AI in Sales Is Growing—But Results Aren’t

Sales teams have more AI than ever—chatbots, assistants, forecasting tools, and content generators. But for many organizations, performance isn’t improving.

According to the Gartner® report, 2025 Strategic Roadmap for an AI-First Sales Organization, “Seventy percent of sellers we surveyed agreed that they felt overwhelmed by the number of technologies.”

That overwhelm isn’t just a feeling—it shows up in results.

“Overwhelmed sellers are 45% less likely to attain quota and 43% less likely to demonstrate high productivity.”

It’s not that AI doesn’t work. It’s that AI is being deployed without a strategy that aligns to how sellers actually sell. The result? Tool sprawl, poor adoption, and minimal impact.

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The Reality Check

Let’s start with the numbers. AI adoption is high—but the return is still low.

“While functions like sales and marketing show a 61% usage of GenAI, there has been very low impact on seller productivity, especially compared to other functions.”

Why? Because too often, AI gets added as yet another system sellers need to learn, log into, and switch between—without delivering meaningful help in their workflow.

• “Too often, sales operations leaders acquiring a new technology create disparate and/or duplicative tech in the sales or organizational tech stack.”
•  “If a seller must suspend or abandon work in one platform to complete the workflow in another platform, the organization faces increased frustration, poor data hygiene, skipped steps or other undesirable sales outcomes such as inaccurate pipeline results and analysis.”

More AI doesn’t equal better performance. Without integration and orchestration, it just becomes noise.

3 Ways Disconnected AI Hurts Sales

1. Tool Overload Leads to Seller Fatigue

Sales teams aren’t short on technology—but that’s part of the problem. Each new platform, assistant, or dashboard adds to the cognitive load, forcing sellers to navigate a patchwork of logins, interfaces, and disconnected insights. Instead of simplifying the job, AI often fragments it further.

Gartner® captures the impact bluntly:

“New technology that is not integrated into seller workflows contributes to overwhelming sellers and reduced performance.”

Too many tools—and too little orchestration—turn AI from a productivity booster into a performance drag.

2. Misaligned Systems Lead to Low Adoption

AI is only valuable if it’s used—and most sales orgs struggle with this. Sellers don’t reject AI because they fear it; they ignore it because it doesn’t help them in the moment they need it. If an AI tool lives in a separate interface, adds steps, or requires training to interpret, adoption will suffer.

Gartner® notes that even useful tools go unused:

“Sellers are unsure how to incorporate them effectively into their workflows, or don’t want to take the extra steps required to incorporate them.”

Technology that isn’t embedded directly into the seller’s flow of work becomes shelfware—no matter how powerful it is.

3. Fragmented Systems Obscure the Pipeline

Disconnected tech stacks don’t just make life harder for sellers—they make it harder for leaders to lead. When data is scattered across systems or inconsistently updated, visibility into pipeline health, deal progress, and seller activity becomes unreliable.

As Gartner® explains:

“The organization ends up with duplicated capabilities throughout the tech stack and extraneous features that go unused.”

This duplication doesn’t just waste money—it creates blind spots. Forecasts become gut calls. Coaching becomes reactive. And revenue teams lose their ability to steer with data.

What Sales Leaders Can Do Differently

The problem with Sales AI isn’t a lack of innovation—it’s a lack of alignment. Leaders don’t need more technology; they need better-connected systems that work with sellers, not against them. Here’s where to focus.

Rationalize the Stack

Tech bloat is real. When multiple platforms claim to do the same thing—or worse, contradict each other—sellers check out. Leaders need to step back and take inventory: What’s delivering value? What’s duplicative? What’s driving real action?

Gartner® urges leaders to take control:

“Sales operations leaders should immediately begin to review their current tech stack and ensure it is delivering value — creating actionable next steps for sellers and improving how and the speed at which they get work done.”

Rationalization isn’t about cutting—it’s about refocusing on tools that fit your strategy and your sellers.

Integrate AI Into Existing Workflows

The key to effective AI isn’t novelty—it’s relevance. AI needs to show up where the seller is already working. If it exists outside of core workflows, it will be ignored or used inconsistently.

Gartner® puts it plainly:

“Before investing in any AI-first new application, sales operations leaders should consider the full extent of capabilities already available to them in the existing tech stack, such as AI agents or next best action ML. Doing so will enable them to leverage the value of their tech stack without increasing seller effort.”

That’s the test for any AI deployment. Does it save time? Does it reduce clicks? Does it guide the seller at the right moment? If not, it’s noise—not value.

The future of Sales AI isn’t about adding more—it’s about activating what’s already there in smarter, more contextual ways.

Focus on Outcomes, Not Novelty

Too many AI initiatives are launched based on what’s possible, not what’s needed. But AI that can’t be tied to pipeline progress, forecast accuracy, or rep productivity is just a science experiment.

Gartner® advises a mindset shift:

“Hold the AI you put in place accountable for results, much like human sellers are responsible for their outcomes.”

The metric isn’t usage—it’s impact. Can you draw a line from AI to revenue? If not, something’s missing.

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Conclusion: Sales AI Isn’t Failing You Because It’s Weak—It’s Failing Because It’s Disconnected

Sales leaders aren’t suffering from a lack of AI—they’re suffering from too much AI deployed in the wrong ways. The future of sales enablement isn’t more dashboards or smarter chatbots—it’s a strategy-first approach to embedding intelligence into how sellers actually work, and equipping reps with AI tools that lighten seller workloads without sacrificing quality or insights.

As Gartner® concludes:

“For AI to be effective, sales must adopt an AI-first strategy — designing the technology architecture to fit sellers’ needs and integrate into workflows, and intentionally applying AI to augment sellers’ capabilities and create actionability rather than simply collect data.”

What You Can Do Now:

• Audit your stack for duplication, bloat, and underused AI.
• Deploy AI inside workflows, not alongside them.
• Track outcomes, not just feature adoption.

Read the Gartner® report, 2025 Strategic Roadmap for an AI-First Sales Organization, for a strategy-first blueprint to get Sales AI working for your team.

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Source:

Gartner, 2025 Strategic Roadmap for an AI-First Sales Organization, Melissa Hilbert, Adnan Zijadic, 5 May 2025.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.[PC2] 

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