The controversy over whether or not synthetic intelligence belongs within the company boardroom seems to be over — not less than for the folks accountable for producing income.
Seven in ten enterprise income leaders now belief AI to frequently inform their enterprise choices, in keeping with a sweeping new examine launched Thursday by Gong, the income intelligence firm. The discovering marks a dramatic shift from simply two years in the past, when most organizations handled AI as an experimental expertise relegated to pilot packages and particular person productiveness hacks.
The analysis, based mostly on an evaluation of seven.1 million gross sales alternatives throughout greater than 3,600 firms and a survey of over 3,000 world income leaders spanning america, United Kingdom, Australia, and Germany, paints an image of an trade in fast transformation. Organizations which have embedded AI into their core go-to-market methods are 65 % extra prone to enhance their win charges than opponents nonetheless treating the expertise as non-compulsory.
"I don't assume folks delegate choices to AI, however they do depend on AI within the course of of creating choices," Amit Bendov, Gong's co-founder and chief government, mentioned in an unique interview with VentureBeat. "People are making the choice, however they're largely assisted."
The excellence issues. Somewhat than changing human judgment, AI has turn out to be what Bendov describes as a "second opinion" — a data-driven verify on the instinct and guesswork that has historically ruled gross sales forecasting and technique.
Slowing progress is forcing gross sales groups to squeeze extra from each rep
The timing of AI's ascendance in income organizations isn’t any coincidence. The examine reveals a sobering actuality: after rebounding in 2024, common annual income progress amongst surveyed firms decelerated to 16 % in 2025, marking a three-percentage-point decline 12 months over 12 months. Gross sales rep quota attainment fell from 52 % to 46 % over the identical interval.
The wrongdoer, in keeping with Gong's evaluation, isn't that salespeople are performing worse on particular person offers. Win charges and deal period remained constant. The issue is that representatives are working fewer alternatives—a discovering that implies operational inefficiencies are consuming into promoting time.
This helps clarify why productiveness has rocketed to the highest of government priorities. For the primary time within the examine's historical past, growing the productiveness of current groups ranked because the number-one progress technique for 2026, leaping from fourth place the earlier 12 months.
"The main focus is on growing gross sales productiveness," Bendov mentioned. "How a lot dollar-output per dollar-input."
The numbers again up the urgency. Groups the place sellers frequently use AI instruments generate 77 % extra income per consultant than those who don't — a niche Gong characterizes as a six-figure distinction per salesperson yearly.
Corporations are transferring past primary AI automation towards strategic decision-making
The character of AI adoption in gross sales has developed significantly over the previous 12 months. In 2024, most income groups used AI for primary automation: transcribing calls, drafting emails, updating CRM data. These use instances proceed to develop, however 2025 marked what the report calls a shift "from automation to intelligence."
The variety of U.S. firms utilizing AI for forecasting and measuring strategic initiatives jumped 50 % 12 months over 12 months. These extra subtle purposes — predicting deal outcomes, figuring out at-risk accounts, measuring which worth propositions resonate with totally different purchaser personas — correlate with dramatically higher outcomes.
Organizations within the ninety fifth percentile of business influence from AI had been two to 4 occasions extra prone to have deployed these strategic use instances, in keeping with the examine.
Bendov supplied a concrete instance of how this performs out in apply. "Corporations have hundreds of offers that they roll up into their forecast," he mentioned. "It was based mostly solely on human sentiment—imagine it or not. That's why plenty of firms miss their numbers: as a result of folks say, 'Oh, he informed me he'll purchase,' or 'I believe I can in all probability get this one.'"
AI modifications that calculus by analyzing proof reasonably than optimism. "Corporations now get a second opinion from AI on their forecasting, and that improves forecasting accuracy dramatically — 10 [or] 15 % higher accuracy simply because it's evidence-based, not simply based mostly on human sentiment," Bendov mentioned.
Income-specific AI instruments are dramatically outperforming general-purpose alternate options
One of many examine's extra provocative findings issues the kind of AI that delivers outcomes. Groups utilizing revenue-specific AI options — instruments constructed explicitly for gross sales workflows reasonably than general-purpose platforms like ChatGPT — reported 13 % increased income progress and 85 % higher business influence than these counting on generic instruments.
These specialised methods had been additionally twice as prone to be deployed for forecasting and predictive modeling, the report discovered.
The discovering carries apparent implications for Gong, which sells exactly this sort of domain-specific platform. However the information suggests an actual distinction in outcomes. Common-purpose AI, whereas extra prevalent, usually creates what the report describes as a "blind spot" for organizations — significantly when staff undertake client AI instruments with out firm oversight.
Analysis from MIT means that whereas solely 59 % of survey respondents mentioned their groups use private AI instruments like ChatGPT at work, the precise determine is probably going nearer to 90 %. This shadow AI utilization poses safety dangers and creates fragmented expertise stacks that undermine the potential for organization-wide intelligence.
Most gross sales leaders imagine AI will reshape their jobs reasonably than remove them
Maybe probably the most carefully watched query in any AI examine issues employment. The Gong analysis provides a extra nuanced image than the apocalyptic predictions that usually dominate headlines.
When requested about AI's three-year influence on income headcount, 43 % of respondents mentioned they anticipate it to remodel jobs with out decreasing headcount — the commonest response. Solely 28 % anticipate job eliminations, whereas 21 % really foresee AI creating new roles. Simply 8 % predict minimal influence.
Bendov frames the chance when it comes to reclaiming misplaced time. He cited Forrester analysis indicating that 77 % of a gross sales consultant's time is spent on actions that don't contain clients — administrative work, assembly preparation, researching accounts, updating forecasts, and inside briefings.
"AI can remove, ideally, all 77 %—all of the drudgery work that they're doing," Bendov mentioned. "I don't assume it essentially eliminates jobs. Persons are half productive proper now. Let's make them absolutely productive, and no matter you're paying them will translate to a lot increased income."
The transformation is already seen in position consolidation. Over the previous decade, gross sales organizations splintered into hyper-specialized features: one individual qualifies leads, one other units appointments, a 3rd closes offers, a fourth handles onboarding. The outcome was clients interacting with 5 – 6 totally different folks throughout their shopping for journey.
"Which isn’t a terrific purchaser expertise, as a result of each time I meet a brand new individual which may not have the total context, and it's very inefficient for firms," Bendov mentioned. "Now with AI, you may have one individual do all this, or a lot of this."
At Gong itself, sellers now generate 80 % of their very own appointments as a result of AI handles the prospecting legwork, Bendov mentioned.
American firms are adopting AI 18 months quicker than their European counterparts
The examine reveals a notable divide in AI adoption between america and Europe. Whereas 87 % of U.S. firms now use AI of their income operations, with one other 9 % planning adoption inside a 12 months, the UK trails by 12 to 18 months. Simply 70 % of UK firms presently use AI, with 22 % planning near-term adoption — figures that mirror U.S. information from 2024.
Bendov mentioned the sample displays a broader historic tendency for enterprise expertise developments to cross the Atlantic with a delay. "It's at all times like that," he mentioned. "Even when the web was taking off within the US, Europe was a step behind."
The hole isn't everlasting, he famous, and Europe typically leads on expertise adoption — cell funds and messaging apps like WhatsApp gained traction there earlier than the U.S. — however for AI particularly, the American market stays forward.
Gong says a decade of AI improvement provides it an edge over Salesforce and Microsoft
The findings arrive as Gong navigates an more and more crowded market. The corporate, which just lately surpassed $300 million in annual recurring income, faces potential competitors from enterprise software program giants like Salesforce and Microsoft, each of that are embedding AI capabilities into their platforms.
Bendov argues that Gong's decade of AI improvement creates a considerable barrier to entry. The corporate's structure contains three layers: a "income graph" that aggregates buyer information from CRM methods, emails, calls, movies, and net alerts; an intelligence layer combining massive language fashions with roughly 40 proprietary small language fashions; and workflow purposes constructed on prime.
"Anyone that may need to construct one thing like that—it's not a small characteristic, it's 10 years in improvement—would want first to construct the income graph," Bendov mentioned.
Somewhat than viewing Salesforce and Microsoft as threats, Bendov characterised them as companions, pointing to each firms' participation in Gong's latest consumer convention to debate agent interoperability. The rise of MCP (Mannequin Context Protocol) assist and consumption-based pricing fashions means clients can combine AI brokers from a number of distributors reasonably than committing to a single platform.
The actual query is whether or not AI will increase the gross sales career or hole it out
The report's implications prolong past gross sales departments. If AI can remodel income operations — lengthy thought of a relationship-driven, human-centric operate — it raises questions on which different enterprise processes could be subsequent.
Bendov sees the potential for growth reasonably than contraction. Drawing an analogy to digital pictures, he famous that whereas digital camera producers suffered, the overall variety of photographs taken exploded as soon as smartphones made pictures easy.
"If AI makes promoting easy, I may see a world—I don't know precisely what it appears to be like like but—however why not?" Bendov mentioned. "Possibly ten occasions extra jobs than now we have now. It's costly and inefficient as we speak, but when it turns into as simple as taking a photograph, the trade may really develop and create alternatives for folks of various talents, from totally different places."
For Bendov, who co-founded Gong in 2015 when AI was nonetheless a tough promote to non-technical enterprise customers, the present second represents one thing he waited a decade to see. Again then, mentioning AI to gross sales executives seemed like science fiction. The corporate struggled to lift cash as a result of the underlying expertise barely existed.
"Once we began the corporate, we had been born as an AI firm, however we needed to virtually cover AI," Bendov recalled. "It was intimidating."
Now, seven out of ten of those self same executives say they belief AI to assist run their enterprise. The expertise that when needed to be disguised has turn out to be the one factor no person can afford to disregard.
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