Let's take a minute to thank Innovator Sponsor BCG for their
support of Dreamforce.
Joining me now is BCG managing director and senior partner,
Phillip Andersen.
It's so nice to see you.
Thanks, nice to see you as well.
So, let's talk about the role of generative AI in the future of
B2B sales.
Yes.
So first of all, we're super excited to be here and see all
the innovation this year.
At BCG, about 10 years ago, we founded a practice called Next
Gen
Sales to take really advantage of data and technology and the
power of selling.
And over the last 10 years that's been an exciting journey
and we've really seen the impact with our clients and with
ourselves.
But as we look ahead, this move from augmenting sellers with the
right data to now moving into driving autonomous selling,
driving true assisted selling, and creating agents that really
provide both autonomous selling and enabling sellers to engage
very differently is super exciting and we're very excited
about the innovation.
All right, so then paint the picture for me of the future,
you know, down the road, what does it look like?
What's the future you envision?
Well, to some degree, we, we see two things happening.
One is, you know, in every job for sellers or marketers,
there's joy and there's toil.
And the toil work is where there's real opportunity to
innovate and have sellers engaging with agents that help
them sell better or get the pricing, drive the RFP, etc.
So, that, really taking the toil out, but then also inventing new
experiences for both employees and sellers and marketers, but
also for customers.
So, BCG has developed a three-horizon framework for
leveraging generative AI in all the B2B sales.
Talk a little bit about that and how does that drive
organizations in transforming their GTM market?
Certainly.
So, our framework, we call it DRI, Deploy, Reshape, Invent.
That's about deploying the right capabilities and getting those
in the hands of sellers to do the things, and marketers and
customer service agents, do the things
they do well, everyday, a little bit better.
Reshape is about reshaping processes and functions really
changing the way work gets done and invent is about inventing
new experiences.
Now for most companies, they're in the deploy.
50% of the companies we research suggest they've already deployed
use cases.
They're out there using the technology.
The next horizon is reshaping functions and processes with the
power of generative AI.
How do you think organizations should be approaching the
process of integrating generative AI into what's
already there, what's already existing?
Well, I think a big chunk of that comes down to really taking
a hard look at the process first.
So how can we really, where's the value?
How do we change the processes?
And then how do we bring the technology, fit for purpose,
using all the great configuration capabilities of
the platform to go and, and drive the value.
So the change management is the big unlock.
And when we see this with our research, 74% of execs say, hey,
we want to see the business impact, we expect it, but only
50% say that they're feel confident they can actually get
to that value and change management
is that big unlock that brings the technology to the business
outcomes.
So given that, what's the advice that you would give an
organization that's trying to figure it out and maybe start
their journey to AI? To some degree
the first thing is focus on the value, and that's two kinds of
value.
We talked a little bit about toil.
There's value in just where is - get rid of that - the pain.
The other side is where's the business value? Where's the
cost? Where's the inefficiency?
And by starting with a view on where the value is going to be,
you can then work backwards to say, what's the process change
that's needed to make that happen,
and then what's the technology that is needed to unlock it.
So, our advice is always focus on value and the employee
experience and the culture around it first and then work
your way back to how to get that value out of the system.
Excellent.
Phillip Andersen from BCG, nice to talk to you.
Nice to talk to you as well.
Thanks so much for the time.
To link Gen AI to business objectives,
there are two exercises all of you need to be doing.
1, is truly understanding what Gen
AI can do.
Understanding what are the tools, the methodologies, the
software packages out there that exist and what are they good
for, what they can be used for versus not.
At the same time, you need to do the constant business hygiene of
thinking through what are your customers biggest pain points,
what are, what are you really solving for, and what is going
to give you competitive advantage.
And you're doing those two things in parallel.
And just the discipline of going through the thinking motion of
how can you use Gen
AI to solve these biggest problems is something that needs
to be a regular rhythm and part of your ongoing muscle build.
And if you do that in a consistent way, you're going to
start identifying those opportunities of how you're
embedding Gen
AI into everything you're doing.