Special Report

Attendees at this year’s Gartner SEO and Sales Leader Conference were inundated with one overarching message: Artificial intelligence is changing how B2B sales teams operate and you need to develop your AI adoption strategy now. In fact, now is late to get started.

In his keynote address, Gartner for Sales Vice President Analyst Dan Gottlieb said companies that fail to develop a formal AI for sales adoption strategy and that fail to hire with AI skills in mind will be left behind.

As CSOs look ahead to the second half of the year, there are three strategy shifts they should consider to meet their 2025 goals.

The role of the CSO continues to evolve, requiring a forward-thinking approach that goes beyond traditional sales metrics to drive long-term growth and success

CSOs will be most effective in their first year by focusing on four critical areas: establishing priorities quickly, understanding your environment and role, building relationships and your personal brand, and delivering on priorities in the first year and beyond.

By embracing a growth mindset, resilience and a willingness to take risks, sellers can unlock their full potential and drive exceptional results.

Sellers must move beyond generic pitches and instead focus on delivering tailored solutions that address specific buyer challenges.

An imperative first step to develop a high-performing team is to create a work environment in which individual team members embrace the challenge to excel, encourage each other to achieve, and feed off each other’s successes.

Human sellers remain the decisive factor in winning complex deals despite AI’s promise to automate everything from prospecting to pricing.

Without clean, connected real-time data — and the processes to support it — AI becomes just another siloed tool spitting out half-truths, inconsistent insights or conflicting answers.