In the sales arena, the customer may be king, but a company that pivots from adapting by necessity to one that adapts by design could be ruler of the RevOps universe.
According to Gartner, Inc., which hosted its CSO and Sales Leader Conference in Las Vegas, sales organizations that adapt will outpace the competition. However, based on Gartner’s research, two out of three sales leaders admit that they struggle to shift resources to an emerging priority.
“From budget constraints and limited resources to fast-evolving buyer expectations and mounting pressure to adopt and master new technology, sales leaders are stuck in a reactive mode,” said Dave Egloff, VP analyst in the Gartner Sales Practice, during the conference’s opening keynote address. “Rather than building organizational adaptability in the face of this constant chaos, leaders are over-relying on individual sellers, leading to seller burnout and performance issues.”
Egloff believes that in order for a sales organization to succeed in constant disruption, leaders must signal a pivot from a reactive approach to being adaptive by design. “It is this game-changing shift towards anticipatory adaptation that will lead to an organization having a winning advantage,” he said.
What separates the leaders from the pack? Gartner shared three accelerators that speed up decision-making:
1. Revenue Intelligence
Sales executives are informed about what’s coming, what’s working, what’s slowing them down, and what they should do as a result via revenue intelligence, which uses data to provide contextualized insight. Data gives firms the ability to change since it is both actionable and predictive.
2. Technology as a Teammate
Building a new relationship between people and technology—one with clearly defined roles and transparent actionability—is the goal of technology as a colleague. Technology is now a partner that helps sellers quickly adjust, rather than just another instrument that might overwhelm them.
3. Modularity
With change being an enduring constant, teams must first have a willingness to pivot. Then, they need a system that simplifies customizing their adaptive approach based on emerging demands. “In order to thrive in the uncertainty, sales organizations must embrace constant adaptation, effective decision making, and be able to sustain shifts in strategy or execution,” said Alice Walmesley, director, advisory in the Gartner Sales Practice. “Organizations that make this shift to adaptive design are more likely to mitigate the downsides created by external events and capture the full potential of opportunities.”
AI is undoubtedly a kingpin in this strategy.
Ryan Bott, chief revenue officer at Fullcast, who attended the conference, sees the value of using AI to help adapt to new GTM strategies. Rather than watching AI replace his sales team, he sees the role expanding with unprecedented insights into customer acquisition and support.
“We understood these changes when Fullcast developed its RevOps platform,” he said. “It’s exciting to see AI capabilities fall in step with the need for thoughtful and strategic resource allocation and territory planning.”
“CSOs must embrace this winning formula regardless of marketplace conditions, acting with agility and finding opportunities for growth in disruption,” Walmesley said.
To learn more about ways Fullcast can help your teams adapt your Go-to-Market by design, click here.
