A global survey of 5,500 sales professionals published today finds 81% of sales teams are either experimenting with (40%) or have fully implemented (41%) artificial intelligence (AI).
Conducted by Salesforce, the survey also notes that 83% of sales teams that have implemented AI saw revenue growth in the last year, compared to 66% that experience growth without using AI. Two-thirds of sales representatives using AI say they have no intention of leaving, compared to just over half on teams without AI, the survey finds.
Additionally, more than two-thirds (68%) of survey respondents that work for organizations that have adopted AI have added headcount to their sales teams in the past year, compared to 47% of teams without AI.
However, the survey also finds nearly three quarters of the sales representatives surveyed don’t expect to meet their quota this year, and an even larger 84% report missing quotas last year.
The issue that sales teams need to fundamentally address is sales capacity, says Ketan Karkhanis, executive vice president and general manager for Salesforce Sales Cloud. “Organizations need to maximize selling capacity,” he says.
Unfortunately, too many sales representatives are spending 70% of their time on tasks that are not directly related to selling, notes Karkhanis.
AI, however, is not an immediate panacea for solving that problem. A third (33%) of sales operations professionals using AI say their teams lack resources or headcount to support the new technology, while another 33% cite insufficient employee training as an adoption hurdle.
In addition, only 35% of sales professionals completely trust the accuracy of their organization’s data.
Overall, 57% of respondents said competition has gotten more challenging since last year, while only 13% say it’s gotten easier.
Among those using AI, however, the survey finds 80% reporting it is now easier to get the customer insights they need to close deals, compared to just 54% that are not using AI. That capability is especially critical for junior members of a sales team that have been recently onboarded, notes Karkhanis. They become much more productive sooner because AI makes it easier for them to understand customer requirements, he adds.
The challenge, however, is that organizations that embrace AI typically need to make significant investments in IT. In fact, the survey finds 53% of the respondents that have fully implemented AI first consolidated their technology stack, with nearly the same amount (51%) implementing additional data security measures.
Of course, it’s just as likely that sales teams trying to engage will also be investing in AI to optimize purchasing processes. Many of them will similarly be using AI agents to optimize workflows and identify preferred suppliers based on quality, consistency and cost. How the AI agents that they employ might interact with AI agents created by sales teams remains to be seen.
In the meantime, however, it’s clear that sales teams that do have access to AI are going to be more effective. Less clear is how long that might be an advantage once every sales team is armed with similar AI capabilities.
