Five ways B2B sales leaders can win with tech and AI

B2B sales leaders today stand at a crossroads. The environment they face is dynamic and challenging. Economic growth is uneven across the world, competition is evolving, and B2B customers are adopting many more consumer-like behaviors, seeking more robust buying experiences, and showing a willingness to find alternative vendors. How can B2B leaders break through in such a challenging landscape?

Of course, companies still need to execute on core principles of commercial excellence—which include operating with a thoughtful strategy, delivering effective value propositions, optimizing for a wide variety of channels, and sustaining growth. But to stay on the front foot, B2B sales organizations can leverage technology to find the right markets while discovering, retaining, and delighting customers across all channels.

Today’s leaders understand the value of embracing innovation and using cutting-edge technology to execute strategies. McKinsey’s latest B2B Pulse Survey reveals a widespread willingness to adopt advanced digital solutions. And yet only 20 percent of respondents say they have a proven track record of consistently implementing technologies that fuel outsize growth. That means there’s still a wide-open playing field for players who want to get ahead.

Smart efforts will likely pay off. Top leaders who can turn growth mindsets into action can unlock success. A McKinsey study on courageous growth found that companies that outperform on growth invest more aggressively in digital-led transformations and AI to boost sales and marketing productivity. Companies that master innovation see an additional four-percentage-points-higher cumulative TSR growth than their peers.

The authors sought to understand how successful B2B sales organizations use technology for greater accuracy and speed. They spoke with more than 70 commercial leaders around the world to uncover how they propel above-market, sustainable growth trajectories.  They found that they use tech and data to get a more precise view of opportunities, eliminate time wasted on low-yield initiatives, empower sales teams with better information for nuanced decision-making, and optimize resources, pitches, and pricing. Doing all this can help growth leaders get in front of industry trends, high-growth markets, and specific customer opportunities before their peers.

The most successful B2B players are leveraging technology in five key ways to rewire their approach to growth and outgrow their peers.

1. AI-powered opportunity identification: Growth leaders in B2B sales are using AI to find new pockets of growth both within their core business and beyond.
2. Personalization: Innovators are tapping into gen AI to effectively tailor their offerings and pitches in response to increasingly specialized customer pain points and needs.
3. Value-based, AI-enabled pricing: Companies are using technology innovations to better inform value, transitioning away from manual, static pricing and toward dynamic models that can automate prices, tailor deals to customer segments, and improve price discipline.
4. Digitally enabled seller task automation: B2B players are using technology to improve their sales force efficiency and productivity, incorporating tools to better prioritize opportunities, speedily deliver customer value, and inform go-to-market strategies with better insights.
5. Digitally driven talent improvement: Sales organizations are leveraging tech to more effectively assess seller performance in line with their goals while also improving performance by implementing capability-building programs.

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