Generative AI Tracking To Transform Sales Functions and Data Use: Gartner
While a great deal of the hype surrounding generative AI has been focused on marketing use cases — in no small part due to the low-hanging fruit offered by the quick content creation tools — the technology stands to transform how sales organizations collect and use complex data.
That’s according to Gartner, which predicts that 60% of B2B seller work will be executed through conversational user interfaces via generative AI sales technologies within five years. (For some context: Less than 5% of this work was executed in similar fashion this year.)
Adnan Zijadic, director analyst in the Gartner sales practice, warned both sales operations leaders and tech teams to prepare for a convergence of new forms of AI, dynamic process automation, and revamped deal-planning activities that are expected to remodel sales functions.
What’s more, the technology’s ability to streamlining the time-consuming process of collecting and reviewing disparate data sources will save oodles of valuable 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 in a statement. “This shift will see sales technology moving from being just a tool to truly becoming a teammate.”
Indeed, all of the major technology solution providers within the consumer goods industry are launching their own forms of generative AI-infused technologies. In a recent CGT survey of consumer goods manufacturers, 32% of respondents cited content creation as where they see the most potential for generative AI in the consumer goods industry, while 20% said analytics.
And while adoption levels vary, use cases abound. Some companies, such as Estee Lauder, are investing in genAI to unify their customer view in order to more quickly deliver personalized experiences.
Colgate-Palmolive is testing a generative AI assistant that pulls in digital shelf data to collect data on pricing, stock levels, and sales performance, among other things, to enable employees to more efficiently and effectively complete necessary tasks and adjust strategies as needed. It also produces and optimizes content for the CPG company to use on retail websites, including attributes like optimal title lengths per individual retailer website.
Such combination of salesforce automation (SFA) data and generative AI prompt engineering will pave the way for the next generation of dynamic process automation, according to Gartner, to enable real-time adjustments to market strategies. And with AI’s ability to combine buyer data and creative to produce content, 30% of outbound messages from large organizations will be synthetically generated within the next two years, the firm said.
Generative AI is also expected to impact process automation use cases via mobile and smart devices, desktops, and bots, with conversational experiences used to execute up to 14% of sales planning, 15% of customer meeting prep, and 14% of deal negotiation, according to Gartner.
“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.”
