Among the report’s key findings is that 61% of respondents cited budget and economic uncertainty as the top challenge to revenue growth, with competitive pressures a close second at 58%. The survey also showed that lengthy sales cycles are plaguing teams, with the median cycle at 120 days, ballooning to 408 days for $250M-$1B companies that target mid-market and commercial accounts.

Other key findings include:

• 26% of respondents expect SDRs to generate 31% to 40% of pipeline and, amongst $250M–$1B companies, 38% expect SDRs to generate 41% to 50% of pipeline;
• 64% of C-level executives said account executives were responsible for pipeline generation, but only 29% of “sales staff” said the same; and
• While leaders believe their coaching is effective (46%) or highly effective (37%), 95% of sales reps are not meeting their quotas.

“This report provides a window into how sales teams are operating, addressing challenges and dealing with new market dynamics,” said Manny Medina, CEO and Co-founder of Outreach, in a statement. “By understanding these trends and challenges, sales organizations can better equip their teams to navigate the complexities of today’s market. We’re also proud to announce the launch of the Outreach Insights Group. By analyzing millions of interactions and market trends, the group will arm sellers around the globe with valuable data and research. Our goal is to continue to share the insights we’ve gathered to help every sales professional expand their knowledge base and achieve excellence.”

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Solution Overview

Zilliant’s new features include:

• Pricing Analytics, which reportedly enable rapid insights into the full impact of pricing details for products/customers;
• Pricing Guidance, a deep integration between price optimization and configure, price and quote (CPQ) solutions; and
• Self-Service AI Assistant to configure the right deal through multiple channels like sales, partners and self-service.

Back Of The Box Details

With GenAI Pricing Analytics, customers can receive AI-generated insights to quickly take action, create meaningful reports for users and set up alerts to drive proactive price management.

For its part, Pricing Guidance helps ensure quotes are in line with revenue targets and reduce price discrepancies. Within the quoting process in Zilliant CPQ, a sales representative can immediately see a red, yellow or green light next to the price for every line item in the quote. Prices that fall within the price range will automatically be approved, while those that do not serve as a reminder to the sales rep that this quote will need to go through approval workflows.

Finally, Zilliant CPQ Self-Service AI Assistant allows users to configure the right deal through multiple channels like sales, partners and self-service. In the self-service experience, users will be able to have conversations with an AI assistant to help them find what they’re looking for.

What Makes It Special

Pricing is a C-suite priority as companies grapple with a new global economic environment. As a core strategic process that affects brand, buying experience and financials, pricing involves multiple departments such as sales and finance, but it’s often managed in disconnected spreadsheets and siloed. According to Zilliant, companies can infuse AI throughout the lifecycle to augment and automate critical pricing processes.

Contact

Zilliant

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Forwrd.ai is designed to provide organizations with an AI-based data science platform. Through the infusion of LoudnClear.ai’s technology, Forwrd.ai seeks to enable RevOps executives to build no-code models that connect the dots between marketing, sales and support data and patterns to analyze, predict and act upon growth trends.

“Our technology enables RevOps leaders to create and deploy predictive models seamlessly, without depending on data science teams, to drive operational efficiency and proactive business strategies,” said Kobi Stok, CEO and Founder of Forwrd.ai, in a statement.

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Gong Engage is a full-cycle sales engagement solution designed for creating, managing and converting pipeline, and the integration with Demandbase will reportedly provide users with better access to important account and contact in one place. Specifically:

• Sellers will be able to search Demandbase’s third-party company and contact database to help paint a clearer picture of overall account and contact engagement, set up connections and more; while
• Marketers will unlock a new channel for integrated campaigns that include sellers’ workflows.

“Our goal is to bring the power of Demandbase data, insights and actions directly into the flow of work for advertisers, marketers and sellers,” said Michael Wilczak, Chief Strategy & Development Officer at Demandbase, in a statement. “This integration with Gong surfaces relevant contact and account intelligence right in Gong Engage to make it easy for salespeople to sync and add contacts to Gong. There’s a lot for our joint customers to get excited about, and we look forward to sharing more soon.”

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Specifically, the new capabilities include:

• New tools designed to help build workflows, get trustworthy insights and quickly understand what good AI-generated results look like without depending on data scientists or writing code;
• AI Methodology Playbooks, which reportedly allow leaders to select their sales methodology and then rely on AI Smart Trackers to detect whether elements of the methodology have been met in customer interactions; and
• AI Scorecard Suggestions that seek to automatically suggest answers to inform coaching scorecards.

“AI is already delivering productivity and efficiency benefits to enterprises, but without the accuracy enabled by true contextual understanding of data, the benefits of AI can’t be realized across an organization’s most critical workflows,” said Eilon Reshef, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gong, in a statement. “By bringing deep understanding into and operationalizing insights within key sales processes, Gong gives revenue leaders the visibility, consistency and scale they need to make key decisions that will drive revenue success.”

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Solution Overview

ZoomInfo Copilot is an AI-powered solution that works to blend a company’s data with ZoomInfo data and apply generative AI to predict pipeline via AI-guided recommendations about who to contact, when to engage and what to say.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

ZoomInfo Copilot seeks to help salespeople seize time-sensitive opportunities in real time with Breaking Alerts delivered through Slack. These alerts can be shared across multiple channels, allowing teams to triage emerging opportunities and act decisively on high-quality intent signals. Marketers can also receive ranked and prioritized target accounts and in-market buyers, derived from millions of signals processed daily by ZoomInfo’s AI.

How It Helps

According to the company, ZoomInfo Copilot successfully predicted nearly half of beta users’ existing pipeline. Forty-five percent of the open opportunities in beta users’ CRM had ZoomInfo Copilot signals telling them to engage and, on average, beta users created nearly twice as many sales opportunities compared to non-users in the same roles and companies. Beta users also purportedly reduced their time spent on account research and manual tasks by 10 hours per week.

What Makes It Special

“What sets ZoomInfo’s Copilot apart from any other solution in the market is that it is sitting on top of our AI-ready trusted data foundation that drives decisions, personalization and confidence,” said Henry Schuck, ZoomInfo’s Founder and CEO. “AI is only as good as the data it’s built on, and most solutions are layered on top of static CRM data.”

Contact

ZoomInfo

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6sense Revenue AI for Sales seeks to help sellers prioritize in-market accounts and provide buyer intelligence and contact data within existing tools, while Gong Engage is a full-cycle sales engagement solution designed to create, manage and convert pipeline. The integration reportedly will allow sales teams to:

• Explore high-value intent activities from 6sense directly in Gong Engage;
• Identify key contacts and purchase contact information from 6sense;
• Better personalize sales outreach based on high-value intent signals; and
• Devote more time toward prospecting to reduce average time to close.

“The B2B selling environment is increasingly challenging and we need to give sellers the tools they need to reach new heights,” said Latané Conant, Chief Revenue Officer of 6sense, in a statement. “Arming sales teams with intelligence right within their workflow accelerates their path to efficient revenue generation. Our partners at Gong share our goal to help sellers be more effective and predictable in their pursuit of winning more opportunities.”

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Solution Overview

According to the company, Responsive is the industry’s first AI-powered SRM platform that enables organizations to seamlessly collaborate and confidently respond to RFPs, bids, security questionnaires, sustainability assessments and other information requests so they can win more deals while mitigating business risk and improving the employee experience.

Back-Of-The-Box Details

The Responsive Platform, which is designed to centralize an organization’s most current and compelling, customer-facing information, is engineered around five core tenants:

• Content management to ensure a single source of accurate, trusted content;
• Project management to establish tasks and automate workflows using AI;
• Collaboration to streamline input, iterations and permissions based on role;
• Content accessibility that allows users to access information directly from the apps they’re in every day; and
• Business intelligence to track revenue, win rates and emerging trends and opportunities.

Who It’s For

Nearly 2,000 customers have standardized on Responsive to respond to RFPs, RFIs, DDQs, ESGs, security questionnaires, ad hoc information requests and more.

What Makes It Special

According to the company, part of Responsive’s success has been its deep commitment to rapid, customer-driven innovation, extensive incorporation of AI into its solutions from day one and focus on delivering value to customers.

Contact

Responsive

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The new tools include:

• Pipeline Generation Reports to highlight high-yield pipeline generation activities;
• Sequence Engagement Scores to provide ongoing evaluation of messaging effectiveness;
• Custom Topics and Coaching Cards in Kaia to deliver deep insights into each rep’s interactions with buyers, alongside Coach Card Reports to track the implementation and impact of coaching efforts;
• Smart Deal Assist, which allows managers to ask questions of Outreach’s AI engine and quickly identify pitfalls and gaps in deal progression so timely intervention can occur; and
• Sales Execution Reports to highlight how various sales activities contribute to revenue generation.

“Even the most skilled team members need access to data and guided insights to understand which sales practices are effective, whether their coaching is making a difference to seller performance and how deals are performing at scale,” said Abhijit Mitra, President of Product and Technology at Outreach, in a statement. “These new features were designed to address these challenges with coaching and improving team performance. The platform leverages AI to analyze every aspect of the selling process, giving sales teams unprecedented visibility into their sales workflows.”

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With more than 50% of customers saying they would switch to a competitor after one bad experience, the stakes are high for giving customers the best experience possible. That statistic is troubling when paired with the fact that just 34% of buyers believe their sales reps are genuinely helpful during the buying process, according to Mindtickle’s “2023 State of Sales Productivity Report.”

Many factors contribute to the challenge of providing an optimal CX, but the most notable may be the lack of personalized and effective training for sellers. During training, too many new sales representatives receive generic programs that fail to prepare them with the nuanced skills required to react to diverse customer situations successfully. This deficiency becomes apparent to the buyer in more highly competitive situations where the ability to pivot strategically is critical and, therefore, requires a more comprehensive training strategy that ensures the customer experience is top of mind.

Navigating Customer Interactions

Customer expectations are continually evolving with their day-to-day business needs, creating an environment where being prepared to pivot quickly is needed. Sales teams must be trained on how to shift seamlessly and be knowledgeable enough about customers and their potential needs to react in the moment during calls. This underscores the critical necessity for sales professionals and businesses to reevaluate their strategies, align with evolving buyer expectations and ultimately enhance the overall CX.

One training exercise that shouldn’t be overlooked when cultivating customer-focused habits is active listening. It was found that in the most successful sales calls, customers talk 57% of the time, according to the Mindtickle report. By gleaning insights from call intelligence tools, companies and their sales representatives can better analyze and interpret customer interactions, such as themes covered, deal risks and whether the customer spoke more during the call.

Critical sales enablement and training programs equip sales representatives with the necessary skills to secure deals and create long-lasting customer relationships. In a volatile market landscape where customers may be quick to leave, representatives must give them a reason to stay. Navigating through high-risk deal interactions with poise and maintaining the customer relationship is difficult for even the best reps. Recognizing the impact of preparedness on CX, businesses are prompting more internal audits where training is a system pillar instead of a “when you have time” task.

Personalized Sales Training Through Data

Another difficult part of tying sales training to CX is the overall approach of the courses, discussions and industries. With specific products, vastly different customer needs and varying skill sets, there is no correct way to train generally, which is where a distinctly tailored approach is needed. This is done through personalized training, which addresses the diverse challenges faced by sales professionals, cultivates a sense of empowerment and confidence and allows seller to contribute uniquely to the overall CX.

To scale that across large sales teams, you can leverage your company’s data on seller behaviors. Sales managers can leverage sales tools to analyze calls to better understand the best strategies for interacting with customers and areas of improvement for each team member. They can also share insights with their team to learn from each other’s experiences, creating a dynamic learning culture that continuously evolves and adapts.

Sales managers can also build programs on skills proven to win deals, such as learning which keywords to use, appropriate speech pace, how to limit filler words and more. Reps can then practice their skills with engaging, bite-sized exercises that showcase winning behaviors through real-life examples and gamify the learning experience with leaderboards, challenges and quizzes.

Personalization to improve sales training and CX is needed, and your customers will be helpful in your success. According to Redpoint, 66% of consumers will share personal data about themselves if they think it will elevate their CX. Active listening, adaptability and strategic preparedness are pivotal components of a successful sales approach in the quest for a perfect customer experience interaction.

Parth Mukherjee is the Global VP of Product Marketing and GTM Strategy at Mindtickle, a sales enablement and revenue productivity platform.

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