Hello there,

Being a sales leader right now is hard. We are constantly being asked to do more with less. Something that is always in the back of my mind as a GTM leader is thinking about what “knobs” I can turn to grow revenue, make my teams more effective, and ensure we are providing real value to our customers every day.

Think about running your GTM org like flying a plane. You're in the pilot's seat with a huge control panel in front of you. You need to figure out what knobs to turn for a smooth flight, better fuel efficiency, an on-time landing, and happy passengers.

You are in a constant state of tweaking, testing, and iterating, seeking things you can do better. It's our job as sales leaders to do that. But, you can only do it with great data. And we've all had that feeling of not having the data you need, or knowing you’re data isn’t accurate. It's a very uncomfortable feeling.

What I love about AI is it allows me to ask questions on the fly and provides me real answers based on data. It's not only giving me more "knobs to turn”, but providing data-driven insights into what might happen with each move. It gives me the option to turn knobs I didn’t even realize existed.

Here are a couple of things I’ve come to expect from AI (fueled with great data):

• AI tells us what's going well, but more importantly, what's going wrong, where we need help, and where there are risks we might not have seen.
• AI should make us more proactive versus reactive.
• AI should help us run the business using leading versus lagging indicators. By the time you get to a forecast call, oftentimes it's too late.
• AI should help us answer questions that we had absolutely no insight into in the past. And bring up questions we didn’t even know we should be asking.
• AI should empower us and make us better, smarter, faster decision-makers.

The key to all of this is having high-quality, comprehensive data. Without smart data, AI will not be effective. It will not add value. You will not use it. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

You know that last minute dinner you have with an executive at a company, and you ask the sales executive, “Hey, can you put together an account briefing for me?” It seems like a small request but it takes the AE half a day to pull those insights together. It’s a mad scramble and you still might not get all the information you need. If you have multiple account teams calling on that same account, good luck.

Alternatively, I recently had the opportunity to visit a top tier account. I prepped for this meeting on the plane using our SalesAI platform. By asking a simple set of questions I understood who we had engaged with, when, what the outcomes of meetings were, conversation topics, and potential risks. I could easily see the complete picture of all our engagements across both my sales and customer success teams.

I didn’t need to ask anyone to do the mad scramble. In fact, we use SalesAI to prep for every customer meeting we have.

Lastly, I wanted to share some things I’ve been hearing from other GTM leaders lately.

• A customer who runs a large renewals team recently told me they believe if they are not using AI in their go-to-market organization in the very near future their job will be at risk. However, they also see it as a golden opportunity to bolster their career and make a mark at their organization.
• Leaders are clamoring to use AI in a way that genuinely has an ROI. It's abundantly clear that this is getting dictated from the C-suite and trickling down.
• A theme of being underwhelmed by the value of AI is almost always a result of starting before getting your data in order.
• There is this feeling of, “if you’re not thinking about AI, you're already behind.” Big companies are in an AI race to be the first to put it in place, the right way.

Remember, as GTM leaders, we need to be constantly turning the knobs available to us. Stop guessing and start using data to make smarter decisions. Turn those knobs with confidence!

Be bold. Sell smart.

Laura

Laura Palmer
Chief Revenue Officer | People.ai
LinkedIn