This session examines emerging trends and best practices defining high performing sales operations functions.
Few functions within the firm confront as much change as sales organizations. In the past five years, they’ve adapted to a global pandemic, then an uneven return to normalcy; they’ve been whipsawed by sudden spikes in demand and product supply, uncertain labor markets and worker shortages, and the introduction of...Read more
Conference Archives
AI’s Impact on the Sales Organization: Managing on the Jagged Frontier 
18 September 2025
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AI is changing the way sales organizations work, how salespeople sell, and how core functions such as sales operations and enablement support sales productivity. This session examines AI's impacts on sales forces. AI is improving efficiency and productivity, but is also expected to permanently change staffing models and organizational structure...Read more
Sales organizations are seeing incremental productivity gains from AI adoption. While significant to be sure, these impacts mostly fall short of the disruption suggested by AI’s unrelenting hype. Except when it comes to sales training. AI enabled training offers the most compelling and demonstrably value-creating application of AI for most...Read more
Webcast
Guiding Sales Transformation: Practitioner Perspectives
6 August 2025
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Sales organizations often change in response to shifting market conditions, competitive pressure, or shifts in demand or buyer preferences. Sometimes those changes rise to the level of “transformational” change, involving wholesale restructuring or strategic realignments of selling resources. In this panel, senior sales and sales operations leaders discuss their experiences...Read more
Many sales organizations use a combination of inside and outside salespeople, but struggle to determine the optimal mix of the two. New academic research helps address this challenge. Using data from 194 firms and a review of current practices, researchers examined the relationship between the use of inside sales roles...Read more
Changing the sales compensation plan is fraught with peril. Poorly thought out changes can tank morale, erode productivity, and trigger salesperson turnover. A recent Sales Management Association research reveals that firms with the most amount of sales comp program change are least likely to have effective sales compensation programs - suggesting...Read more
Webcast
Focusing Salesperson Coaching on Skill Improvement
11 June 2025
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Sales organizations consider coaching an important management role and a critical driver of sales force effectiveness, but few firms effectively coach salespeople. Many fail to elevate coaching among competing manager priorities, while others deliver training, performance feedback, or training, rather than true coaching. This webcast focuses on skills coaching. It...Read more
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