Roundtable: CRO Strategy in the Agentic Era | HSE Agentic Distribution Summit
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As AI agents become core to revenue execution, CROs must rethink how sales teams operate, scale, and compete. This session explores strategic models for agent deployment, performance measurement, and org design, equipping CROs to lead in a world where execution is autonomous, cycles compress, and human judgment drives system-level leverage.
00:00 – Meet the CROs
Who’s driving AI transformation across Vivun, Paystand, Smarsh, HG Insights, and BCG?
06:47 – What AI use cases are delivering results right now?
Real-world wins across SDR automation, mid-funnel acceleration, and RFP speedups.
20:59 – What’s next for AI investment?
The future of account planning, next-best-actions, and AI-led customer research.
24:40 – What is conversational AI, and how is it reshaping sales?
From self-service discovery to AI-run demos.
27:23 – What’s a Go-To-Market Engineer, and do you need one?
New GTM roles emerging to own AI strategy and execution.
31:49 – Will AI shrink sales teams?
Yes—and why that might be good for revenue and comp plans.
34:13 – What’s the human differentiator in an AI-driven sales world?
Relationship-building and trust will define post-AI sales winners.
38:52 – How should CROs rethink planning and productivity?
Why headcount-based planning is dead. Capacity and yield are the new metrics.
43:36 – How will AE/SE ratios shift with AI?
Expect leaner overlay models and more self-sufficient AEs.
46:10 – What are the biggest AI data security risks?
Prompt injection, impersonation, and the need for AI vendor vetting.
49:34 – Is AI helping buyers spend—or just cutting costs?
How faster ROI stories can unlock spend despite tighter budgets.
53:32 – Can AI help with competitive analysis?
Yes—battlecards are now real-time, built into agentic workflows.
54:59 – What’s your one piece of advice for sales leaders?
The CROs share their closing guidance for leading in the agentic era.
CROs shared how AI is already transforming their sales orgs—from reducing SDR headcount by 75% using tools like Clay and Artisan, to automating mid-funnel deliverables with agentic AI, accelerating RFP responses by 90%, and using AI voice mode for rep retros. These aren’t theories; they’re deployed solutions delivering measurable results today.
Sales leaders are prioritizing AI in enterprise account planning, next-best-action recommendations, operational decision-making, and buyer engagement. The goal: compress sales cycles, improve ramp times, and enable reps with proactive insights that drive revenue impact.
With agentic AI taking on manual tasks across the funnel, CROs are streamlining orgs and shifting focus from headcount to capacity planning, rep productivity, and output per seller. AI is enabling lean teams to do more, with better results.
To scale AI adoption, companies are embedding dedicated GTM Engineers within revenue teams. These cross-functional leaders pilot and operationalize AI tools while coordinating with product and ops to drive bottom-line impact across the sales motion.
In a world where every vendor has AI, trust and relationships will separate top sellers. CROs emphasized that authentic in-person connections, buyer references, and post-sale relationships are becoming critical differentiators, and can’t be automated.
With productivity rising and teams getting leaner, CROs are redesigning comp plans to reward impact over activity. CFOs are greenlighting more aggressive OTEs for top performers, while aligning incentives with AI-augmented workflows and compressed cycles.
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