Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference: Day 1 Highlights

We are bringing you news and highlights from Day 1 of the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference, taking place this week in Las Vegas. Below is a collection of the key announcements and insights coming out of the conference. 

On Day 1, we are highlighting how to unlock customer retention and growth, insights into customer engagements and diving into what buyers really want and Gartner's 2025 CSO Leadership Vision. 

• Gartner Survey Finds 73% of CSOs Are Prioritizing Growth from Existing Customers for 2025

Presented by Bill Yetman, Senior Director Analyst, Gartner

In today’s world of AI, sales enablement must adapt competencies and skills to leverage new tools. Sellers must stop trying to outperform what AI is good at and instead pivot competencies and skills to where humans add value – and where AI can’t. Bill Yetman, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, discussed how enablement teams must start focusing on where humans drive outsized impact and how to adapt and pivot sales enablement. 

• “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.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.

Presented by Luke Tipping, Director Analyst, Gartner

Effectively engaging with customers is a critical enabler of commercial performance, but this is a growing challenge for sellers. Luke Tipping, Director Analyst at Gartner, explored how coaching buyers through complex B2B deals underpins successful sales engagement strategies to deliver high-quality deals and revenue growth. 

• “Seventy-four percent of B2B sales leaders agree that it’s getting harder for their sellers to close deals.”

• “As hard as it is to sell B2B solutions today, it's even harder for buyers to buy B2B solutions today. Forty-four percent of buyers agreed they encountered multiple points where they stopped making progress and unnecessarily delayed the purchase.” 

• “Just like sellers need coaching to navigate complex B2B sales processes, buyers need to be coached through complex buying journeys. 

• Sellers need to help their buyers with three things: 

  • Establish clarity: Why are we making this purchase?

  • Provide context: What exactly does our organization need?

  • Instill confidence: How do we know we’re making the right decisions?”

• “Sellers must help buyers feel in control of their journey, confident in the decisions they make, and establish consensus across the buying group:

  • To provide control, sellers must enable buyers to engage with them on their terms, while providing sellers with insights they can use to keep buyers on track.

  • To inspire confidence, sellers must use key human skills to build connection and trust with buyers.

  • To yield consensus, sellers should provide information that’s relevant at the organizational- and buying group-level, aligned across touchpoints, and easily shareable across buying teams.”

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.

Presented by Robert Blaisdell, VP Analyst, Chief of Research, Gartner

Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) are confronting a myriad of challenges shaped by both internal and external forces. From the rise of artificial intelligence, ongoing economic uncertainty, and the necessity to implement multiple sales transformations are creating a complex environment that demands strategic foresight. With all these challenges, Robert Blaisdell VP Analyst, Chief of Research at Gartner, discussed what CSOs must prioritize in 2025.

• “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.” 

Journalists can receive additional information and/or request an interview with the Gartner expert by contacting Juliette Dixon at juliette.dixon@gartner.com.