3 Takeaways from Gartner CSO Conference that Revenue Leaders Need to Know Now

It’s been a little over two weeks since the Ambition team attended this year’s Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference, and I’ve spent a good deal of that time reflecting on the conversations I had with the many talented leaders there. 

Because Ambition is a software designed specifically for sales leaders and managers, my ear was especially attuned to themes relating to those roles throughout the conference. 

Here, I’ll share my top three takeaways from the Gartner research presented throughout the conference. 

1. The manager role is in need of a massive redesign

Currently, the frontline manager role is characterized by a combination of ambiguity and administrative overload, effectively serving as an organizational “junk drawer” for operations, revenue, and people management. 

‍The problem

‍The existing model for sales management is broken. 

Over half of managers report that their day-to-day responsibilities are completely different from their formal job descriptions, and 55% say they feel disconnected from their leadership. Consequently, only 18% of sales managers report leading high-performing teams. To take it one step further, sales leaders often expect managers to act as “super sellers,” playing into a fragile “hero model” that can create massive strategic and revenue risk. 

The solution

‍Organizations that want to break this cycle must eliminate manager busywork and redesign the role to prioritize high-impact activities like coaching and intervention. The future of the manager role should focus on shifting time away from rote, time-consuming tasks like analysis, reporting, and direct selling. 

Instead, there should be space for managers to increase time spent on coaching (moving from 20% of their week to at least 30%) and thoughtful team management. Providing managers with this level of role clarity has been shown to yield over 3x impact on seller performance. 

2. Equal coaching isn't necessarily equitable coaching

A big topic of conversation at Gartner CSO was around the need to move away from legacy coaching models where managers coach all reps equally based on calendar rhythms. This doesn’t work. Manager time is scarce and not all reps require the same level of attention. This means manager time should be deployed as strategic investments instead of blanket activities. 

Doing this successfully requires a two-prong approach: 

Targeting coachability

‍Managers need to learn to assess seller coachability (like whether a seller accepts and applies feedback, takes responsibility for their own learning, etc.) to determine who to spend time coaching. Ideally, managers will spend their energy where coaching converts to impact fastest. 

Data-driven precision

‍Managers should learn to use the data and technology at their disposal to identify early seller signals, trigger-driven cues, and “moments of maximum leverage.” Equipping frontline managers with data-driven guidance to find these high-impact coaching opportunities can make their team more than twice as likely to hit quota. 

3. Redefining what managers coach: Mindset, Judgment, & Barriers

As businesses and revenue organizations evolve, managers must move from being an activity auditor to an insight orchestrator. This means shifting away from just racking and reporting on metrics, and focusing instead on diagnosing the root causes of seller performance. Here are two possible approaches to this problem: 

Diagnosing with Skill, Will, Hill

‍One tool managers can keep in their pockets is the “Skill, Will, Hill” framework, which can be used to diagnose seller productivity challenges. This model helps managers identify is a rep is struggling with: 

• Skill: Competence and expertise
• Will: Intrinsic or extrinsic motivation and drive
• Hill: Environmental obstacles and organizational friction 

Coaching for adaptability

‍High-performing managers specifically focus their coaching on three critical drivers: seller mindset, deal judgment, and win-driving behaviors. 

Coaching to these deeper behavioral drivers can yield massive results. For example, sellers demonstrating a growth mindset are 3.7 times more likely to attain their quota. 

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All of this research reinforces our primary belief here at Ambition: Consistent, data-driven coaching is the path to success and growth for revenue teams, no matter the size, industry, or methodology. 

I’d love to show you how Ambition brings operationalized coaching, integrated AI, and contextualized data to revenue orgs like yours. Get in touch with the team here.