All 2025 Conference Sessions

Navigating AI’s Impact of Sales Enablement Competency Model

Presented by Bill Yetman, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Key take-aways

• “Sales enablement can become future-fit for AI’s impact by addressing the legacy competencies and skills which are prevalent in much of sales learning and development.”

• “Sales leaders must move away from manual content development to content prompting, while preparing for systems that will deliver dynamic content, and pivot from point-in-time delivery — which is optimized for enablement — to point of need delivery — which is optimized for the learner.”

• “Using legacy learning models, disconnected systems, and one-size-fits-all training modules will not give revenue teams a competitive advantage.”

• “Sales enablement needs to evolve from simply training people … to understanding the importance of training the systems — that train the people. Soon, each learning experience will be personalized through agentic systems.”

• “As sales enablement evolves beyond traditional training paradigms, the integration of the sales tech stack with AI becomes crucial. System programming emerges as a pivotal skill, empowering enablement teams to deliver data-driven, point-of-need training via AI and integrated tech systems, shifting focus from traditional training to system-driven learning experiences.”

The CSO 2025 Leadership Vision: It's Way More Than Just Sales

Presented by Robert Blaisdell, Vice President Analyst, Chief of Research, Gartner

Key take-aways

• “Sales and marketing leaders need to collaborate to achieve results, despite any challenges this may present.” 

• “Most buyers engage across both traditional and digital channels, with nearly 75% of buyers engaging directly with traditional rep-led channels and approximately 28% of buyers utilize digital commerce platforms.”

• “When the teams work together on key commercial activities, they are 2.3x more likely to see strong commercial growth.”

• “In addition to CSOs’ leadership, execution, change management and planning skills, they have to address the latest factors that are driving the need for a shift in upskilling themselves and their team, which include: 

  • Rising complexity of markets

  • Increased need for enterprise alignment

  • Amplified buying and selling dynamics

  • AI’s rapid increased impact”

• “CSOs have three priorities for 2025, which include leading a unified commercial strategy, creating an adaptable sales organization and radically simplifying seller roles.” 

The New CSO’s Toolkit: Leveraging Gartner’s New To Role Insights for First-Year Success

Presented by Brendan Condon, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

Key take-aways

• “Based on thousands of CSO transitions occurring across all industries, we've built out four areas of focus in the Executive FastStart framework:
  • Establish priorities quickly: Why have you been hired? What is the current state of sales?
  • Understand your environment and role: What’s the reality of this role you now find yourself in?
  • Build relationships and personal brand: You’re in an ecosystem of stakeholders and must evaluate how others perceive you in this new environment, and how you influence those around you.
  • Deliver on first-year priorities and beyond: How do you really deliver and stay focused on the job you’ve been hired to do and successfully make an impact?” 

• “According to our CSO Priorities survey, new customer acquisition, account management and growth, and optimization of the go-to-market strategy are top priorities for CSOs."

• “Your brand as a leader will be defined, with or without you. Own your brand by being intentional about your leadership narrative in your new role.”

• “The average time for a transitioning leader to achieve success is more than seven months, which is why this framework focuses on the whole year, not just 90 or 100 days.”