The Future of Sales AI: Predictions & Trends You Can't Ignore

Yeah, thank you. I'm really, really happy to be here. Appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, a little background, just super quick, you know, I'm here at Zoom Info. I run our new business sales development program. I've been here around nine years, which was, you know, 20 person team when I got here with 400 something SDRs at one point in time. Today it's around 230. And that kind of speaks to the evolution of the market and some of the things that we have seen and obviously where AI comes in and the kind of opening here is like there's a lot at stake with AI this year and go to market as a whole. I'm excited to share some insight on where it's led my team through change, where I feel strongly about it and what I think it means for most sales teams in 2026. I think the reality is we've been at an inflection point that most sales leaders were or are not prepared for still, right? We had this SEO impact through this kind of AIO reality where search changed, right, and inbound demand hit some historic lows. And that was true for even us, right? We're a sales tech company that spends millions of dollars on paid search and everything else that we do. And all that's happening now is, you know, my outbound team's getting bigger and that outbound group is now about 140sdrs out of that total. And I'm going to come back to why that's so relevant. It's not a matter of pulling people from one place and throwing people at another problem. You know, we've ultimately, as a company made some strategic bets based on where this market is actually heading for us. Right? So today I'm going to shed some light and how we're deploying some of those resources, training people, leveraging AI and investing in AI in 2026. And for us, these aren't theories, these are the bets we're making with real budget, real people, with a lot of real pipeline on the line for us. So I'm excited to get into it. Where I want to start is like the reality check. My big thing for 2026 is like the AI honeymoon is over, right? In 2026, AI is going to be judged on the production that it drives, not the potential of it or the fluffy concepts and the use cases that you're proposing to the team. You need tangible outputs tied to dollars. So otherwise, how are you going to make a case for investing further here? I've loved it. We've had our ups and downs. We've tried things that worked, we've tried a lot of things that didn't work. But today it's embedded in our product and all throughout the rep tech stack that they're using on a day to day basis. And the becomes, you know, your C suite or your board isn't really going to care about the cool AI pilot program anymore. They want to know what is it helping us produce for the company as a whole. And after, you know, call it two years of promising results and proof of concept, the market is shifting from this fascination with AI to accountability around it. Right. CFOs and CROs are going to be asking the question of like, what did this actually do for us? Where did this do for Pipeline? What has this done for revenue for our business? And you know, we've learned a lot across rolling AI out for 230 SDRs and through thousands of conversations with our customers. And I think everything has come back to one major topic and it's that the AI will fail you because of the inputs and not so much the model. Right? You have the most sophisticated AI model in the world, but if you're feeding it garbage data, you're just automating bad decisions at scale for your business. Right? So what does it look like, you know, in partnership with some customers and on our own, you know, testing, say AI powered lead follow up sounds like a great idea. AI tells you who to prioritize and who to call. But when the underlining data is stale, right, you got wrong phone numbers, you got misspelled job titles or incorrect titles and companies that are actually no even longer in business, you're just prioritizing garbage faster, right. Reps get mad, they spend all day calling leads and they go nowhere. So the priority that we took on was this investment in the data accuracy and the referential data that's going to be updating these things in real time. And that looks a little bit different, right? We have an inbound team and we have an outbound team and you know, this fuels our account executive motions in a lot of ways too, right? But it's about surfacing, you know, content and context for the reps so they can go take action faster. Right? And on the inbound side, the outbound side, it looks similar in a lot of ways, but the depth of how we have to go approach an account through an outbound motion is a little different. But think about identifying the ICP fit in real time, right? Knowing which accounts are going to be prioritized because they best match Our best customers. You know, the beautiful thing about this was alignment that we were able to drive between sales and marketing, you know, getting closer to that final agreement on what qualified meets. Right? But it's also about surfacing things in real time to the reps so they can take action. Right. Intense signals are just simple buying signals. You know, who's actively researching and we know immediately so that can trigger again a workflow at the exact right moment so we can reach out to prospects entering that buying window. The AI investment, the data accuracy is fueling all of this on a day to day basis. So now the result of doing that for our business has been reps spending less time researching and more time selling. The dream for any sales leader.

Right?

Connect rates are up, our meetings, book rate on the conversations we're having are up and the pipeline we're driving is up. And it's been great to see. And that's the main difference between AI that sounds smart in a demo and AI that helps you hit quota, right? So in the frame of a prediction, right. In 2026, the winning go to market teams, they're going to be the one whose AI tools are fed with the richest, most reliable data, not the one with the flashiest features. And then you'll be able to prove it through your pipeline and through your revenue. So when you're evaluating AI tools this year, don't get distracted by the bells and whistles. Watch it, learn, understand. And then ask the most important question, what data is this thing actually using? Right? And is it good enough for me to bet my quota on? That is the real kicker of all of this right now. You want to make your investments and you want to do that. When I think about the investments we're making as a business and what I'm seeing in our customer base, it kind of spins me into the reinvestment conversation and what strategic reinvestments you might be able to make deploying AI, right, take here is, you know, companies should be reinvesting these AI quote unquote savings into other strategic initiatives. And if you don't, I feel like it's going to leave a gap for that business. You're going to get left behind, you know, AI and automation as a whole right now. For those leveraging it with some levels of success, you're finally freeing up budget, right? But most companies want to use that savings to simply just cut costs, right? Shrink teams, consolidate roles and then go back internally and you know, refer to it as, you know, we're more efficient, efficient in a silo feeling like that's a mistake. Take the dollars you're saving through these newly efficient motions and redeploy them into other strategic initiatives. For us that was a high touch outbound motion. And for us it started last year when the SEO topic the slowdown and we were still in this kind of like outbound's dead and we're not going to do. We made a hard choice a little over a year ago and now as a result of that choice and following the market and the deployment of AI AI that we have done, our inbound team is the smallest that it's ever been. Right. And we made that decision off of a lot of information. But one key metric, it's kind of our North Star for productivity and efficiency has been the MQLs per rep per day. Right. We have this breaking point around six or seven where if we go over it, it becomes more of a bandwidth thing where we lose productivity in the wrong way, probably understaffed, but if we drop below that, that's where productivity tanks in the wrong way. Where you start justifying the argument of are we was salary, right? So asked ourselves a very simple question, right? Where can we run leaner and where do we need more boots on the ground? And for us that answer was very clear. Was the strategic outbound motion. It was perfect timing. It's kind of the perfect storm of things because we were in the same window of time where I imagine many other sales leaders deal with a resegmentation of your business. Right. And we were really drilling in on our outbound motion around the SMB mid market and enterprise segments and making more investments there as a whole. This isn't a add people to increase the spray and pray motion or increase to send more email blasts. It was a strategic signal based outbound motion that we were looking to capitalize on with reps who can navigate conversations and deals that get a little bit more sophisticated. Right. Again, the bottom of all this, we've got AI fueling our prioritization and our targeting and helping with messaging. But we've now scaled team up to about 140 reps. It's the biggest it has ever been in my time here. And the key is like this isn't hire build it out and do the same old kind of activity based nonsense if you will.

Right.

We're deploying these people where the expertise actually matters to follow up and execute upon these AI insights that are being surfaced. So relationship building and connecting the dots in these large mid market and enterprise accounts deal navigation across multiple Stakeholders across multiple products. Just strategic human conversations, right. In the pursuit of these deals that AI can help you kind of get to, but they won't replicate those conversations for you. And at the moment think about the cost of sale going up. Right? But we can now save dollars through automation and we can reinvest them into whatever that high impact area is for your business. Alongside all this, right. We shrunk account loads, we pulled resources out of transactional motions, we redeployed them into teams that were going to move the needle on larger deals for us. Right. That was a company level conscious decision that we made and the early results were really promising. Right. It was the thought that we went into it that this was going to be our reinvestment. We added the people, we added the process, we added the AI. And in the second half of last year we saw our mid market and enterprise segments for Outbound where we made this thoughtful investment. Improvement opportunities created and deals and total ACV and all of that at the per rep level, right. Even just at the raw totals. Right. And the efficiency improved. Even so when you start looking at win rate and sales price, right. Quality of targeting got better, quality of opportunity got better, quality of deal got better. And all these things are happening now and we are continuing to invest in this area as we go through 2026 because of the early results that we saw. So that I can go own those decisions back internally and say here's the investment we made and here's the return on that investment. Already it's been a good news story so far. I'm excited for it to become a great news story for us. I just think about this as like, don't solely think about AI replacing headcount, allow it to enable you to redeploy resources strategically. I think the companies that figure it out for the right things, they're going to continue to dominate. And I think the ones that simply look at it as an opportunity to cut and just run lean everywhere, you're going to experience those gaps. You're going to find that pipeline drying up, you're going to find those deals stalling out. I think that's the really critical piece of what we're doing here, 2026 and what everybody really needs to be mindful of now. The last topic I'll get into, and I know we're running short on time already, we think about this as like we're going to go reinvest, right. And through the lens of my organization, we did that through outbound staffing and we put a Lot of resources in them. But the other piece and this other layer of AI, that's really interesting. It kind of comes back to getting away from the kind of one size fits all prospecting method for outbound. You know, we really need to be thoughtful about winning by meeting our buyers where they are. Right. And doing so with relevancy. I think that's the most important piece for this. You know, most teams are building their prospecting channels not on like preference of a buyer, but what's going to scale easiest for them. Right. You know, all in on cold email, all in on cold calling. But the reality is we've got to be everywhere. We've got AI at our fingertips to give us the content and the context we need to craft the message here, send the follow up here, have that relevant touch point here. Right. All the first and third party data that's available to us and the things that have been really interesting that we've continued to unpack, analyzing hundreds of millions of cold calls and millions of cold emails is the best. Reps are everywhere, right. And their messages are connecting across all of these different channels. The interesting data point for my group, right, Talk about not a one size fits all method. You know, my group used to be about 100% of their, their demos are getting booked over the phone. Right. We were very, very, very reliant and we still are. That number's about 80% today. Right. And the good news is there, that's almost a 20% shift of introducing, prioritizing the layer of email and LinkedIn in a bigger way, even in person, when it makes sense or is really practical for you. But it's put us in a position where that 80%, we're not booking less by phone, we're just booking more in other channels. Right now we're giving ourselves upside that we didn't have before. So it's been a really interesting kind of investment and then injection of where this AI is living, where it's having impacts for us, but it's giving us the ability to have our reps go wider. And the last piece of that is we've introduced as part of our ZoomInfo product. But this, this opportunity to track some behaviors, an account level or at a contact level, especially in your first party data, to understand prior engagements with these individuals that give us a recommendation for where they're going to be most likely to engage with us now can be a little bit of a black box. LinkedIn is social, so you can go and see who's active, who's liking who's posting, who's commenting and understand that that might be a viable option. But we've also got that now on best phone number to reach out to somebody, best email to reach somebody by, and is it phone or email that they're going to prefer? And again, it's giving our reps a little bit of a faster lane, right? To the prospect to get in touch faster. So again, you have all this context, you write all these messages, put all these summaries together. But there's also the reality of the outreach itself. And knowing the best channel to reach somebody, right? Even as just a recommendation has been a win in the early goings as well. So it's been really important. I just think it's this idea that be human, find people where they are, connect with them. With relevancy, as the AI generated outreach is flooding email inboxes and LinkedIn inboxes, like we've got to stand out. That's the most important thing right now. And I think in closing I want to bring this back together, right? It's like there really is three things here, right? It's the AI accountability, end all, be all. What you invest needs to show results. And in 2026, that is the reality for everybody. Find your strategic reinvestment, right, and go lean in across these channels with relevancy, right? Meet your prospects where they are. There is data and resources and tools out there to help you do that, right? But I think it's about investing in these areas. Ask the right question, know what your next move is going to be.

I have a personal question for you, Sean. First of all, you did a fantastic job sharing all this insights about how you become a more successful company and how you help other companies become more successful. What was you said you were zooming for when you had 20 people, what was it like in those days? How did you prospect? How did you land your first memorable sale?

Certainly the wild west kind of here's the CRM, here's the tools and if somebody's name's not on it, all you, you know, go, go, go get it. I think back then it was a very much just phone heavy, you know, find it. I think when, you know, when I started I was actually part of the business that was DiscoverOrg, you know, on that half of the acquisition. And one of our bread and butter products at that time was just having org charts and intent data, right? Those two key aspects. So if I could identify good fit accounts on paper and I had this, you know, org chart to tell me what their sales organization looked like, or their marketing organization looked like, and I had any other key indicator that they might be in market, it was my priority. And we still do that very heavily. You know, those, those buying signals are, are critical to everyone. Back then it was, you know, write your own emails and do them one by one and then getting into, you know, using tools like outreach to, you know, have your sequences and your, your more elaborate email messaging. But yeah, it was get in, find it. And my, my most memorable, my first memorable one, I think the point I'd make on it was big company, this idea that like, you don't have to go book the C level person, you don't have to go find the vice president. There's going to be really meaningful people in the middle who are going to drive these initiatives. And that's exactly what happened with Apple once upon a time. And we found the right person to get to the right person and it spun into what was ultimately the biggest deal I was ever associated with as an SDR here. But yeah, it's just at that point we were just grinding. Everything was manual. You had to go make it happen for yourself.

Wow, that's a great story. Thank you for, for sharing the, the pioneer days. And obviously all your efforts and diligence paid off. Congratulations on your success.

Thank you very much. And I, I want to just reiterate, I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. This is great. Love the forum, love the event. I hope everybody got something out of this and I certainly hope everybody enjoys the remainder of the event the rest of the week.

Stephanie, what, what's your biggest takeaway from Sean?

Well, I liked actually what one of the people said in the chat and they, they made this analogy that AI is like a person using a shovel. And then they're giving them, what is it, an excavator or. Oh, giving them a skid steer. It totally allowed you to amplify what you're doing and really dig in 100%.

And I think there's so much of it that like, I think anything, it's like some version of a human in the loop AI, Right. Like, I love the idea that there's so much data out there that gives you the opportunity to craft these messages personalized at scale. But there's still that oversight. Like you still got to have that, you know, kind of look through because it's going out with your name on it. Right. And understand every AI tool. You says, like, it will make mistakes, right. So just know that you've got to go do that. Level of inspection. But, yeah, you can move mountains now, and it's really cool. And you have to do it thoughtfully and strategically because the flip side of that is you'll get caught in those traps and you'll get in trouble, and you got to make sure that you're doing that thing with care. But, yeah, it's been a great kind of early going, being about a year into some of the major investments that we've made. But there's a lot more in store for us in 2026.

Can't wait either.

Thank you, Sean.

All right. Thank you so much. Again. Appreciate, everybody.

Thank you.