Report: 54% of GTM leads say speed to revenue is a top priority for growth

Driving growth is undoubtedly a major priority of any modern-day sales leader, and a new report from sales enablement platform Seismic shows they are under increasing pressure to drive growth, customer retention, and improve performance.

Revenue leaders cited several top priorities in how to drive growth:

• Speed to revenue (54%)
• Analytics and performance measurement (50%)
• Customer retention and account growth (50%)
• AI adoption and governance (47%)
• New customer acquisition (47%)

These priorities address many crucial aspects of the GTM organization and signal that leaders need to put more focus on customer-facing teams to “execute better and build trust, guide customers through complexity, and turn information into meaningful action,” according to the report.

Barriers to growth

While sales teams are expected to move quicker and produce positive results, there are several constraints leaders highlighted that can pose as roadblocks:

• Poor integration with existing tools (56%)
• Manual and time-consuming reporting (48%)
• Slow onboarding and ramp time (44%)
• Insufficient AI capabilities (40%)
• CRM and tool integration are difficult to maintain and keep updated (39%)

An up-to-date and efficient tech stack is the best way to eliminate these barriers and set up teams for success. AI is one way to address these tech stack pain points, and Seismic’s report shows that there is still ample opportunity for many teams to further integrate it into their organizations.

Embedding AI

Of those surveyed, only 9% said that AI was fully embedded into their tech stack, while 41% said it had been partially adopted. Additionally, 27% said their teams were still experimenting with AI, and 12% said it’s used on an ad hoc basis.

The partial adoption isn’t surprising as there are still hesitations surrounding AI adoption. Sales leaders surveyed noted several concerns feeding about AI:

• Quality and accuracy of AI outputs (24%)
• Difficulty measuring ROI (18%)
• Data security and privacy (16%)
• Integration with existing systems (14%)

The report indicates that AI adoption is moving faster than AI confidence. It’s important for leaders to use the most accurate and up-to-date data to ensure AI outputs can be trusted.