AI's Impact on Revenue Enablement

Before we get started, as the moderator, I think it's important to understand who these people are here and they are not here just by enforced election. They are not only good friends, but three of the strongest practitioners that I could find especially for this particular session and panel. So why don't we start with you Terry, to introduce yourselves so the folks know who you are.

Thank you, Roderick. Terry Long, VP of Enablement over at GoTo. So I have been a enablement leader for the last 20 plus years. Prior to that I was a quota carrying rep. Like I think a lot of us enablers are very excited to be here, passionate about AI and all the work we're doing, even at GoTo, within the embedding of it in our product.

Thanks so much, Terry. Sandy, how about you?

Hi. Thank you very much for having me. Roderick. I'm Sandy Robinson. I am the VP of Revenue Operations and Client Growth at Quavo. I started out in sales, I'm not going to say how long ago, but I carried a bag for a number of years, led sales teams and moved over into revenue operations a number of years ago and always led enablement as well. And I've had the pleasure of over the last 10 months also running our client growth team. So getting a little bit in the business and on the business.

Thank you. And Russ, let's round it out with you, my man.

Thanks Roderick. Russ Walker. I start off my career similar to Sandy and Terry, carrying a bag in various sales roles. I've been doing the rev ops enablement thing as well as a chief of staff hat on my role as well throughout the last 10 years at datasite.

Thank you sir, Appreciate it. For those that know me, I'm Roderick Jefferson. I'm CEO of Roderick Jefferson and Associates. I am a recovering corporate executive as well as a keynote speaker and the best selling author of the book sales enablement 3.0 along with the companion workbook. So enough about me. Standi, let's start with you. So when you first started evaluating AI for rev enablement, how did you distinguish between those Shiny syndrome, shiny object syndrome, if I can talk today. And what are genuinely high impact use cases? If you could just walk us through your mindset, your framework, et cetera, on how you're helping to move the needle within your organization.

Great question. There are definitely a lot of shiny objects out there and it's, it's, you know, they all sound amazing, right? And so I think I look at my core evaluation process. I don't know that I approach it differently than other tools. Other than the certain types of outcomes I'm looking to achieve are obviously different. But, you know, understanding, you know, what problem am I trying to solve? And is this shiny object a thing that I can sustain as we scale and grow as an organization? Is it a tool that's just going to go away after a couple of months and not really be a thing? Or is it only going to solve for one little piece of my problem that I have to solve? So I always try to ask, what problem are we trying to solve? And then really just ask the questions when I'm engaging and learn. So I'll take demos to understand what's happening and learn what things, the differences and how different companies are presenting things. And then I will kind of look to my core criteria for, you know, security and scalability. And, you know, is it going to work with Salesforce, like, for real? Like, is it really going to work with Salesforce or is it something I've got to, like, cobble together and build and stuff that I don't want to do? That's the way I look at it.

All right. I want to go back to something we talked about when we were planning for this session, and that is how and where, because we all want to, you know, try the new tools, we want to kick the tires, and we want to help the smaller companies as well. So where's that differentiator and that. That line, or Mendoza line, if you will, for you, Sandy, between. This is a net new, which I think is very cool. And we'll do some things versus this isn't as established as it can be today. An established AI tool or platform, how do you decide which direction you're going to go?

It definitely goes back to the problem that I'm trying to solve and then the scale. Right. So we have like growth, you know, scale plans, hiring plans and things like that. So is. Is it able to work with the foundation that I've built in Salesforce and is going to complement our processes, or is it going to have to be a separate thing that they have to go interact with? And the separate thing they have to interact with may be less money, so it may be faster to set up and easier. So if it's velocity I'm looking for to solve a quick problem, I had a need for an AI RFP tool at the beginning of the year. I just, I looked for, you know, a good price and the best, coolest, fastest AI that could solve that small problem. And it's probably going to end up working in its own little silo for now. And I will probably eventually replace it with a more, with a heavier, you know, better, more comprehensive RFP tool, if that makes sense.

I love that sometimes you need that, that technical laser focus and sometimes to your point, as enablement and rev ops leaders, we need something a bit more robust. So I love the direction you're going and your mindset around how you choose and decide. Now Russ, I got a question for you. Clearly you can't have a conversation these days without those two letters of AI in every conversation that's out there. Right. But let's get a little more specific about results because we've got a bunch of enablement folks and sales leaders and rev ops folks that want to hear about results. And what did you do practically? So can you give one example where AI delivered and I'm going to stress this word, measurable ROI in your organization, whether it was lead scoring or content personalization or sales forecasting, et cetera, what surprised you most about that implementation process?

Yeah, and you know, just to kind of baseline. Let's face it, by the time this, this session is done, there will be new AI platforms and tech that have spun up and been created that we will get. I'll get phone calls to go out and buy. Right. So it's an ever.

No question there's going to be some 14 year old kid like Sandy's so.

Exactly.

Out there right now that's going to create six new AI tools by the time this session's over.

Exactly. So at Data site we, we had a very high class problem last year. We had roughly 56,000 MQLs come into our system. You know, we support a sales team of about 300 people and we had like two humans in our, you know, two, two SDR slash BDRs fielding those, trying to figure out which ones have the highest propensity to buy, which ones are the most qualified. We didn't have the tech and the tools in the system to be able to kind of streamline those. So we purchased and went out to market and looked at different AI providers that could help rank, score and even route leads effectively on the ones that we should really be paying attention to. And we selected. You want us to use technology names or just go generic?

Rodrik, I leave it up to you.

All right. We selected something called Forward AI. They got bought by Pendo, so they're now called Pendo Predictions. And we implemented this model in about six to eight weeks where we kind of back tested our converted leads before this model and then looked at the use Cases we wanted to solve for first. And we decided that we were going to go with greenfield leads. So accounts or contacts that we had never done business with before so we could grow market share and wallet share. And then we kind of came up with a five point rating system. So everything from very high to high to moderate to low. And then we determined what team or function those are going to. So for things that are like high and very high, as an example, they met certain criteria and we got those to our SDRs, BDRs to put into sequences, develop outreach programs to the customer. And we saw a 2x conversion on leads to opportunities and also saw a very big lift on the revenue attribution of those. And we saw about a 20% lift per SDR in meetings generated per month with actual higher quality than we had before. And that was with less headcount.

Wow, thanks for the strategically tactical overview there. What jumps out at me right now is what you did, what you just explained sounded like it was easy, right? And we all know you're a pro when you can make something sound easy because what we all do is a lot of things. But easy is certainly not one of those things. So during that process, a couple of things come to mind. One, initially what did success look like? Secondly is what was the outcome and then third is what surprised you.

Honestly, we didn't know what success would look like. This was uncharted territory. We were going into it with the thesis that, you know, we got industry stats and things around what you could do with AI to get additional lift on your conversions. So we really didn't know what it looked like. So we were very happy with that 20% lift per SDR per month and the 2x of the conversions. And that's kind of our baseline now to move forward to drive that further. I think one of the keys to success with that was cross functional partnership. There was absolutely no easy button to push on this thing. Is there ever marketing ops involved? You got to get salesforce involved, you got to get the inside the business development team involved. You got to get buy in from stakeholders on who's going to handle these things so you don't generate a bunch of leads and no one actually chases them. Otherwise it's just a bunch of leads sitting out there that we're not taking action on. So putting SLAs in the place around response times and ownership and accountability and reporting to make sure we're taking action and converting those things. So that was also extremely important.

Wait, did you hear scalable and repeatable processes. Is that what I'm hearing going there, Russ?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm like grinning. I'm grinning here because I literally have a sales manager, an SDR and an account executive sitting in my kitchen downstairs and we're workshopping out exactly what you just did. So I'm gonna have to pick your brain because we're landing on a couple of tools, right? So we use zoom info and do the traditional auto form fill and things like that. But we're looking to level up, looking at clay. So I'd be definitely curious to get your input because we're going through that process right now. And I think that the collaboration is really key in getting that buy in and getting their input because ultimately like the people sitting at the kitchen table are the ones that are going to get the leads, right? They're the ones that are going to determine right now they're manually determining whether or not, you know, it's, it's worth pursuing. So I love it.

Happy to help.

Terry, as one of the people not only that I respect immensely and absolutely love and you know that you're also one of the people that I go to. I think I've got a pretty good grasp in my arms around AI, but when I've got questions, I come to you. So here's one that has been kind of noodling around for me and that's. As AI starts to handle more and more of the analytical heavy lifting, how are you redefining the roles of your sales teams and your enablement folks?

Very good question. I think it's two things. One, there's the human aspect that is missing with AI and there's also the strategic approach when you're using AI. So both of those boil down, for example, we've got AI embedded into everything from you're talking about the lead scoring, you've got IT sales assistant to help you do your pre call planning. You've got it in your messaging and your outreach. You have it in interactive role plays, you have it in AI coaching in it's built into every part of the sales process. But you still have an element of humanity in your outreach, in how you discern what to say, when to say it. There's nuances to all of that because just like anything else, if it's really that plug and play, then let's be honest, none of us would even be in a job today. It's not that plug and play. And so from a rep perspective, we just talked about this last week. It's the digital presence. We what does your digital presence look like as a human interacting with AI and how are you bridging that gap? Because people still do buy from people. And guess what? AI is not perfect, nor are people. But you've got to pressure test that. And I think going back to the strategy, it's not enough to say we're using AI. You have to be thinking about strategically, where does it make sense to leverage AI to drive productivity, to drive revenue so it doesn't become a bottleneck or just another expense that the organization has or another security risk you really have to think through. With all the fly by nights that are coming out, what is it we actually want it to do? Going back to Sandy's point, but is it fully integrated, is it fully aligned? What is the roadmap for that particular product look like against the roadmap we have as an organization? And security is a big piece of it.

So.

So I think those two things for me are very critical.

You touched on something that is very dear and near to my heart, as all three of you know, and that is the convergence of IQ + EQ + AI. And I think that has now become literally the three legged stool of business that no company can be successful without. So staying along that same line, Terry, when you're talking about the human part of this and where it converges with IQ and eq, what skills do you think are becoming more critical and how are you helping your people to evolve alongside with the technology as humans and to be able to make them more productive and more profitable?

Big question. I'll try to scale it back. Know what AI is and what it is not.

Love that.

Understand prompting. If you understand how to prompt AI effectively, when to use which prompts, why to use those prompts over something else that will make you more strategic and actually make what you're doing within AI much more successful. I think again, it also goes back to once you understand what it is and what it isn't, you still need to understand in your role. Maybe you're really good at some parts of the sales process, again, depending on what your role is. But figure out with the tools that are at your fingertips, which ones are going to make you specifically most productive. Because there is no unique, hey, if every seller could be like Roderick, then we would just be successful. We all have certain aspects of our job that we do better. And I think being smart about where you could use it to help accelerate again your success. Because you know, that might be your gap. But the only way to do that is to really understand what it is and what it isn't. And which prompt should I be using to get what I need?

Love that. I would love to get some feedback from both you, Russ and Sandy on this topic. Around again, the IQ + EQ + the AI philosophy of how are we utilizing AI in your companies, in your organizations to help the humans.

Right. I mean, I think low hanging fruit on that is a good role play bot. I mean it takes role playing. In the history of me teaching sales training, salespeople never like to do role playing, but it is so much easier to get them to role play with a bot in a safe place. And depending on the tool that you get, I'm using gtm buddy. It's phenomenal. Like, so what we just started doing is taking like a good, you know, a call where there's some objections. Take the transcript from that. Make a good, use a good prompt, make a good role play out of it and let people practice with it. And it's, it's just, it's low hanging fruit and it's a great way to kind of marry up that, you know, what, what is, what is the need that we have and a very targeted way to use it. And it's teaching people how to actually have the human conversation. So that's the kind of EQ to AI, I think.

Love that, Russ. How about in your world?

Yeah, I think if you, if you think about what your mission is and what you're trying to accomplish for your org or for your company and what you need to drive for results, whether it's revenue, whether it's units, whether it's profitability, what processes can you shift to agentic AI that are more meaning like menial task things that you can then have the human spend more of that customer facing time or the sales coaching time with. So you know, giving you example. Like if we think about leads that come in that are kind of, we call them low scoring, that thing I talked about before, High, very high. We got the ones that are kind of low scored. They're not ready to buy yet. We want to put them into some kind of sequence. So we're using agentic AI through Salesforce, an agent force bot that then takes those and, and puts them into various sequences depending on what kind of person that is or what their Persona is, so that hopefully they engage with our content and then rise back up that funnel to that high, very high thing. And then that way our SDRs are focusing on those that have a higher propensity to buy. They're putting that personalized Messaging into AI. So AI is creating the messaging, but then they're putting that human touch to it so it doesn't look like a robot and kind of customizing that messaging to that particular customer. That's why we're getting more meetings, because we're giving more thought to that messaging and then having them get more time to focus on that because agentic AI is handling some of the tasks.

Thanks on that. We have put an enormous amount of information out and some really good stuff. I want to slow the train down just for a moment for the folks that are out in the audience and ask them to start putting in the chat any questions that you may have for any of us to make sure that we can answer those questions because we've all been on your side. Right. We're going to learn, but at the same time, we've got some real life scenarios and things that are going on in our own companies that are going on. So now would be a great time to add in any questions that you have for any of the panelists, myself, all of the above. Russ, before I leave you, we've talked about where things are right now. Let's grab our crystal ball for a moment and look into 2026. What's one emerging AI trend or even capability that you think will be an absolute game changer for revenue enablement? Go to market enablement, and how are you preparing for that right now to capitalize on that over your competitors? And then the other two? I'm gonna ask you the very same question. So start thinking about that one.

Yeah, I think if you, if you look at how you go to market and engage with customers right from the outset, like customers know who you are, they can do their own research. Right. They don't have to have a sales meeting to do that for the most part. What can you do from an E Commerce standpoint, from a digital conversion standpoint, to get that customer engaged all the way down to getting a price, to getting what the commercials look like, to spinning up maybe a freemium option of that to then convert to a paid thing after they pass certain gates or certain walls utilizing your product. I think that's a big one because we've got to, you know, we want to lower the cost of sale where you can increase your margins and increase your market and wallet share. And customers want to embark on digital journeys in today's world.

Thanks, Chris. Appreciate that. Sandy, we've talked about this point before in a personal conversation. So often things look like blue and light blue out there. So let's go back to that crystal ball question of 2026. What are you doing and how are you leveraging AI to have your company rise as the cream does above your competitors 100%.

So I've started with the foundation which is data, right? So you've gotta have your data, your underlying structure. I think no matter what AI you put on top of, it doesn't matter if you don't have the foundation built. So if anyone listening in is just kind of starting from scratch if you're at a startup, you know, I came into this position, we didn't have a CRM and then we put in salesforce. So everything has been literally from the ground up which is fun and exciting. So the foundation, building the foundation for me it is agentic AI. How can I deploy agent force? How can I deploy any sort of enrichment that we're in enterprise sales that can provide the data that's already out there? We're using zoom info, that's great but it's only going to get so much. How can we take it to the next level with agentic AI and with better, you know, inbound enrichment to be able to really enrich the data.

Thanks for that. Appreciate it. Terry, you have been at some phenomenal companies, right? And you are new at a company now and we've all been there as leaders. The first thing we've got to do in those first 90 days is put our fingerprints on things and make an impact, right. And we all know that the proverbial onboarding doesn't apply for us as leaders, right? And so you're now at the almost at the end of the year, going into a net new year in 26. So I'd ask you the same question around the crystal ball with those fingerprints that you're putting in place. What are you doing now and and looking into in 26 to be able to move you guys either above your competitors or if you were there today, even further away from them.

So from a product perspective looking at where AI and agentic AI need to live to accelerate both the experience but also customers ability to be successful. So that's in actually in motion but really accelerating what that looks like and where there's other use cases for AI or agentic AI in the product. From an enablement perspective we are embracing everything AI and that looks at holistically from our own system. We've built our own AI tool to help in the pre call planning. We use mindtickle to help embrace everything from an enablement process around the two way interactive role play that Sandy's talking about to AI coaching to really extracting insights that can be more valuable for just in time enablement. And the one thing I would love to see crystal ball is to get to a point in time where we're more effective at using all of these AI insights around win loss, around propensity. So while you're in a call having that conversation, using AI to be listening in, but also having the history of previous engagements to be a live coach or a coach that is just in time to help pick up on those nuances that aren't just the selling cues but also some of the human cues of disengagement. So I see like there's just a massive opportunity in the space to transform all of this and I hope we're on the cutting edge and I want to be on the cutting edge so as these tools become ripen in the space, I fully anticipate embedding them.

Oh, I have no doubt that you will know the way that I do. And look, this is not the first time that the three of us have done this together. And so I think it solidifies something that I said earlier when the call kicked off. And that is you three are my go to folks, but not just for conversations. You know me, I always want to leave the audience with something that they can walk away today and go put into practical application. And so as we look out to the folks that are sitting out in the audience, they're full of enablement leaders, rev ops leaders, sales leaders who want to take action right now. So here's the question for all three of you and Sandy, I'm going to start with you. If someone came up to you after this panel and said, hey, I've got 90 days and I've got a modest budget and I need to start my AI journey today in revenablement. What would be your one specific and I want to stress this word actionable recommendation that they could implement to see not just quick wins but also building as a foundation for bigger transformation inside of their companies.

Yep, that's a great question. So I think the role playing tool is low hanging fruit. So I did that myself and needed to get a quick win. And first of all, do it yourself. By the way, if I'm going to give it to somebody, I'm going to try to beat the bot myself. So I then realized that I need to brush up my skills on being an SDR when I there's a difference.

Between theorists and practitioners right there.

Yeah, get in the business, do it yourself. But I know I really wanted to see how it worked and if I could book the appointment and if I was giving it the right, you know, I had to play with it and use it because the last thing I wanted to do was to give something to a leader to try and have it not work out. Because then they're going to poo poo the tool. They're never going to use it. They're going to be like, oh, I did this one time, it sucks. So nailing that, so getting a low hanging fruit and like I said, the role play, you got to be, you know, look, look at a lot of them, remember the problem to solve thing. But it is a very easy way to get a quick win and to paint the picture. Especially if there's leadership that doesn't understand the power of enablement and AI and, and just take a minute to learn the tool and do it right. Give it the right rubrics, the right, you know, those things. It's a real, it's a real easy win because it's just so cool and it's so interactive and every sales manager is going to love it because they hate doing the coaching. I mean, I'm not going to say they should do it, but no one's sitting on calls anywhere. Like it's not like old school like me. Like we're hooking up on the ears. Yeah. So like, you know, but people will do role play with bot like they just will and it's not as big of a deal. And so anyway, that'd be my quick win.

I think you nailed it. And the thing that I take away from what you just said is as the leader, you have to own the adoption, the execution, but most importantly the positive modeling of what you want your people to do as well. Right?

Yes. 100% lead by example.

I got 90 days, I got a modest budget. I've got to do something with impact. Sound familiar? May have been there before. Once or twice. Where do you point to? Build my foundation.

Yeah. First, you need to do a listening tour. So you need to spend the time talking and listening, mostly listening to as many people as you possibly can within the first two weeks. What's working, what's not working. Second, go through, prioritize that list. Understand where you've got your triage of the biggest bleed versus not and then take that and map that against the sales process that exists. And the reason that's important is because now you're looking at, okay, as I understand it, where do I have opportunity to augment and really drive the lowest hanging fruit using AI. In Sandy's case it might be in the two way role play. It may sit further up in the sales process. But understanding again priority list against that floor flow is really, really critical because you know exactly where to go put your efforts and you can measure the impact so you can start putting those KPIs against that and work with your team to, to really demonstrate that in, you know, that success.

I was waiting to hear that last piece about measurements and KPIs because you know me, if you can't measure it.

Then it doesn't count.

Nothing, right? So Russ, bring us home man. I got 90 days, I got a little budget, I understand AI well enough and I know I've got to put it in right. Where would you recommend that I start again? This is going to be my foundational piece and it's also puts me in front of E staff to say hey, we've made some changes, we're moving forward, we're part of this AI journey where you can appoint me man.

Well, I think Terry nailed it with the listening tour. Like what's going to make the most impact for the people that are out there driving the number. And I've already talked about lead optimization. I'll go to another one. I think if you got a modest budget and modest is always the variable player, there's I would take a look at like if I'm a sales rep and I wake up in the morning and I fire up that Salesforce instance, who do I call? Because sometimes I get paralysis by analysis or I gravitate to something else. I'm not sure where to start. Can AI AI serve up the leads or the accounts and contacts that you should be calling based on gentic AI or AI surfacing up, who's got the highest propensity to buy and then help you through that cycle, Help you write the emails, help you write the follow up actions, help you do the meeting summaries. To me, that's where I would start.

Great point again. Now I think the world's starting to see why you three are my go to and I cannot thank you enough for not only saying yes to this but bringing in your individual experience and also real life experiences. Right. Because it's very easy to have these conversations at a high level. But you actually gave the folks in the audience something that they can jump into right away and go put into practical application. So to Sandy, to Terry, to Russ, thank you all so much and I am looking forward to doing this again together. I don't see any questions. So either a, we have confused everybody or I'd like to believe you have answered every question that they had and now this is the best part of their day. So to that, Perry and Gerhardt, thank you to the panel and I give the floor back to you both.

Great. What a great job. I love the theme. I can see this new thing as a theme for different teams. Beat the bot, a new internal game with prizes. I can see that. And thank you also for the. The group has been really practical, practical about giving examples. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

I have a question for Sandy. Can you, can you grab that eagle statue for a second and oh gosh.

There. Oh my, my Selling Power award.

Ah yes, Revenue enablement of the year award. And I think that Roderick has something very similar. And what about Terry?

I do, but I have to be honest with you, we just moved my office around so I think it's over in that box. But yes, I do and I'm very proud of it.

Congratulations to all of you. You've been phenomenal. I have listened to you so many times at different events and you always bring practical, actionable information to our audiences and I can't thank you enough for participating. Russell, you blew me away with your comments. The way you have progressed starting in sales enablement at your company, moving into revenue enablement and then managing a sales team, you keep growing and I'd like to know what is your secret, your best insight for the, what's the. Your DNA for growing?

I think it's just what can you do, not just yourself because it's not about me. What can we do to make an impact on the business? It's getting the people bought into the mission. It's getting them going the right direction. It's getting ideas, challenging the status quo, thinking outside the box and just getting people that are passionate on your team to go after the same thing. That to me is the big difference because it's again, what can I do to help enable and empower people to be successful?

It's a great mindset and thank you, Roderick, for keeping us running like a Swiss train. Loved your questions. That was the best panel of the day.

Thank you so much. And I want to take a moment to thank you and so three zero conference, dear heart, because these are much needed conversations and thank you for always continually raising the bar for each one of these. They are never the same from one to the next. And so again, as I said earlier, my go to people. You are certainly way up on the top of that thing. So thank you so much for the opportunity. And on behalf of the audience, thank you, Gerhart, for constantly providing practical application that can be put into practice. Right away.

One more thing. What's the title of your new book that's coming out next month?

It is called Stroke of Success. Thank you so much. It drops on October 28th. And for those that know and don't, I actually had a massive stroke a few years ago. And I've now written a book, but it's not a memoir. It's literally about how to fight through the difficulties in life and how to make sure that we learn to take that corporate mask or entrepreneurial mask off and not get comfortable living at that red line of stress. So I think it's one of those things that I believe will be a game changer. I truly do. Because Russia said something I didn't. That really resonates with me. I didn't write the book for me. I wrote the book for everyone that's going to be reading this thing. And it's actually in pre sale, so you could actually order it now on Roderick jefferson.com. thank you, Gerhard. I appreciate the moment.

Thank you. And when you experience a red line, then you're transforming into a lifeline for other people. Thank you for.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And I remember when the idea appeared on stage, when I did an interview with you in. In Vegas, and you could hear a pin drop when you told the story. Right, Perry.

It was fantastic. I was there, too, parts of the event. It was great.

Yes.

It's interesting. I actually gave an entire chapter to that particular keynote that we did that day because it was literally the first time that I had ever told the story broadly. There is the. The book, there's the new cover, and for those out there, there is the QR code as well.

Aw.