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Will AI and Self-Service Sales Define the Next Decade of GTM? · Sales Pipeline Radio

0:15
Matt Heinz: All right.
0:16
Welcome back.
0:16
We are live from the marketplace at B2B Summit.
0:20
Thanks to Forrester for letting us be part of this.
0:23
When we set up this audio system, Rick, we did not anticipate the
0:25
live band component of this.
0:27
So if you hear some Fleetwood Mac covers in the background it's part of the
0:31
entertainment part of the ambiance.
0:33
Today.
0:33
It's very good.
0:34
It's not bad.
0:35
The band's really good.
0:35
But excited to be here.
0:36
We're here in this episode of Sales Pipeline Radio with Rick Bradberry.
0:40
He's the principal analyst for Forrester with some hot off the press research
0:45
that I'm super excited to get in.
0:46
Today we're gonna talk about the concept of the sales supercycle.
0:50
Yes, sir. You almost wanna say that with a little bit of an echo.
0:52
The supercycle.
0:54
It's been a long day.
0:55
We're getting a little cheeky.
0:57
But Rick, thanks for being here.
0:58
Yeah, you bet.
0:59
I'm really happy to join.
1:00
How's the day been for you?
1:01
How's today been?
1:01
It's
1:02
Rick Bradberry: good.
1:02
Yeah.
1:02
Lots of variety of busy sessions.
1:04
Busy.
1:04
Yeah.
1:04
Lots of hype, lots of buzz.
1:06
And
1:07
Matt Heinz: this is really exciting being right here on the floor.
1:09
This is amazing.
1:09
Yeah.
1:10
Shout out to Amanda and the PR team for making all this possible.
1:13
Thanks.
1:14
Shout out to Nick on the AV team for getting all this equipment together here.
1:18
It's been a busy day.
1:19
It's been a lot going on here, and it's been exciting to see some of the themes
1:23
that have come out of today around.
1:24
Like the buying journey, turning into buying groups and the
1:27
diversity of that buying group.
1:29
Really interesting to see people talk about integration across go-to-market
1:33
teams and the need for sales, marketing, CS product spend time together.
1:37
Lots of AI conversation as well.
1:40
But I'm excited to talk today about, the future of sales and what we're gonna see.
1:44
So let's start with that.
1:45
Like what do you see in your research you've done, this is literally hot off
1:48
the press, so excited to talk about it.
1:50
What are some of the components that you think are gonna be
1:53
key to the future of sales?
1:54
Rick Bradberry: Yeah.
1:54
Alright, let's jump in.
1:55
I think part of it here is around the context of selling, right?
2:00
Yeah.
2:00
Like, when we think about the future, the future's not really something
2:03
that sales leaders love to spend a lot of time on because they're
2:06
focused on the quarter and they always are, and they always will be.
2:10
But the context around selling is changing and there are a handful
2:13
of forces that I think really stress the sales function in the future.
2:18
And that's what we wanna get into.
2:19
And you mentioned AI earlier.
2:20
Mm-hmm.
2:21
Like, let's just start with that one.
2:22
It's probably
2:23
foremost
2:23
on everyone's
2:24
mind.
2:24
Matt Heinz: Took us two minutes in this, it's a record for this
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podcast, not a record here.
2:27
Two minutes to get about to AI here and Forrester B2B Summit 2025.
2:33
You look across all the booths here in the marketplace and it's really
2:36
hard to find one that doesn't have ai.
2:39
Somewhere.
2:39
So clearly it has become now ubiquitous, but let's land the plane a little bit.
2:43
When it comes to the future of sales, how do people need to think about
2:47
like operating and integrating ai?
2:49
Rick Bradberry: Yeah, AI is gonna really augment sales productivity.
2:53
Yeah.
2:53
That's the immediate near term benefit, but let's not make any mistake about it.
2:57
AI is a fast moving, really rapid trend that is really dynamic and it is going to.
3:04
Challenge the basics of sales, like AI plus automation together is really
3:08
going to create a different kind of selling environment altogether.
3:12
The nature, the speed, and the quality of sales tasks.
3:15
Yeah.
3:15
Totally.
3:16
New calculus.
3:17
Yeah.
3:17
Yeah, yeah.
3:18
Matt Heinz: Well, and when I think about ai, I think about automation.
3:20
When I think about AI and automation together, start thinking about
3:22
this concept of buyer self service.
3:25
Ooh.
3:26
And this has been.
3:27
A little bit of a controversial topic is how I've talked to
3:31
you know, go-to-market leaders.
3:32
Some see this as inevitable.
3:34
Some see this as an existential threat to their go-to-market teams.
3:38
When you think about the next decade of selling, how ubiquitous
3:42
is self-service gonna be?
3:43
Are we not gonna need salespeople anymore, or is this part of
3:46
a different job to be done?
3:47
Rick Bradberry: Yeah.
3:47
So when people hear
3:48
self-service, they often think that final click, the final tap or
3:53
document signature that finalizes everything with the transaction, right?
3:56
That's really not what we're talking about, right?
3:58
With self-service.
3:59
Self-service is really about buyers who can complete tasks on their own.
4:04
Yep.
4:04
So rewind, go back 10, 15 years in order for a buyer to progress.
4:08
They had to complete most of their buying tasks with a seller.
4:11
Right?
4:11
That's just how it worked, right?
4:12
And that's how most sales teams are set up today.
4:15
Generate a lead, generate an opportunity.
4:17
Oop, pass it off to sales, we'll work with you the rest of the journey.
4:20
That's not how it works anymore.
4:22
So more and more of the buying journey is becoming digitized.
4:26
Right.
4:26
And it's self-service.
4:27
Right.
4:27
And the real takeaway for sales leaders is that engagement with.
4:31
Prospects is now a hybrid motion, right?
4:34
So we have to enable buyers to complete those tasks on their own, but then create
4:40
natural links where we can have personal and meaningful interactions with them
4:44
as we go through the process together.
4:46
Matt Heinz: And if you were to describe, give that definition
4:49
to marketers in this room, they'd be like, yeah, that's not new.
4:51
That's been happening, right?
4:52
Like the self-service around content, self service around demos.
4:56
The fact that a lot of companies are getting rid of forms and saying just
4:59
you know, choose your own adventure.
5:00
We're gonna watch you, but choose your own adventure.
5:02
That is happening and it is benefiting companies.
5:04
It is benefiting marketing teams.
5:06
I think now that we are bringing that self-service to
5:08
sales, do we need an SDR team?
5:11
Do we just have robots do this?
5:13
I've seen a lot of companies.
5:14
Let go their SDR team and then hire many of them back.
5:17
'cause they realize the ai, at least for now, can't yet do that entire job.
5:21
So yes to self-service, but to jobs that need to be done
5:25
along that complex process.
5:26
Right.
5:27
Rick Bradberry: Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
5:29
And it creates a different kind of engagement with
5:31
prospects, the real change.
5:33
So self-service is not brand new.
5:35
That's been happening for 5, 10, 15 years.
5:37
Yeah, lots of digitization.
5:38
What is happening is that the self-service is spreading to all
5:42
buying stages and purchase sizes.
5:44
So if you talk to somebody two or five years ago, they would say,
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oh, that's self-service stuff.
5:49
That's for small purchases, transactional stuff, right?
5:52
SMB type of environment, that's not really enterprise sales.
5:55
Oh, so wrong, right?
5:57
Buyers are completing self-service tasks in all purchase sizes and.
6:02
Stages.
6:03
That's really new.
6:04
When we ask sellers, what do you think are some of the biggest
6:06
challenges out there that you face?
6:08
More than a third of them, 37% from Forrester's B2B sales survey.
6:13
In 2024, they said, being slow to recognize and adapt
6:17
to changing buyer behaviors.
6:19
Is one of the top revenue growth challenges for their team.
6:24
And so it doesn't sound like a huge percentage, but again, this is more than
6:27
a third saying that is the top thing.
6:30
Yeah.
6:30
It's buyers and their changes and the self-service is foremost among
6:35
them.
6:35
Matt Heinz: And your ability to adapt to that as an organization in your
6:39
process and your culture is not trivial.
6:42
Right.
6:42
As this really scales and becomes a more material part of the process.
6:46
So I've not heard someone before you used it use the phrase sales supercycle.
6:51
Right?
6:51
And for a lot of organizations that really wish and hope that selling
6:54
could be easier, streamline, faster, easier, supercycle sounds like
6:58
we're going the opposite direction.
7:00
I would argue that's an inconvenient truth.
7:01
That is a law of physics and selling.
7:03
And in B2B markets right now like that trains out of the station.
7:06
But talk about what do you mean by supercycle and why is that important for.
7:10
Go to market leaders to embrace.
7:11
Rick Bradberry: Yeah.
7:12
In the past, the internet, cloud, mobile, all of those technologies
7:16
fueled a cycle of macroeconomic growth.
7:19
And that was a boon for sellers, right?
7:20
Mm-hmm.
7:21
You could sell a lot of product based on those trends, and it was great.
7:26
And so what we're seeing is that AI is part of that next cycle of economic
7:31
growth, but the super cycle we define here is both growth, but combined with.
7:37
A period of revenue transformation that goes with it.
7:40
Okay.
7:40
So even if in the near term, so we see a lot of macroeconomic clouds right now,
7:45
you know, just some really bad stuff that's not best for selling environment.
7:49
Yeah.
7:49
But regardless of what economies are going to do, yeah.
7:52
These trends and dynamics in the supercycle will persist.
7:56
Yeah.
7:56
So AI is going to continue to transform.
7:59
Our sales processes are gonna continue to transform, and then what?
8:03
And how we sell is all going to transform as well.
8:06
It's gonna be more AI based.
8:08
It's gonna be smarter, more automated.
8:10
That is a trend that's just not going to go away no matter how we define it.
8:13
So the sales cycle.
8:15
Is that period of growth and transformation that will hit
8:18
the sales function in ways that we've not seen in the past.
8:22
Matt Heinz: Is this exclusive to net new sales and customer
8:25
acquisition, or does this apply to customer expansion efforts as well?
8:28
Rick Bradberry: Yeah, no, it's the whole.
8:30
The whole thing.
8:31
Think about your routes to market.
8:32
Yep.
8:33
Routes to market.
8:33
So we're not just talking about a direct sales team.
8:36
Yeah.
8:36
But what we're thinking about is the composition of how revenue is attained.
8:39
Yep.
8:39
So routes to market, equal routes to revenue, that's one thing.
8:44
Another theme is really around direct versus indirect.
8:47
One is around Pipeline or deals that are net new versus
8:52
post-sale, like you mentioned.
8:54
All of that is changing.
8:55
Yeah.
8:55
So the post-sale is going to be more important, Matt, in the future.
9:00
Matt Heinz: Right.
9:00
So the way that this is straight from the description of your session coming
9:03
up, it's like, to succeed in the future, sales leaders will have to learn or
9:06
maybe in case relearn much of what has made them successful in the past.
9:11
What do you mean by that?
9:11
Yeah,
9:12
Rick Bradberry: relearning.
9:13
That's great.
9:13
So the dynamics of this new supercycle are, here's some characteristics.
9:18
The future will be more intelligent for sales.
9:20
Yep.
9:21
AI agents and automation.
9:23
We'll be accelerated.
9:24
So it's just faster.
9:25
Yeah.
9:25
This new world, we're gonna be in the next decade.
9:28
Right?
9:28
It's a disruptive decade.
9:29
Yep.
9:29
Fast, frequent improvements will be needed from the sales team.
9:33
Yep.
9:33
A lot more.
9:34
Around that.
9:35
Number three, characteristic adaptive.
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So agile, customer-centric adjustments.
9:41
We can't continue to sell the same way we have before.
9:45
Let's be real honest.
9:46
Yeah, real honest, like, brutal, honest.
9:47
For your listeners, most of sales, most of demand gen, it's, here's secret, I'm
9:53
gonna whisper it into the microphone.
9:54
It's all built for sellers.
9:57
Yes.
9:57
It's not actually built for customers, right?
10:00
And so in this new future, I don't think we can get away
10:03
with that for very much longer.
10:04
Like it's adaptive, it's gotta be customer focused.
10:07
Number four, for sales leaders characteristic, integrated.
10:12
So roles, technologies, processes.
10:14
Yeah.
10:14
Like we used to have these really defined roles, responsibilities,
10:18
silos, these functional areas.
10:20
That were really nice and tidy, well guess what's happening?
10:23
All of that gets a little murkier.
10:25
What is a demand team?
10:26
What SDRs, you mentioned SDRs.
10:28
Yeah.
10:28
Where do they report, right?
10:29
Is that a marketing function?
10:31
Is that a sales function?
10:32
In every organization you will see that.
10:35
All over the map.
10:36
So more integrated is what to expect in the new Supercycle.
10:40
And then lastly, it's going to be more networked.
10:44
So you mentioned some of the themes coming out of the B2B summit here.
10:48
One of them is around buying networks.
10:50
So buyers don't just buy as a group, but they use the entire set of people.
10:56
Assets and resources that are available in their network to
11:00
go through the purchase process.
11:01
And they too will be using AI for their purchases in the future.
11:07
Matt Heinz: Talk today the live at Forrester, B2B Summit on the
11:10
marketplace floor with Rick Bradberry.
11:12
He's the principal analyst at Forrester.
11:14
There will be a test later on those five areas.
11:16
Hopefully you're keeping track of those at home.
11:20
I was really excited to see the more network component bear out in
11:23
a lot of the content in the keynotes earlier today, and to recognize that
11:26
the internal buying committee is not sufficient, that you have to engage
11:30
the ecosystem around buyers as well.
11:32
Yes, that increases complexity, but when you think about the analysts,
11:36
you think about influences, you think about partners, you think about
11:38
other customers that are either have relationships with your prospects
11:42
and other peer customers as well.
11:44
How you orchestrate those relationships together really matters.
11:48
And even as AI and technology grows in importance, I think it's those
11:52
relationships amongst people in those ecosystems that is going to give companies
11:56
a competitive advantage moving forward.
11:57
Rick Bradberry: Yeah, A real secret too.
11:59
Another secret, revenue happens in networks, happens in buying networks.
12:04
Revenue happens in your selling network internally.
12:06
How you get to market and get things done.
12:08
Revenue happens in your partner network, your ecosystem overall
12:12
of how you are getting out to market and selling your product.
12:15
Matt Heinz: So your content in your report is really focused
12:18
on the next decade of selling.
12:19
But I think if someone sits down and listens to all this, it'd be really easy
12:22
to get intimidated by how much change is coming, how much change is here.
12:27
What do you recommend of sales leaders think about and do
12:31
in the next six to 12 months?
12:33
So that if we're sitting here next year, 10% into that next decade of selling.
12:37
What are the things sales leaders need to have already spent time mastering
12:40
and integrating into their teams?
12:42
Yeah.
12:43
Rick Bradberry: Let's hit a few and in no particular order, and I think
12:45
this first one will surprise you.
12:47
Income and employment insecurity among sellers yes, will rise.
12:52
And so sellers live with a higher degree of that to begin with.
12:56
But in the future, it will look a little bit different.
12:59
In Forrester's future of work survey last year, 60%, six 0% of B2B employees
13:06
say they fear losing their job due to automation in the next 10 years.
13:10
So in this next decade, same time period, 60% are like, Hey, I'm already
13:15
fearful that my job is gonna disappear.
13:17
I'm gonna lose it.
13:18
Right?
13:19
That number is probably heightened for sellers.
13:22
So for sales leaders, the takeaway there is.
13:25
Look, there's probably an emerging wellness crisis going
13:29
to be brewing among your sellers.
13:30
You better get on top of that ahead of time.
13:33
So that's number one.
13:35
Number two, and we've hit on this AI theme, but it's gonna change the
13:38
composition of how sales leaders allocate their budgets and their resources.
13:44
And it is gonna become difficult because sales leaders tend to be
13:47
pretty tight with their sales team.
13:49
And now they're faced with this decision of, Hey, I have to start
13:53
introducing more automation, more ai.
13:55
I have less head count.
13:57
And some of these composition questions might become agonizingly difficult as
14:02
sales leaders are forced to automate into and engineer into this new calculus.
14:09
So sales agents will be onboarded.
14:12
And train to co-sell with sellers.
14:16
Yeah.
14:16
Don't know what that looks like.
14:18
Exactly.
14:18
Yeah.
14:18
No one does.
14:19
They may say they have an idea but we're gonna figure that out.
14:23
Co-selling with ai agents will be kind of the new norm for sales.
14:27
Those are two.
14:28
Matt Heinz: Yeah.
14:29
There's a guy by the name of Pascal Finette, I dunno if you know this guy.
14:31
He's a futurist and he talks about this concept called the innovation paradox.
14:35
And what he says is, the innovation has happened in the past, now appears
14:39
far shallower than it actually was.
14:42
You think about like 15 years ago when the iPhone barely existed and now we
14:45
have this supercomputer in our pocket.
14:47
We are recording these programs the last couple days on an SD card.
14:50
It is barely the size of just the surface of my thumb.
14:53
It holds a quarter of a terabyte of data like that would've filled this
14:57
conference room not that long ago, right?
15:00
So his point is like the innovation that's happened in the past was much
15:04
steeper than it now feels and appears.
15:06
The innovation in the future looks far steeper than it will be.
15:10
So everything from AI to mobile to the advances in computing, it is
15:14
all coming and without understanding it today, it may seem scary.
15:19
But we are really good as humans at adapting to new normal.
15:23
Yeah,
15:23
and I think if you're a go-to market leader thinking about this
15:26
future of selling in the super sales cycles, this will be different.
15:29
You pointed out areas where it's different, where it could feel scary.
15:32
My job security feels a little scary, but go into this eyes wide open, go into
15:37
this, seeing this as an opportunity, not a threat, and there will be
15:40
a new normal that will be better.
15:43
Rick Bradberry: Yeah.
15:43
You know, I think there's some good news in it for sales managers.
15:47
Okay.
15:47
We haven't talked a whole lot about them.
15:48
We've been talking about sales reps. But for managers like their job, if
15:53
they do it well, is to be a great coach.
15:56
And what we know is that most sales leaders don't spend enough time on that.
15:59
And when they do, they're not really that good.
16:02
And let's face it, humans have biases and it's sometimes really hard to get to that
16:07
level of trust with a sales manager to really drive outsized results with AI.
16:12
In the future, you will probably have an AI agent, be your sales coach, that
16:18
is your new coach, your primary coach.
16:20
Listen in on all your calls.
16:21
Your manager can't do that.
16:22
They're too busy.
16:24
Record 'em all.
16:25
Summarize them all.
16:27
Put the next steps in there, give you contextually relevant prompts on what
16:30
to do, what to say next on what the next step is, and then to give you
16:34
feedback on what other sellers in the organization are doing that are successful
16:39
and are tied to deals that are one.
16:42
And correlated to those factors.
16:44
Can your sales manager do that today?
16:46
No.
16:47
No, no.
16:48
No.
16:48
Cannot.
16:49
And so the sales manager role is really going to be from first line sales coaching
16:54
to first line sales Orchestrating, yeah.
16:57
Really looking more holistically at this people process technology equation.
17:02
And how to make sure that reps are getting all of the resources they
17:05
need to sell at the top of their game.
17:07
Part of that is automated.
17:09
Part of it is a different productivity equation as well.
17:13
That is really what the emerging role of the first line sales manager will
17:16
probably look like in this next decade.
17:19
Matt Heinz: You keep describing a future that feels better.
17:22
You keep describing a future that feels more efficient, more
17:25
productive, more beneficial to the people, the humans involved.
17:30
It might be a little messy getting there because we don't have that clear path.
17:34
We don't know exactly what that looks like.
17:36
And I think, you know, as humans we don't like change.
17:38
We like things that are known.
17:40
We wanna know what that clear path is gonna look like.
17:42
It's why attribution continues to be a real challenge in the industry.
17:44
We wanna know, we wanna know exactly what's working, exactly what to do next.
17:48
And it frustrates us when we don't know.
17:50
Right.
17:51
But I think this guidance you've got here in some of these areas of
17:54
focus again going eyes wide open and really for everyone listening,
17:58
for everyone that's a part of this to really be part of identifying
18:01
what's gonna work to be part of.
18:03
Testing and learning, and then sharing that back in communities like this,
18:06
so we all continue to get better.
18:07
Rick Bradberry: That's right.
18:08
And we probably wouldn't normally associate these words with the sales
18:11
function, test, iterate, deploy, you know?
18:14
Right.
18:15
Get out there and really experiment with technology and deployment, but
18:18
that is exactly what needs to happen.
18:20
I was chatting with somebody earlier on the floor, we were
18:22
talking about this very subject.
18:24
And they said, you know, I think the marketing organization
18:26
is a little farther along.
18:28
And they sort of said it with a wink.
18:29
Like, you know, sales is kind of a laggard here.
18:31
And I said, look, the quarterly sales attainment and bookings
18:35
attainment focus is just gonna drive where leaders spend their time.
18:38
That's how their goal, that's how they're measured.
18:40
Yep.
18:40
They're not measured on long-term change and transformation,
18:44
right, or technology deployments.
18:45
That would be a pretty rare type of thing from a sales leader.
18:49
We are gonna see fits and starts, but the real, like, I think there's some
18:52
tension here, and that is, if you look at transformation in the go to market scheme
18:57
broadly, the sales function is behind and they have a backlog of transformation
19:03
initiatives that they should have been working on all along that they haven't.
19:07
So they're starting from a point already that is behind the curve and
19:12
now they're faced with the future that is faster, more intelligent and
19:15
requires like immediate deployment.
19:18
With this kind of stuff, it's gonna reach a really uncomfortable point for sales
19:24
leaders because they have to arrive at that conclusion right there in the moment.
19:29
Oh my gosh, my job has changed.
19:31
Yep.
19:32
Let me go back to the CEO.
19:33
Lemme go back to my boss and be like, look, the world is totally
19:37
different in the next six to 12 months.
19:39
It's even like more radical in the next decade.
19:42
Let's talk about what that means for sales and how sales and the rest
19:46
of the go-to-market machine really organize differently for the customer.
19:51
Matt Heinz: I love it.
19:52
Rick Bradberry.
19:53
Where can people who are listening to this say like, this is great.
19:55
I want to dig in on this further.
19:56
Where can they go look?
19:56
Where should they learn for these topics?
19:59
Yeah.
19:59
Rick Bradberry: Yeah.
20:00
Well, Forrester's always a great source and you know, I think there
20:03
are some really interesting points in here that I really haven't seen yet.
20:07
So it took a group of analysts.
20:09
To come together to find these points.
20:11
And if you're a Forrester subscriber and you have access
20:14
to this report, take a look.
20:16
Because it's more than just the future of sales.
20:19
It's really the entire context around what the future of the go-to-market
20:23
machine looks like in the next decade.
20:25
Matt Heinz: Awesome.
20:25
Love it.
20:26
Rick.
20:26
Thanks for being here.
20:27
Enjoy the rest of the day.
20:27
I know we're doing this at the end of a very long day, but
20:29
thanks for making this a priority.
20:30
Rick Bradberry: Great.
20:31
Likewise.
20:31
Great to be here.
20:32
Matt Heinz: Thank you.
20:32
We'll see you next time.
20:33
Rick Bradberry: You bet.