Dave Eddleman: Everyone. Thanks for joining. I’m Dave Eddleman with the Alexander Group. I’m joined with my colleague Mike Burnett, also with the Alexander Group. He and I lead up the business services and financial services practice area for the firm. Our topic today is AI and AI in the go-to-market environment, and some emphasis on the job roles and how AI investment in job roles is really impacting the total go-to-market environment. Primarily, we’re going to be focusing on sales jobs, but it’s also more inclusive and broader coverage models in the go-to-market environment. We’ve done some research and we’ve got a survey, and I think it’s some of the insights, and that’s what we’re going to be sharing with you today, some of the insights from our work in that area. And without further preamble, Mike, let’s just jump into it. What sort of jumps out as some of the top end or maybe the top insight from our research.
Mike Burnett: Yeah. Thanks, Dave. I think the the overall headline is that AI investment is skyrocketing. I think, as we all know. But the surprising element is that seller productivity is actually flat to down year over year. Uh, so what does that mean? It means that there’s a ton of activity, a ton of interest, a ton of dollars being poured into AI tools. But we’re seeing organizations really struggle with pulling through the value. And a lot of what we’re going to talk about is, what are some of the reasons why folks are falling into that pitfall? And a lot of it has to do with essentially not planning ahead in terms of how to rewire jobs. We wire processes and making sure that the tools are actually sticking is the punchline. So we’ll unpack that more. But that’s the overall headline. Flat productivity. Given a really big investment in AI in the past year.
Dave Eddleman: Yeah, I think what we’ve experienced with our client base is that a lot of our clients are doing this, but they seem to be stuck in pilot mode. They seem to be stuck in they’ve done some things, but they’re not quite getting the right type of return on investment, or they’re not in general, seeing any major change in the roles and how they do business with their customer. Would you agree that that this pilot mode is sort of there’s a whole motion that seems to be out there right now. And it really and I think the research and reflects that as well, it hasn’t really taken off in terms of return.
Mike Burnett: Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of it, Dave, is because organizations are viewing AI as a technology initiative rather than a go-to-market initiative, at least for the go-to-market functions. What I mean by that is folks are starting with the tools, the technology, rather than what the high performing organizations that we saw as part of the survey are doing, which is starting with one of the right workflows, what’s the right data environment to be able to free up and actually capture the most return from a time savings and from an efficiency standpoint? So we see organizations kind of getting that backwards, starting with the tech first rather than the workflow. And I think the second point is when we do see folks actually generating more cellular bandwidth in this case, because AI is able to take more off of a seller’s plate. Folks aren’t prepared in terms of directing where they want sellers to be spending that bandwidth. Is that, for example, making more phone calls? Is it being trained on being able to sell broader solutions? There’s a lot of misguided time that’s being spent or freed up there that I think organizations aren’t just ready to successfully take advantage of and really point their sellers in the right direction. It’s almost going lost a lot of the savings that folks are being found in the near stage because of that.
Dave Eddleman: Totally agree. And I think even before this new pervasive AI revolution I should say maybe it’s a revelation as well, I don’t know. But nonetheless, I think just starting with the job role and looking at how sellers shift their time around now that they’ve got these tools, are they really taking the time away from non selling activities? Right? So we spend a lot of time at the Alexander Group looking at the efficacy, the general efficacy of of the job roles. And I think you’re absolutely right, Mike, that what are they doing with this extra bandwidth? And really, how are we even measuring this? You know, are we getting a good feedback loop to say, yep, this tool is really changed the structure of the job roles and how we interact or how many customers that we actually are engaging with. Is that an expanding world, for example, any other like kind of mistakes that we see out of the research? We talked about the roles and the time allocations, but anything else that you could comment on in terms of mistakes?
Mike Burnett: Yeah. I think the other thing is taking a harder look at how we need to train and really develop the sellers, the sales managers, the customer success managers of the future. What I mean by that is there are going to be new skills, new expectations put on a lot of these folks. And it’s not just about AI isn’t just about automating these processes and freeing up time. There’s also going to be an expectation that sellers evolve into becoming more real strategists. Some of the admin that we’ve been talking about, if that falls off their plate, we need to up the ante in terms of what they bring at the point of persuasion or when they’re meeting with customers. Sales managers, we need them to be not necessarily just doing the admin, the reporting, the behind the scenes back office. That’s so critical to what a lot of managers are doing today. We need them to be helping with developing the talent of the future, being more coaching oriented, being change agents really in terms of making sure that the rest of the organization is following through. And at times, the talent and skills that of sellers today are going to need to evolve and the expectations are only going to grow. And you need to have your training and development programs put in place in order to allow you to once again sees the full value of this additional bandwidth that we’ve seen. Uh, you know, sellers and organizations really strive to produce and maximize.
Dave Eddleman: That’s great stuff. And I think to the, in terms of training and development, the leaders really have to lead here. There’s a lot of worry out there in the, in the workplace. My job’s not going to be there because of AI. There’s that emotional piece to it. But if the leader is really driving in a very positive way and say, look, we’re going to sell more, you can make more money with these new tools. So I don’t know if you have any insights on should they be worried about their jobs? Right.
Mike Burnett: I don’t think they should be worried. We heard this from customers. We’ve heard this from in other research. We’ve heard this in our research. I think everyone has acknowledged that the human, the critical human element to selling into go-to-market isn’t going away. I think while there’s excitement around agentic AI and autonomous AI, there are absolutely applications for that. More and more, we’re hearing the organizations that are going to be really successful are the ones that enable their team via AI, rather than try to replace their team with AI. There’s going to be some elements of jobs that will disappear and be automated. But I think at the end of the day, there’s still going to be this desire for sellers to sell to, you know, putting the humanity in human back in selling. I don’t expect that to go anywhere, so I wouldn’t say be worried. I think if anything, the thing that folks are probably anxious about is where do I start? And if there’s three things I might offer up as a suggestion, one is keep this simple. Three focus areas. One, reevaluate your processes. Identify what work I should know. You talked about that. Second, reset what your productivity expectations are for sellers if you’re expanding capacity. If we’re expecting to be able to take on more accounts or more calls let’s make sure to identify that upfront so that we can build in processes how lead flows are distributed, really what the time profile of the future should be. Think ahead to, to reset those while you’re establishing or implementing AI. And then third is the point I was mentioning. Rethink your talent profile. It’s going to be really important to have a newer core competencies that are equally important human skill that AI cannot replace. So try to emphasize those in your hiring profiles for the future, as well as in your sales and training programs. I think if you aren’t focused on those three areas, you run the risk of just not capturing that. All this great promise that we’ve talked about in terms of what AI will be able to produce.
Dave Eddleman: Fantastic. Any closing remarks? Where do I start? What do I reevaluate if I’m stuck in this pilot mode and not sort of driving some of the points that you were making?
Mike Burnett: Yeah. Just don’t fall in love with the idea of just buying more technology. AI investment is not going to drive the growth alone. You have to think of that in tandem with really redesigning all the processes, talent profiles, jobs, workflows. That’s going to be critical. Those are the folks who are winning today where we’ve seen differentiated productivity uplift. It’s because they’re thinking about this more holistically as a go-to-market transformation transformation initiative, not just the tech investment.
Dave Eddleman: Great stuff. Again, thanks so much, Mike, for the insights. And if anyone has any questions, reach out to us at www.alexandergroup.com. Easy to find us and hope you enjoy the video. T
