By 2028, 60% of B2B seller work will be executed through conversational user interfaces via generative AI sales technologies, up from less than 5% in 2023, according to Gartner.

“Sales operations leaders and their technology teams must prepare for the convergence of new forms of artificial intelligence, dynamic process automation and reinvented deal-planning activities that will transform the sales function,” said Adnan Zijadic, director analyst in the Gartner Sales Practice.

According to Gartner, generative AI stands to revolutionise how sales organisations capture, understand and utilise an array of more complex data signals.

Before generative AI, sellers would review disparate data sources to inform their tactics and messaging. However, it’s believed that generative AI will enable sales leaders to streamline these processes, saving hours of seller time.

“By combining external and internal data sources, and automating complex manual processes, generative AI will unlock a richer understanding of target audiences and usher in a new era of sales decision-making,” said Zijadic.

He added: “This shift will see sales technology moving from being just a tool to truly becoming a teammate.”

Combining Sales Force Automation and Generative AI

The combination of sales force automation (SFA) data and generative AI prompt engineering will facilitate the next generation of dynamic process automation, claims Gartner.

According the company, this will enable leaders to make real-time adjustments to market strategies. AI can combine buyer data and creativity to automate value messaging, producing high-quality content. Gartner predicts that in the next two years, 30% of outbound messages from large organisations will be synthetically generated.

AI will also drive impactful process automation use cases through mobile and smart devices, desktops and bots: Conversational experiences will be used to execute up to 14% of sales planning, 15% of customer meeting prep and 14% of deal negotiation.

“One of the most transformative use cases of generative AI will be process automation,” said Zijadic. “CSOs should invest in AI readiness and data maturity to ensure they’re ready to embrace this highly impactful use case.”

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Successful adoption of generative AI adaptive sales and deal playbooks will provide new gains in sales productivity, presenting an opportunity to reanalyze how go-to-market (GTM) resources are allocated, according to Gartner.

Gartner expects that the most significant impacts of generative AI on SFA platforms for planning purposes will materialise in the areas of guided selling, forecast management, visualisation and analytics, integration and platform composability, and collaboration.

“In the next few years, Gartner expects 35% of chief revenue officers to resource a centralised ‘GenAI Operations’ team as part of their GTM organization,” concluded Zijadic.