How Sales and Go-to-Market Leaders Should Navigate AI Evolution

In-Depth Highlights from Our Conversation with Abhinav Duggal (Partner, BCG)
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In this episode of The Inventive Podcast, host Gaurav Nemade speaks with Abhinav Duggal, a Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), who specializes in go-to-market strategy and operations for high-growth SaaS organizations. With nearly a decade of experience advising tech companies, Abhinav offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at how the most successful sales and marketing organizations are responding to a volatile economic climate, the rapid rise of generative AI, and the pressure to build more efficient revenue engines.

Below is a detailed breakdown of the most compelling insights and strategies from our discussion:

1. SaaS Go-To-Market is at an Inflection Point

The old playbook no longer works.

Abhinav identifies two macro trends fundamentally reshaping SaaS sales:

• The Capital Shift: With funding becoming harder to access, the “growth at all costs” era is over. Investors and boards are now demanding profitability and sustainable efficiency, not just top-line expansion.
• The AI Disruption: AI and GenAI are no longer optional innovation areas — they’re essential to staying competitive. But most companies are underutilizing them.

As a result, sales organizations must now rearchitect their go-to-market (GTM) motions around metrics like:

• CAC payback period: Now increasing, due to slowing pipelines and longer sales cycles.
• Net Revenue Retention: Under pressure as renewals get tougher and expansion slows.
• Field productivity: A critical lever for efficiency in enterprise sales.

2. From Art to Science: How AI is Transforming Sales

Abhinav outlines a powerful mental model: the evolution of sales across four waves of AI capability.

Phase 1: Tribal Knowledge

Before data and tech scaled, sales relied heavily on instinct, relationships, and legacy intuition.

Phase 2: Predictive AI

With better data (CRM, usage, intent), organizations began predicting:

• Which leads were most likely to convert
• Which accounts were at risk of churn
• How territories should be allocated for maximum ROI

Phase 3: Generative AI (Today)

We’re now deep into the GenAI wave. Key use cases include:

• Proposal and RFP generation
• Sales enablement content creation
• Coaching simulations and AI-driven onboarding
• Real-time seller nudges and knowledge retrieval
  But despite the hype, the focus has shifted from experimentation to value realization.

Phase 4: Autonomous Decision-Making (Emerging)

This is the future. AI agents will:

• Prospect, nurture, and qualify leads
• Execute follow-ups autonomously
• Even negotiate or recommend solutions before human reps step in

Companies already testing “AI SDRs” and autonomous workflows are the vanguard of this next shift.

3. Why Most AI Initiatives Fail to Deliver Full Value

Despite widespread investment, many AI sales initiatives stall or underperform. Abhinav cites several root causes:

• Low data maturity: Dirty CRM records, unstandardized hierarchies, and siloed systems limit what AI can learn or act on.
• Fragmented tools: Sales reps juggle 20+ tabs across disconnected tools, creating tool fatigue and low adoption.
• Lack of functional alignment: Sales, IT, ops, and marketing often pursue isolated projects rather than an integrated roadmap.
• No change management strategy: Buying AI is easy. Getting reps to adopt it and change behavior? That’s where most organizations fall short.

His solution: Treat AI implementation like a company-wide transformation, not a software deployment.

4. A GTM Playbook for AI Transformation

Abhinav shares a practical framework for any sales or revenue leader thinking about AI:

Step 1: Assess Current Maturity

• Do you have usable data? Clean customer hierarchies? Working sales telemetry?
• Are your enablement and reporting tools integrated?

Step 2: Define Your “AI Boundaries”

• What use cases actually make sense for your business model?
• Don’t chase hype — prioritize initiatives aligned to revenue goals (e.g., lead scoring for SMBs, churn prediction for enterprise accounts).

Step 3: Align Functions and Invest in Change

• Involve IT, operations, enablement, and leadership from day one
• Don’t expect instant ROI — treat AI like a new way of working, not just a new tool

He summarizes it perfectly:

“Manage AI before you get managed by AI.”

5. GenAI in Pre-Sales: High Potential, Real Challenges

Abhinav identifies pre-sales and solutioning as a massive opportunity area for GenAI. Top use cases include:

• Automated RFP and proposal generation
• Knowledge base synthesis for faster internal response times
• Sentiment analysis for better account insights
• Enablement materials personalized by segment, deal size, or rep role

But he also warns:

• Generative quality varies widely
• Many internal pilots fail due to hallucinations or poor content accuracy
• There’s growing buyer skepticism unless vendors prove business value

What teams need is not just AI — they need AI plus workflow integration, plus trust, plus adoption.

6. Horizontal vs. Vertical AI: Which Approach Wins?

There’s a tension in the market between:

• Horizontal platforms that try to solve everything across sales, marketing, success, and more
• Vertical or specialized tools that go deep into solving one problem exceptionally well (like AI for RFPs)

Abhinav suggests the market may move toward ecosystems of focused solutions, especially for agentic workflows — where vertical context matters deeply.

7. Leadership, Career Growth & Mindset

Abhinav also shares personal reflections on what has helped him rise from Consultant to Partner at BCG:

• Don’t over-optimize for the perfect role — maximize every opportunity you get
• Be open to unexpected growth, including discomfort and failure
• Seek apprenticeship and long-term learning over fast wins

And his final advice to leaders navigating AI:

“This isn’t a data science project. It’s a behavior change project.”

For more episodes like this, exploring the cutting edge of AI, sales strategy, and go-to-market execution, subscribe to The Inventive Podcast.

At Inventive AI, we’re building agentic systems for RFP automation and sales workflow acceleration — because the future of revenue operations is fast, data-driven, and AI-powered.

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