So, is AI Coming for your job in Sales or Sales Enablement?

USPA NEWS - As I mentioned in a previous Artificial Intelligence article, AI Isn't Just About Computers. It's About Technology AND People (see link below). I often talk to people in all walks of life about Artificial Intelligence. I mentioned that most people don’t think of AI as “good” or “bad” in multiple ways today. They see benefits and risks all at the same time. To be honest, no one knows for sure where it will go, especially with the recent news that we have a 10% chance of an extinction event for humanity if AI is not controlled! We’ll find out sooner, rather than later, but taking an optimistic position, I'm still saving for retirement!

The traditional corporate repository of sales brochures, case studies, and static training decks is officially dead. In its place, a quiet revolution is reshaping how enterprise companies equip their go-to-market teams. Driven by recent breakthroughs in generative technology, AI has transformed sales enablement from a passive content library into a proactive, in-workflow execution engine that actively manages data, coaches reps, and fuels a new generation of autonomous selling.

For years, sales enablement suffered from a chronic "pull" problem. Reps spent an estimated 30% of their day hunting for collateral or manually customizing proposals. Today, top-tier organizations are pivoting to an automated "push" model. Rather than forcing a human seller to search for a competitive battle card, AI systems now analyze live deal stages and deliver contextual talk tracks directly inside customer relationship management (CRM) platforms.

So, why are businesses implementing AI? Well, sadly for the 'Traditional Rep' they are becoming a thing of the past.

The Industry Analyst View

Gartner says their data backs it up. "67% of buyers now prefer a rep-free experience, and 74% of B2B sales leaders say closing deals is significantly more difficult. In response, 87% of sales leaders are rushing to implement AI."

In their recent report, Sales Leaders Must Shift Enablement to AI-driven, In-workflow Execution to Keep Pace with Rising Revenue Demands, Gartner comes to some fairly straightforward conclusions. Gartner Predicts AI-Driven Sales Enablement Will Deliver 40% Faster Sales Stage Velocity Than Traditional Enablement Methods by 2029.

As Gartner puts it, “Findings from a Gartner survey of 227 chief sales officers (CSOs) in August and September 2025" underscore why this shift is becoming urgent. Sales organizations completed an average of four transformations in the past 12 months, making the ability to drive performance through continuous change a core requirement for CSO success.

IT'S NOT ALL BAD NEWS

AI isn’t just another tool for sales enablement; it is changing what the enablement function does and how sellers work. As Gartner and other business analyst firms like Forrester and IDC believe, AI should augment sellers, not simply replace them. Gartner, for example, says AI is well suited to research, personalized messaging, signal monitoring and recommended actions, while human sellers remain important for judgment, empathy, negotiation, consensus-building and contextualizing customer value.

AI agents are becoming part of enablement itself. Gartner’s August 2026 research specifically discusses AI agents providing on-demand, synthesized competitive differentiation and sales narratives, allowing product marketing and enablement teams to scale field support without manually producing every deliverable.

Measure revenue impact, not merely time saved. That's perhaps the import metric. Gartner's 2026 enablement research specifically warns that organizations struggle to justify AI when they concentrate on efficiency metrics rather than connecting AI to measurable business outcomes and value contribution.

OTHER VIEWS

So, what Forrester think? See the link below for the answer to that one, though it was written before the talk of extinction events!

IDC thinks similarly with a twist: IDC’s view is similar to Gartner’s in direction, but the emphasis is somewhat different. IDC puts more weight on AI changing the entire buyer–seller relationship, not simply making sellers more productive.

AI should be embedded in the selling workflow: IDC points specifically to production-ready AI for lead scoring, proposal generation and sales coaching, rather than treating GenAI as a standalone productivity application. IDC sees the most AI-mature GTM organizations restructuring their processes around these capabilities.

Also, personalization becomes much more dynamic. Instead of giving every seller the same playbook, AI can combine customer, market and contextual information to help sellers tailor conversations and content. IDC describes the shift as moving from static messaging toward real-time personalization.

There's lots more from IDC, but that is a whole separate article!

SUMMARY

Well, things are moving really fast. Too fast some would say, especially if you're a CEO of certain GLM-type (General Language Model) company. So, in essence, time will change, but the success will come to those whom embrace AI as complementary to people. Whether it's workflows, accurate data (remember 'Garbage-in-Garbage-out' (GIGO) is still relevant), or good financial evaluation (RoI, not hope), the traditional sales or sales enablement folks will survive if they evolve and are given the right AI tools.

More on that in a future article.