Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) face a significant challenge: evaluating and implementing new technologies to support their sales teams. However, the proliferation of sales tools has raised concerns about overwhelming teams with yet another piece of technology.

According to the 2023 State of Sales report from Salesforce, sales teams currently utilize an average of 10 tools to close deals, with 94% of sales organizations planning to consolidate their tech stack in the next 12 months. This trend underscores the importance of streamlining sales technology while also considering the promises Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents.

Interestingly enough, it’s CROs who are increasingly driving the push to implement Generative AI, more than any other function in the business, recognizing its potential to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. It’s become critical to understand the core use cases that will best support revenue teams and their operations, as well as the readiness and willingness of the sales team to adopt and integrate new technologies.

New technologies are only effective if sellers take the time to learn new skills and adopt new behaviors. While adopting software of any kind requires sellers to learn new skills and behaviors, the amount of experience your sales team has integrating technologies into their sales motion can dramatically change the kinds of benefits they get out of RevTech. In one of Gartner’s latest reports, “Make Technology a Teammate to Humanize the B2B Seller Role,” a RevTech maturity model is presented, outlining the four stages of RevTech Maturity:

For organizations at stages “1” or “2” in this maturity model, there’s a compelling case to harness the power of AI for the sales team by empowering the original sales teammate, the Sales Engineer.

As one of the more in-demand functions within a B2B tech company, the Sales Engineer has been tasked with a growing range of responsibilities,  but with few levers to support demand from sales, product, marketing, and customer success teams. Consequently, their desire and readiness to adopt new technologies is much higher than their sales peers, and they’re positioned to realize the benefits of those technology investments faster.

It’s important to note that technology investments that empower Sales Engineers also benefit both the product and go-to-market teams. Products improve, deals close faster, and experts become more adept. As this cycle accelerates, attainment rises and the cost of sales decreases.

We encourage CROs to ensure that sales skill sets evolve at the same pace as technology adoption. When evaluating new AI technologies, if concerns about usage and adoption by the sales team arise, consider starting with the technical experts who are best positioned to take advantage, and amplify product and go-to-market success.

For further insights, download the full Gartner report here.