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SaaStr 741: The Future of AI in Sales with Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov

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Jun 14, 2024

Gong's CEO Amit Bendov discusses the future of AI in sales, struggles with raising funds due to AI skepticism, and the potential of AI in enhancing customer understanding. Topics include AI in sales within two years, managing competition, expectations for next year, and handling customer preferences and challenges.

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ANECDOTE

Early AI Vision and Fundraising Struggle

Gong's CEO Amit Bendov shared how in 2015 he envisioned AI understanding customers better than salespeople.
Early struggles to raise money occurred due to skepticism about AI's future impact.

INSIGHT

AI Merging Sales Roles

AI will eliminate much sales drudgery and merge fragmented roles like SDRs and AEs into one.
This shift promises improved customer experience and operational efficiency.

INSIGHT

AI's True Capabilities and Limits

Current AI lacks deep reasoning and planning, operating mainly on pattern recognition.
Despite limitations, 80% accuracy in many applications is highly valuable.

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Gong’s CEO and Co-Founder Amit Bendov sat down with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin at SaaStr Europa 2024 last week to talk about all things AI in Sales and the lessons learned while scaling to billions.

Back in 2015, Google AI beat the world chess champion easily. AI was starting to diagnose diseases better than doctors. Amit asked himself, “How hard would it be to understand customers better than salespeople?” That was the idea for Gong, an early vision of an autonomous customer management system that could capture customer conversations, understand them, and turn insights into action. Believe it or not, Gong struggled to raise money because people didn’t believe that AI would be big one day.

In this episode, you’ll learn what Gong’s CEO thinks about:

*AI-enhanced sales in two years
*Where we’re too optimistic with AI in the near term
*What the AI budget actually looks like
*B2B last year vs. summer of 2024
*How to handle competition
*What to expect next year

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