The journey to AI adoption continues, but there's a new question on everyone’s mind: What’s the return to the business for these tools? It’s straightforward to tally costs, but how do you capture a truly comprehensive return on investment?

Consider this: a tool costs $20 per user per month, primarily helping sales teams streamline research. Traditionally, researching a target account, persona, or individual might take 40 minutes, but with AI, it’s down to 5 minutes. With an average of 60 target accounts per rep each quarter, that’s 2,100 minutes saved per quarter, or 35 hours back per quarter per rep—roughly 5.4% of their work time.

In a perfect world, if a seller closes $1,000,000 each quarter, this additional time would yield an equivalent bump in productivity—maybe an extra $54,000 in revenue. But real-world ROI isn't quite that simple. Did other factors contribute to this increase? Perhaps a strong economy or a wave of elite hires? Did our new sales leader or strategic shifts play a role? 

Here lies the issue: Sales efficiency often lacks leading indicators. Sales outcomes are lagging indicators, making it tricky to tie gains directly to a tool. A leading indicator, like an unexpected surge in responses to AI-augmented outreach, might signal a tool’s positive impact. But how do we qualify a lead’s quality? Let’s imagine that the data shows that reps generating their own pipeline are 35% more productive, and those using time-saving tools may individually generate up to 75% more leads. At the end of the quarter, they have closed 10% more business…but what if that rep didn’t use the AI tool, they used time honored salesmanship, and instead of putting in 10 hours a day, they put in 12. They added 20% more work, and didn’t trust your new-fangled widget.

The problem with numbers, though, is that every angle has its own truth. 

“Anyone who says numbers don’t lie, simply isn’t trying hard enough.”

~Ken Nothnagel

When outcomes don’t align with expectations, we ask, “What if?” What if sales per rep decline? Would they have dropped more without AI? What if one vertical struggles more than others, or AI lacks the right data for non-public or public sector accounts?

How Do You Choose the Right Tool?

This is where, instead of dazzling you with flawless ROI wisdom, I remind you there’s no magic formula to quantify these tools’ precise impact. What I can say confidently is this: Give a rep two hours a week back for focused selling, and remarkable results follow. 

And that’s a teaser for my next post on The Focus Forge Framework - why multitasking is important, but a focused mind is an unmatched differentiator!

For now, I’ll leave you with this: Sales, done right, is high-stakes, elite knowledge work, and Generative AI is reshaping all knowledge work as we have come to know it. 

Stay tuned for updates as we navigate this evolving landscape, and tackle new and interesting challenges together.