The Future of AI in Enablement

AI is transforming the sales enablement space, offering capabilities that will reshape the way businesses operate, innovate, and deliver value.

Whether operationalizing enablement strategies, improving content creation with data-driven insights, or training and coaching sales reps, AI holds a vast potential to enhance enablement in almost every aspect of its application. For enablement, implementing AI capabilities into programs means increased efficiency, productivity, and personalization.

“I think that AI is going to help us grow, it’s going to help us learn, and it’s going to help us evolve,” Marja Moore, cofounder of the Value Collective.

Below, learn more about how AI can revolutionize enablement by enhancing productivity and optimizing efficiency, paving the way for the future of enablement.

Enhance Workflow Efficiency with Automation

One of AI’s greatest benefits is its ability to improve workplace efficiency.

Leveraging AI, mundane tasks like writing follow-up emails, searching for content, and writing content descriptions can all be automated. AI automation frees up sellers’ time to invest in meaningful activities that drive sales goals, like buyer interactions and skill development.

And for a future-focused enablement strategy, efficiency is especially important as buyers are increasingly focused on quick, hands-off sales processes.

“Gartner states that 30% of buyers nowadays want a seller-free sales process,” said Tim Cortinovis, author of “This is Marketing Automation! This is Sales Automation!” “And what is more, markets are highly saturated, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to talk to our clients.”

With AI automating tedious tasks, sellers can be present and responsive to buyers’ needs, whether in formal interactions or by providing personalized digital resources. In this, AI automation helps to improve the buying experience for customers as their needs are met in a timely and innovative way.

“Customers want the fastest process possible — answers the same moment they sent the text message. They want the simplest process possible — no forms, no hassle. And they want total transparency in price, process, and supply chain,” said Cortinovis. “I think, personally, this is only possible with automation.”

By addressing the increasing demand for seller-free sales processes and emphasizing quick, personalized interactions, AI automation plays a pivotal role in elevating the overall buying experience to align with a future-focused strategy that is tailored to modern buyers.

Identify Predictable Behaviors and Target Strategic Conversations with Analytics

Analytics is another AI capability that will define a future-focused enablement strategy. As sales cycles and business demands become more rapid by the day, AI-powered insights help enablement teams stay responsive to an ever-changing environment.

For example, AI analytics help sellers identify patterns in customer behaviors that predict when certain buying actions may occur.

“Within the context of enablement, especially revenue enablement, AI is really powerful,” said Arup Chakravarti, director of sales excellence at Equifax UK. “Essentially, it’s helping an organization and individuals in an organization be more intelligent in the context of identifying some of their customers that may be closer to making some type of buying decision.”

These predictive capabilities empower sellers to prepare for and execute strategic conversations to land deals. Further, other predictive AI-powered capabilities like conversation intelligence can provide sellers with important insights on buyers’ engagement with certain topics or pieces of content.

“With AI, you can be more intelligent in terms of how you analyze that conversation. You can get the computer to flag insights and behavioral patterns,” said Chakravarti.

Identifying these patterns then helps sellers get a step ahead of their buyers. This way, sellers can anticipate buyers’ needs and tailor interactions and content creation to achieve ideal selling outcomes.

The ability to anticipate buyer behaviors is not only important for landing deals but for protecting and maintaining customer relationships as well.

“AI should be able to help you get ahead so that you can protect your revenue,” said Chakravarti.

Leveraging AI, sales teams can identify changes in buyer behaviors or interactions that may indicate a withdrawal from services or an apprehension to buy. With these insights, sellers can interject and reassure their buyers, nurturing the customer relationship and protecting their revenue. As sellers gain visibility into buyer behaviors and actions, they are empowered to maintain relationships by anticipating action and supporting customers’ individual needs in moments that matter.

Optimize Training and Coaching Programs

Beyond automation and analytics, AI can also improve existing training and coaching programs with instant insights, optimizing sellers’ experiences from the very beginning.

For many enablement teams, training programs are difficult to customize to the unique needs of each seller due to a lack of time or resources. For managers, a lack of bandwidth makes coaching difficult to execute regularly for every seller. With AI, however, both of these processes can be quickly customized to sellers’ needs.

“There are so many different learning styles, so the challenge is always how to strike that balance. AI potentially could have software that assesses different people’s selling activities, their learning styles, and potentially create curriculum for them, automated,” said Sharif Wilson, program manager of revenue enablement at Tanium.

With tools like conversation intelligence, AI’s personalization capabilities are not limited to training alone. For example, these types of tools can help reps get immediate insights on their meetings with buyers and feedback on where to improve. This turns everyday tasks into learning opportunities, creating a future-focused approach to rep development as learning becomes an ongoing practice.

Further, this creates an individualized approach for sellers as each is coached individually to their real-world execution of skills. This saves time and bandwidth for managers and enablement teams as sellers are supported by AI.

“One of the things I use AI for is taking meeting notes or a meeting transcript and distilling it down into some of the points that were most important from that meeting,” said Moore. “That helps sellers, too, to understand what those points were in meetings that they’re having – good points and bad points. For example: were they stuttering? Were they saying the wrong words?”

As the new year begins and teams search for new ways to optimize their enablement strategies, AI is at the forefront of enablement’s future. The influence of AI in the sales enablement space is profound and ever-evolving, offering important capabilities like automation, analytics, and customization. By embracing AI innovation in the enablement tech stack, practitioners can stay on the cutting edge of enablement’s evolution while boosting productivity for their sales teams.

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