Featuring:
Peter Ostrow, VP, Principal Analyst
Show Notes:
Revenue enablement teams have been relatively slow to embrace new AI capabilities. In a recent Forrester survey, just 29% of revenue enablement leaders reported “strong progress” in understanding the potential value of generative AI (genAI). What do these teams stand to gain from using AI, and genAI in particular? Vice President and Principal Analyst Peter Ostrow explains on this week’s What It Means podcast.
Early in the episode, Ostrow describes the options that revenue enablement teams have for accessing AI and genAI capabilities. While the hazards of using public-facing tools like ChatGPT for handling client information are well-known, a good starting point for revenue enablement teams may be to use the capabilities embedded in the tools they already have. “All of the [revenue enablement automation] providers offer not just AI, but genAI components,” he says. “The great news is you’re already paying for it.”
A bigger issue for revenue enablement leaders is overcoming a “reactive mindset” when it comes to AI and particularly genAI, Ostrow adds. He shares adoption best practices to help them overcome this, such as offloading email writing and other administrative tasks to genAI and working with IT to maintain data privacy and security. Willingness to upskill is also key, he says: While training and content creation have historically been core revenue enablement competencies, these could give way to prompt engineering and secure data management as genAI use gains pace.
For revenue enablement teams that adopt or deepen their AI use, the potential gains are considerable. Ostrow discusses what today’s tools are capable of, from critiquing sales pitches to divining which deals are most likely to close in a given timeframe. “These are potentially ways for enablement to really transform from … the peddler of software and other toys and tools to the folks who are going to help me get to my number,” he says.
