This report on Gartner’s CSO and Sales Leader Conference is a first for Sales & Marketing Management. It’s a first because, for the first time, I attended the annual Gartner Sales Leader conference, which was held in May in Las Vegas.
Gartner launched a combined sales and marketing leaders conference in 2017. They were turned into separate conferences a year later. The Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo is held each June in Denver.
Approximately 1,350 attendees at this year’s 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.
As we buttoned up production of this report, The New York Times published an article about how the world’s largest tech companies continue to engage in what amounts to an AI arms race. Meta, Microsoft, Amazon and Google have told investors they expect to spend a combined $320 billion on infrastructure costs this year, according to the Times. On top of that, they’re offering compensation packages for elite AI researchers that are worth as much as $100 million per person!
Comments in The Times article from those who monitor big tech companies as well as venture capital investors who are staking out their ground in the AI boom reflect sentiments I heard at the Gartner conference about how sales leaders are approaching the AI implementation era.
“Everyone is deeply afraid of being left behind,” Chris V. Nicholson, an investor with the venture capital firm Page One Ventures, told The Times.
Sounds familiar.
“The thinking from the big C.E.O.s is that they can’t afford to be wrong by doing too little, but they can afford to be wrong by doing too much,” Jordan Jacobs, a partner with the venture capital firm Radical Ventures, told The Times.
Also sounds familiar.
It’s our hope that the collection of articles in this report capture highlights of the informative presentations made at the Gartner Sales Leader Conference. They are, in essence, presentations in print.
AI’s potential remains undetermined. I’m already looking forward to Gartner’s Sales Leader Conference next year to see where things stand. It’s safe to say there will be plenty to catch up on.
