AI & Data: Frontline Sales Leaders Build High-Performing Teams

As our world becomes increasingly data-driven and AI-optimized, the sales leaders who adopt the right tools and processes now will have a competitive edge over those who hesitate. As a frontline sales manager, it’s quite likely you were a highly successful seller not that long ago. Now, as you create and enable a team of high performers, it’s smart to build efficiencies and proven data-driven approaches into your playbook from the start. Here are some steps you can take to set yourself up for success and start to facilitate real change in your sales organization. 

Part 1. Prepare your Sales Organization to Become AI-Optimized 

Step 1. Identify the areas of your sales organization that need to change. Start by identifying inefficiencies and the roadblocks standing in the way of your desired state. Then, start to think through solutions that will help get you there. Here are some challenges you may be experiencing.

Step 2. Align expectations with senior management. Once you’ve identified the areas of your sales organization that need to change and how you propose to address those challenges, it’s time to gain support from senior leadership. By aligning expectations, you’re making sure they understand the impact for themselves and the organization and gaining champions for your programs. In turn, you’re committing to following through with the plans you’ve proposed. 

‍Step 3. Define success metrics. Determine appropriate program KPIs and reporting cadences for your programs and communicate those with leadership. What does success look like for you and your team? Some examples: 

• What percentage of accounts have account plans and how do they improve your ability to upsell/cross-sell? 
• How do account plans improve internal collaboration and shorten implementation? 

In other words, what behavior are you looking to change, and how are you going to measure success?

‍Step 4. Develop your AI roadmap. Your new program should have a complete set of activities, assets, tools, and technologies — all clearly aligned to measurable and observable outcomes that can be assessed by you and reported to senior leadership. Get a detailed explanation of how to develop an AI roadmap here. 

‍Step 5. Implement and iterate using the right tools. It’s possible to build AI sales tools in-house but it can be a months-to-years long process. There are many out-of-the-box sales AI tools that can help make an impact right away. It’s important to select sales technology that offers A. the capabilities you need to help solve your challenges, B. the insights and reporting capabilities you need to measure success, and C. robust and up to date security and data privacy protections. 

Part 2. Measure Success

Once you have the organizational alignment in place and the technology you need to implement changes, you can kick off your new AI-driven sales programs. Here is a table to measure the success of new programs:

Learn more about how you can leverage AI and better data to develop a team of high performing reps.