Sales managers, how to embrace AI and stay ahead of the curve?

You may wonder, what is my role now, where can I bring value as a manager? Indeed AI is going to transform the way we sell and how sales teams are working.

Think of 11x replacing SDR with AI agent or training solutions simulating fakes demo on your behalf. AI is everywhere and it's just the beginning. Let's assume this. Sales workflows, coaching, performance evaluation and even 1:1s. Sounds like a mess? In a few years, a new type of manager will emerge from it.

The world is changing, and it's changing fast.

So let's look first about what is really changing and so where you can, should adapt.

Adopting the Right Posture

Yes AI is a game-changer, but it’s not a magic wand. You are the one on who the team execution still rely on. So here are some advices to succeed:

Embrace AI as an Enabler, Not a Replacement. Rather than fearing AI as a threat to your role, sales managers should position AI as an enabler that automates routine tasks and empowers their teams to focus on building relationships and closing deals. This mindset can help you to make the most out of your team collaboration and expertise.

If you see AI as a replacement, it simply means you are already replaced. You have to reinvent yourself.

Adopt a Growth Mindset AI is evolving everyday. You now have to be in the watch or be doomed to loose competitiveness edges. Stay curious and proactive about learning how AI works and how it can improve sales outcomes. Adapt to the changes and resisting them when you feel this is key to your business.

💡 Subscribe to newsletters like the Rundown, the Rippletide blog and influencers on Linkedin.

You don't have to be ahead of the curve but just reactive enough to keep your sales organization competitive.

Just keep your Human-Centric Approach While AI excels at data analysis and soon prediction, emotional intelligence, empathy, and personal connection remain uniquely human traits. Basically you. Use AI to enhance—not replace—your ability to coach and lead your team.

💡 There are thousands of online training on these type of skills (the art of the feedback, facilitating workshop, collective intelligence,..

Key tools category you should leverage

Ahhh tools. They are inevitable but they can also distract us from real goals. Here are the key categories of AI tools you should keep an eye on to not be left behind

1. Conversational intelligence. AI has unlocked the value stuck in calls recording. And the data that was locked there is a goldmine to automate low value sales tasks (meeting summary, CRM sync,..), identifying best practices, finding key deal blockers and extracting key insights to ease strategic decisions.

💡 The famous one is Gong, working great for enterprise but expensive and distracting for most sales teams growing fast. Rippletide is a strong alternative.

1. Sales AI agent. You can now automate the tedious part of building sales sequences to land demos. It can sounds scary at first, but feed the AI with your knowledge and best examples and it will build sequences of good quality!

💡 You can test 11x, AmpleMarket to name a few.

1. Coaching & training Platforms. Give AI your best calls and your persona and it will simulate sales scenarios to test and train your sales team and provide instant feedback. These platforms allow reps to practice faster while managers can monitor progress and refine coaching. The main benefits is a faster ramping up and a direct impact on the sales performane.

💡 You can try HyperBound or Solidroad.

1. CRMs How can you use a CRM that is not powered up by AI. We know how tedious it can be to maintain.

💡 Solutions like Attio, Folk, Hubspot can now help you to automate data entry, generate new data based on others, suggest next steps, and prioritize leads.

How your Management will evolve

No doubt management is impacted as well. However this is the place where AI is not yet there. Simply because management is first a human job. The role of sales managers though is shifting from task supervision to strategic enablement. Here’s how:

1. Data Driven Coaching Managers will rely on AI insights to tailor coaching to each rep’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, instead of generic feedback like “work on your closing skills,” AI can identify specific behaviors, such as hesitation in responding to objections, and suggest targeted improvements.

💡 Solutions like Rippletide provide you with key insights to help your team outperfom.

1. Proactive Intervention AI’s predictive capabilities can help managers identify potential performance issues before they escalate. You don't have an excuse to realize too late a sales rep was struggling and you didn't do the necessary to fix the situation.
2. Enhanced 1:1s AI tools can provide you with more actionnable feedback. It analyzes a rep’s recent activities and performance trends to generate data-backed agendas for 1:1s. This allows managers to focus on strategic conversations rather than rehashing surface-level metrics.
3. Team-Level Optimization AI can provide insights to identify best practices and standardize them. So you have interessting recommendations to level up each individuals toward the team standard performances. You can now also reveal where you are performing or not. For example, if AI identifies that a certain territory consistently underperforms due to lead quality, managers can reallocate leads or adjust quotas.

So let's wrap things up. You still have a lot of room to adapt and not get caught up by AI. Even better, AI is pushing us to bring even more value as managers! And you know your team will not wait you to adopt AI solution if it can save their time to close more deals.

So, to navigate the AI mess in sales management:

• Embrace AI as a partner, not a threat. Take the right posture for positive evolution.
• Use AI tools to enhance productivity, coaching, performances and decision-making.
• Focus on human strengths to complement AI capabilities and make the most out of it.
• Stay agile and open to continuous learning as the sales landscape evolves.

By adopting the right posture and leveraging the right tools, sales managers can not only survive but thrive in this AI-driven era, transforming their teams into high-performing, adaptive sales organizations.

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