Gong is the #1 AI Operating System for revenue teams. Move faster, coach smarter, and hit targets with fewer surprises. Gong cuts down manual work, captures real buyer signals, and guides reps to action so more deals close and more sellers hit quota.
Check out their guide, “Sales playbook for frontline managers: 4 coaching best practices“ to unlock your team’s potential.
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Sales is changing fast. AI is accelerating everything, buyers are harder to impress, and mediocre selling is getting exposed.
That’s the bad news.
The good news is also simple: the teams that win are going to be the ones who get clear, get current, and double down on human skills that actually move deals forward.
Here are the trends I’m seeing, and the practical moves to make right now if you want a strong year.
We’re living in the noisiest time in history. Tools. Tactics. Hot takes. EVERYONE SHOUTING (😉).
If you wait for clarity, you’ll be waiting forever.
Set your own clarity:
Then act like you mean it. Put it on your calendar. Build your plan around it. Stop drifting.
AI will absolutely wipe out a lot of low-level tasks. Anything that looks like copying, pasting, summarizing, basic research, first drafts, list building, and “good enough” outreach is getting automated fast.
So here’s the play:
If you’re a rep, AI can help you research, organize, and prep.
If you’re a frontline manager, AI can help you spot trends, clean up pipeline signals, and prep for better coaching conversations.
If you’re a sales or revenue leader, AI can help you scale what’s working, identify risk earlier, and make better growth decisions without losing visibility into the human side of performance.
If you’re in enablement, AI can help you reinforce consistency in skills and training, but it should not define what “good” looks like.
READ: The Ultimate AI Toolkit for Sales & Enablement Leaders
As marketing and automation go further “digital,” the moment a buyer finally talks to a human matters more than ever.
Which means sales has to feel less like a pitch and more like a helpful consultation.
If your selling is still built on:
You’re going to feel the shift.
The bar is rising. Thank God.
AI has made outbound louder. Not better. Louder.
So prospecting wins this year when it’s:
Practical upgrades:
And yes, pick up the phone. Calls are weirdly becoming a differentiator again because fewer people are doing them at all, or well.
READ: Best AI Tools, Tips, And Prompts For Sales Prospecting
Buyers do not want to be pitched at. They want to feel understood quickly.
Your edge is better discovery:
A simple standard: if the buyer can’t clearly explain the problem and the stakes after talking to you, your discovery wasn’t discovery. It was a tour.
READ: 4 Steps to Asking Better Sales Discovery Call Questions
The era of the 45-minute “power demo” is fading.
Teams are moving toward:
If your demo is still a feature parade, you’re doing product theater, not selling.
Make demos:
Ghosting isn’t new. Buyers disappearing mid-deal is basically a sport now.
One of the simplest skills that helps is call bridging: setting up the next step while you still have them, with clarity and agreement, so follow-up isn’t chasing.
Quick example language:
It’s not pushy. It’s professional.
READ: Call Bridging 101: Paving the Way for a Follow-up Sales Call
More teams are leaning on AI for forecasting. That’s a win.
But AI can’t save you from messy inputs.
If your CRM stages are fuzzy and everyone has their own definition of “qualified,” you’ll still get bad forecasts. They’ll just arrive faster.
Team move to make:
Most organizations spend way more on tools than training.
Tools are coming. Skills are what will separate teams.
If you’re a leader or enablement:
People don’t change from watching. They change from doing.
READ: The Secret to Scaling Sales Team Revenue: Your Managers
If you’re a rep
Put these blocks on your calendar weekly:
If you’re a manager
Protect your calendar or you’ll burn out:
If you’re a sales or revenue leader
Scale without losing control:
If you’re in enablement
Speed is the name of the game:
READ: 8 Sales Enablement Best Practices to Partner with Revenue Leaders
This year is going to reward the people who stay current, build real skill, and show up as humans.
Use AI to get faster. Use your people to get better.
And please, for the love of all things, don’t let a robot set the standard for your customer conversations.
[Research Report]
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[Research Report]
How do you build a top-performing sales team? Short answer: Skills. Confidence. Coaching.
Every sales team has a few all-star reps. The ones who just get it and crush it. The question is, how do you clone that kind of success?
Here’s the truth: some people are born with drive, curiosity, and that inner fire to win. But top-performing sellers aren’t just born, they’re developed. They learn the skills, build the confidence, and have managers who coach them along the way. The good news? Every bit of that can be taught.
If your reps are struggling to find the right contacts, freezing up when someone actually answers the phone, or taking forever to ramp, it’s not a talent problem. It’s a skills and confidence problem.
So, whether you’re building a team from scratch or helping seasoned sellers hit the next level, here’s how to turn potential into performance.
Before you can grow a high-performing sales team, you have to figure out what’s slowing reps down. For most, it starts with confidence. New sellers don’t know the language yet, feel unsure about the tools, and get stuck just trying to figure out who to call.
Here’s what sales leaders say are the top challenges:
And even when they do reach the right people, getting them to engage (and knowing what to say next) isn’t always natural.
Confidence doesn’t just appear. It’s built, one conversation, one small win at a time.
New hire sales training often tries to do too much. But what sellers need most in their first few weeks is confidence, the kind that comes from actually knowing what to do and say in real situations.
Skip the deep dives into quoting systems or pricing battles. In the beginning, focus on the basics that make up 90% of their day:
That’s the heart of just-in-time sales training. Teach what reps need for their first 30 days, not their first 300.
Tip: When new reps leave training feeling confident, they come back hungry for more. That’s how you build a learning culture and ramp faster.
READ: 8 Sales Rep Onboarding Best Practices
One of the most effective coaching tools out there is the Pause Game. It’s simple and powerful:
This exercise pulls reps out of their own heads and into the customer’s world. It builds active recall, which science shows is five times more effective than passive learning.
The game teaches reps when to apply knowledge, not just what to say. That small shift in awareness can shave weeks off ramp time.
Tip: It’s not just about knowledge. It’s about retrieval. Helping reps recognize when to use the right skill is what separates good from great.
READ: Sales Training Techniques: Telling vs. Teaching
Reps can’t succeed without the right tools and the know-how to use them at the right moment.
To set your team up for success:
Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs) are must-have sales tools. These microsites let sellers organize resources, track buyer engagement, and keep deals moving with mutual action plans and real-time visibility.
Tip: Tools like DSRs don’t just help reps. They make it easier for buyers to stay informed and move deals forward. That’s a win-win.
If you want to keep your top reps, you have to do more than teach them how to sell. You have to show them what’s next.
Reps are motivated by success stories, recognition, and growth. So give them that:
Coaching plays a massive role here. Too many managers run 1:1s, review pipeline, and put out fires, but never actually coach.
That’s why developing your managers matters. Coaching certifications give them a repeatable system to build skills, boost confidence, and grow their people.
Tip: If managers don’t know how to coach, reps don’t improve. Equip your frontline leaders to develop people, not just push deals.
READ: Tips for Enablement Leaders to Increase Sales Coaching Focus
Let’s be real. Most reps are buried under too many tools and use none of them well. The average tech stack is a juggling act, not a system.
Keep it simple. Your learning, content, and call-intelligence tools should actually talk to each other so managers can move fast, coach smarter, and see what’s working.
Manager dashboards should show trends, not snapshots; who’s improving, who’s stuck, and where to step in.
And here’s the kicker: about 90% of what managers say in a 1:1 is forgotten within a week. Real learning sticks when it’s reinforced, coached, and repeated until it becomes a habit.
READ: The Secret to Scaling Sales Team Revenue: Your Managers
This article is based on insights shared during a Sales Shot webinar featuring Lauren Bailey and Devyn Blume, Sr. AE at Allego. Watch the full session here.
What’s the most overlooked factor in sales growth? Your frontline sales managers.
They influence every deal, every rep, every forecast, and yet about 60% of new managers report they never received training when they stepped into leadership.
Let’s stop looking past the obvious. Your frontline managers are the secret to scaling sales growth.
If you want more reps hitting quota, more deals converting, stronger forecasts, and less burnout across the board, it starts with your managers. Not your tech stack. Not your latest AI tool. Not another rep enablement platform (though these are important and we love them, check out our friends at Allego).
I’ve worked with thousands of sales teams and here’s the hard truth. Most companies are investing in everything except the role that has the biggest impact on team performance and revenue growth.
And when we flip that, the results are massive. We’re talking 20 to 47% increases in rep conversion rates. And we didn’t even touch the rep. Just by developing their manager.
So if you’re planning for growth, keep reading. Because managers aren’t a bottleneck. They’re your biggest growth engine.
Change is part of growth. Reps switch teams. Territories shift. Comp plans evolve. But in the middle of it all, your frontline managers keep the team focused, engaged, and aligned.
That only works when they’re supported.
Too often, every manager ends up running their own playbook. Not because they want to, but because they’ve never been shown what “good” looks like. And even when you have playbooks, they don’t get translated into everyday actions and team rhythms.
Here’s where the cracks usually show up:
Consistency is what turns momentum into real, scalable growth. And it starts at the manager level.
Give them the tools to:
Even tenured managers benefit from this kind of clarity. One enterprise team we worked with had over 10 years of management experience and still walked away from this training saying, “I wish I’d had this years ago.”
Most sales managers were promoted from rep roles. And as reps, their entire world revolved around winning. So when things get tough, what do they fall back on?
Closing the deal.
They hop on the call. They take over the demo. They second-voice the close. It’s not bad intentions, they’re just doing what worked for them. But when a manager becomes the deal hero, the team stops learning.
And that’s when reps leave.
The revolving door hurts growth. Every open seat is lost pipeline. Every green rep takes months to ramp. Every exit chips away at morale.
What helps? Redefining the manager role and giving your leaders a new toolkit.
Because a manager who builds skill, confidence, and trust is someone who retains reps, not replaces them.
READ: Build Your Sales Manager Cadence (& Save Time and Stress)
We all love to say coaching is the silver bullet. And it is. But only when it’s done well.
Real coaching moves the needle on performance, confidence, and retention. But too often, what we call “coaching” is just a pipeline review in disguise.
If you’ve ever listened in and heard:
Then chances are, your managers need support here.
The most common trap? The Mini-me. That’s the manager who coaches every rep to be a version of themselves. It works for the one or two reps with the same style. Everyone else gets frustrated, disengaged, or overlooked.
Good coaching is consistent, rep-centered, and rooted in skill development, not deal rescue.
That’s why we don’t treat coaching like a one-hour workshop. It’s now a six-hour, three-part course here at Factor 8. Because shifting behavior and building confidence takes time. And when it clicks, reps perform. They stay. And they grow.
READ: The Best Sales Coaching Questions Ever
Let’s be honest. The biggest miss isn’t the manager. It’s us.
We’ve skipped the basics. We assume managers will figure it out because we did. We prioritize tech over training. We fix people problems with process or platform investments.
But if you want more reps to hit quota, you don’t need a new tool (yet). You need stronger conversations first.
That comes from skilled, supported, confident managers.
Most reps today get a sliver of what they need in onboarding. Then they’re tossed five tools and a quota. They’re still learning the basics. And the person who owns the rest?
Their manager.
So let’s invest in them. Train them. Coach them. Give them a framework, a cadence, and a community. Make development part of the rhythm, not a one-time event.
Because your reps aren’t going to grow if your managers aren’t growing too.
Managers are the secret to scalable revenue growth. Let’s stop hoping they figure it out, and start helping them knock it out of the park.
AI is transforming how sales and enablement leaders work, but not every tool is worth your time. The real win comes from using AI to cut through busywork, speed up planning, and empower your team to perform at their best.
In this Sales Shot webinar, I sat down with Helen Fanucci, Rose Paik, Casey Calkins, and Dr. Richard Conde to cut through the noise and share the AI strategies that are actually working.
Here are the AI tools, prompts, and use cases worth stealing (and what you should skip).
The biggest takeaway from our panel? AI is already drastically changing the game for sales and enablement leaders, and not in a distant future way. It’s helping them cut hours of work, make better decisions, and focus on the human parts of their job that matter most.
Helen shared a genius way to scale call reviews. Instead of sifting through hundreds of recordings, she uploads batches of transcripts into ChatGPT to surface competitor mentions, objection patterns, and whether reps are locking in next steps. It’s like a virtual coach doing the analysis for you, so you can spend time actually coaching.
Prompt to steal:
“Here are 20 discovery call transcripts. Create a table summarizing top objections, competitor mentions, and whether a next meeting was secured.”
Another smart move came from Rose, who built her own “clone” using Gemini. This persona enforces the company’s tone, writes in an active voice, and ensures content is clear and consistent across teams worldwide. The result is scalable sales training that actually sticks.
Prompt to steal:
“You are a sales enablement expert. Write onboarding instructions in an active voice, using customer-centric language at an 8th-grade reading level.”
AI can also help sales managers think faster and coach smarter. By feeding pipeline data into ChatGPT, Casey uses it to surface coaching priorities, the same insights an experienced leader would draw out, but in minutes instead of hours (grab Casey’s free AI toolkit for 6 AI prompts sales leaders need).
Prompt to steal:
“You are a frontline sales manager. Analyze this pipeline report and highlight three coaching priorities for my next one-on-one.”
Richard is taking a different angle by using AI to power better top-of-funnel strategies. He pairs Claude with Crystal Knows to understand buyer personality types, helping him craft outreach messages that feel personal, not spammy.
Prompt to steal:
“Here’s my target persona and their LinkedIn profile. Write a personalized outreach message that matches their communication style.”
These aren’t hypotheticals. They’re working right now. The leaders using AI this way aren’t just saving time; they’re leading smarter.
READ: Best AI Tools, Tips, And Prompts For Sales Prospecting
AI isn’t here to replace coaching (or training), but our panel proved it can make coaching a whole lot more impactful. By letting AI handle the heavy lifting behind the scenes, leaders are freeing up more time to actually coach and connect with their teams.
One of the standout examples came from Helen, who built a custom Love Your Team bot to help leaders role-play tough performance conversations. Managers can pick a scenario (easy, medium, or hard), practice with the bot, and get scored on how they did. It’s a safe way to prepare for conversations most leaders dread.
Prompt to steal:
“You are an underperforming rep. Role-play a tough performance conversation with me and grade my responses.”
Rose is embedding AI directly into enablement the right way: skills first, AI second. Her team uses NotebookLM to create an interactive, searchable knowledge base from training content. Reps can ask it questions, generate FAQs, and even turn the material into podcasts in multiple languages, making learning easier to access and retain.
Prompt to steal:
“Based on this training content, create an FAQ for reps that focuses on what they need to do, not just what they need to know.”
GRW also came up as a powerful tool for role-play coaching, giving reps a safe environment to practice calls and get real-time feedback based on proven sales frameworks (like the Factor 8 COACHN Model).
Casey encourages leaders to train their GPT to think like them. By feeding it prompts that teach their leadership style and decision-making frameworks, managers create a digital “thinking partner” they can lean on for coaching plans and tough conversations.
Prompt to steal:
“Here is how I coach and communicate with my team. Learn my style and use it to draft coaching plans for these three reps.”
AI works best when it reinforces fundamentals instead of replacing them. Richard uses it for pattern recognition in sales scenarios, helping reps see what makes deals successful before they automate a thing.
Prompt to steal:
“Analyze these sales scenarios and identify patterns in what led to successful outcomes.”
The bottom line? AI makes coaching and training more scalable and personal, but it only works if you use it to strengthen (not sidestep) the human connection.
AI is only as good as the guardrails you set around it. The panel made it clear that using AI safely and effectively isn’t optional, it’s table stakes.
Privacy and data control came up first. Casey stressed that leaders must lock down privacy settings before letting teams run wild with new tools. Without clear guardrails, you risk exposing sensitive information.
Prompt writing was another critical theme. Richard shared that the best outputs come from clear inputs: provide context, be specific, and always state your desired outcome. “Bad prompts get bad results,” he said. That’s why he often uses Claude to refine his prompts before sending them to other AI tools.
Helen showed how simple prompts can turn messy CRM data into clean, actionable summaries. Instead of spending hours in spreadsheets, she asks ChatGPT to create a table showing seller progress against objectives, giving her an instant snapshot of where to focus.
Rose brought it back to basics: start with the customer, not the tool. AI is there to help you serve buyers better, not to replace thoughtful strategy. When teams lead with AI instead of empathy, they risk losing the human connection that closes deals.
The message from all four leaders? The tools will not save you unless you teach them who you are, control what they see, and use them to make your work and your relationships stronger.
VIDEO: 8+ Critical Things Sales And Enablement Leaders Need To Know About AI
One of the best parts of this session was hearing the little hacks leaders use to save time without cutting corners. These weren’t big, shiny tech demos; they were practical shortcuts anyone can use.
NotebookLM was a fan favorite for Rose, who uses it like an interactive playbook. Instead of digging through static training docs, her reps can ask it “how do I” questions and instantly get answers. It can even generate FAQs or spin training material into podcast episodes in multiple languages, making learning accessible and easy to consume.
Casey shared how she teaches leaders to train ChatGPT to think like them. By feeding it prompts that define their leadership style, tone, and decision-making process, they turn it into a virtual assistant that knows how they would respond. This saves managers countless hours on repetitive tasks like drafting coaching plans or preparing for one-on-ones.
Richard uses Claude to sharpen his prompts before sending them to other tools. He calls it a “prompt coach” because it helps him ask better questions, which leads to better outputs everywhere else.
Helen keeps her workflow lean by asking AI to summarize CRM and call data into quick performance snapshots. Instead of pulling endless reports, she gets an at-a-glance view of what’s working and what’s not so she can spend her time coaching, not crunching numbers.
Fathom was another fan-favorite for turning meeting recordings into clear, actionable summaries, so leaders and reps can skip manual note-taking and focus on next steps.
For me, Oliv is the standout AI tool for saving time. I raved about it during the webinar, sharing how it delivers all my pre-call research straight to my inbox. No digging, no scrambling, just everything I need ready to go before the call. Oliv’s AI agents handle the admin grind behind meetings, from updating CRM fields to building follow-ups and proposals. For leaders, it automates forecasting and pipeline reviews, keeping everything accurate without the manual chase.
These hacks may seem small, but together they save hours each week and keep leaders focused on what really moves the needle.
When it comes to AI, there’s no shortage of shiny new tools, but only a handful are truly moving the needle for leaders. The panel didn’t hold back on sharing their favorites and the ones they’d leave behind.
For writing and content creation, Claude was a unanimous favorite. Both Richard and Rose rely on it for everything from drafting social content to formatting training materials. Richard even uses Claude to help craft better prompts, giving him cleaner outputs faster.
On the enablement side, Rose swears by her custom Gemini persona, the “Rose Clone,” to enforce tone and consistency in every piece of training content. She pairs it with NotebookLM to turn training materials into interactive, searchable resources that reps actually use.
For leaders coaching teams, Casey’s toolkit is full of must-haves. She loves using ChatGPT to analyze pipeline data, surface coaching priorities, and act as a sounding board for tough management decisions.
The session also spotlighted presentation tools worth bookmarking. Richard uses Napkin and Beautiful to quickly create clean, high-impact visuals, and pairs them with Canva for easy team collaboration. These tools make it faster to produce presentations that actually engage audiences without spending hours designing slides.
Not all tools got glowing reviews. Helen warned against relying on AI to write prospecting emails or LinkedIn outreach. Tools that blast generic messages do more harm than good. Her advice? Skip the automation here and pick up the phone. “Calling is back,” she reminded us. (We don’t think it ever went away 😉).
The panel also flagged a common mistake: blindly trusting AI outputs. Whether it’s using ChatGPT to summarize CRM data or leaning on any tool to draft content, accuracy isn’t guaranteed. Every AI output still needs a human eye before it goes out the door.
The takeaway? Tools like Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, NotebookLM, and even quick-hit design tools like Napkin and Beautiful are worth the investment because they solve real problems. Tools that replace personal outreach or encourage copy-paste shortcuts? Skip them.
The session wrapped up with a clear message: AI is here to stay, but how you use it determines whether it helps or hurts.
Helen reminded everyone not to let AI erode trust with customers or teams. Human connection still wins, and AI should support (not replace) that.
Richard sees the next wave already forming. AI agents acting like digital employees are coming fast, and they’ll change how leaders think about efficiency and staffing.
Casey urged leaders to focus on amplification. Use AI to make what you do best even better instead of trying to automate it all away.
And Rose left us with the simplest but most important reminder: no AI tool fixes bad fundamentals. Skills come first. Layer AI on top to scale and reinforce, not as a shortcut.
The future of sales and enablement isn’t human vs. machine. It’s human with machine, and leaders who embrace that balance are already pulling ahead.
When I asked the panel if AI would replace sellers, the chat blew up with a resounding “NO.” That moment sparked an important reminder from Casey about how we should approach AI:
Here are the top AI tools from our panel and how they’re being used to save leaders time, improve coaching, and scale enablement:
Our audience came ready to share their own favorite tools. Here are a few worth exploring:
