Key Takeaways
- Only 9% of organizations have fully embedded AI into core revenue workflows, revealing a trust gap between buying AI and actually relying on it.
- Enablement must be measured against business outcomes like pipeline acceleration and quota attainment, not activity metrics, to prove its true ROI.
Go-to-market leaders are being asked to do more with less. Speed to revenue tops their list of priorities, yet the teams responsible for driving it keep getting leaner. AI was supposed to close that gap, but for many organizations it hasn’t delivered on the promise.
Seismic’s The Priorities and Pressure Points Shaping Revenue Enablement report points to a clear culprit: disconnected systems. Fifty-six percent of leaders cite poor integration with existing tools as a top obstacle to revenue, and only 9% say AI is fully embedded into their core workflows. The result is a workforce layering new technology on top of fragmented tools, and rarely seeing the payoff. Look closer and a bigger story emerges. Organizations have moved fast to buy AI, but buying isn’t the same as trusting it.
We spoke with Rob Tarkoff, CEO of Seismic, days after the completed merger with Highspot. Operating under the Seismic name the combination creates the leading company in go-to-market (GTM) performance, which measures how effectively companies turn strategy into revenue. Post-merger, Seismic enables 2,500 customers and 3.5 million users worldwide to excel in revenue execution. The combined company serves the world’s largest and most respected brands that operate on a global scale in all major industries, including Allianz Trade, Expedia Group, IBM, Invesco, Oracle, Royal London Asset Management, Thomson Reuters and Uber.
Tarkoff in our interview offers a candid perspective, addressing how leaders can increase speed to revenue without adding headcount, why a trust gap persists between AI adoption and seller confidence, and how the strategic role of revenue enablement platforms is expanding well beyond training and content.
Demand Gen Report (DGR): Rob, thanks for taking time to talk with us today. Before we begin, you completed the merger with Highspot last week. After spending years as direct competitors before, what changed in the market that made joining forces the right move rather than continuing to fight for the same customers?
Rob Tarkoff: Thanks for having me. I think there’s a couple of things going on. The first thing is AI has really catalyzed the industry in a very positive way. Where it used to be that both Seismic and Highspot were focused on the side of enablement that was about preparing sellers and preparing advisors, it’s evolved to actually sitting side by side with them through agents and helping them perform. We started to see the ability to kind of move up in strategic value for CROs and CMOs, and that caused us to think about well, how do we really scale the company and have a scaled entity to invest the necessary dollars in R and D innovation? I joined Seismic in October and probably a month into my tenure, we really came down to a vision of what we could build together by bringing our agentic platforms together, by bringing our content generation, and content compliance.
There’s a lot more value to be delivered to customers as we pool and expand our R and D efforts. And that is what excited me most about this deal— the quality of the product and engineering teams. I spent the last seven and a half years at Oracle, where you could argue some of the best engineers in the world spend their careers, and I’m really encouraged by the kind of people that are attracted to work with us because they see this as a big problem space that’s catalyzed more than anything else by a unique approach to trusted AI. We touch three and a half million people who rely on us to get their jobs done, succeed at their companies, feed their families, and I’m excited about that. Like that to me is like a huge, it’s a huge responsibility, but it’s a great opportunity. So that that’s what excites me.
DGR: Now let’s get to your recent report. How are go-to-market leaders balancing the pressure to increase speed to revenue without adding headcount?
Tarkoff: Successfully increasing the impact from existing teams often comes down to reducing friction across the systems they rely on. GTM leaders are under pressure to drive revenue with leaner teams, which puts a premium on getting more value from every tool. The problem is that major barriers are emerging because tools aren’t connected to one another. Our recent survey of go-to-market leaders found that 56% of leaders cite poor integration with existing tools as a top obstacle to revenue. AI is supposed to drive productivity, not create bottlenecks. The reality is that AI can transform enterprise operations, but only when it’s connected to the workflows and data teams use every day.
DGR: What does the survey reveal about the top priorities driving revenue performance this year, and why is speed to revenue leading the list?
Tarkoff: We’re constantly hearing from GTM leaders that they’re under pressure to move fast without sacrificing impact. Looking at the data, speed to revenue is the highest-ranking priority at 54%, but it’s not the only priority. GTM leaders are in a balancing act, trying to prioritize account growth, performance measurement, customer retention, and responsible AI use.
Leaders aren’t chasing growth blindly. They’re being very intentional about shortening the path from customer engagement to closing revenue. Leaders are aware of the pressure on them, especially due to organizational investments in AI, but they’re not cutting corners. They’re doubling down, focusing on the strategies proven to work best and intentionally driving value for customers.
DGR: What does the survey suggest about the gap between AI adoption and confidence in AI across revenue organizations?
Tarkoff: Organizations have moved quickly to acquire AI capabilities, but adoption isn’t the same thing as trust. Sellers are being asked to build tools into their daily workflows before they fully believe those tools are capable of doing the work. That trust gap creates real friction.
Our report found that only 41% of GTM leaders have partially adopted AI for specific tasks within their organization – not integrated into core workflows. Another 27% are still experimenting with or piloting AI in a limited capacity.
While GTM leaders may recognize AI’s potential to drive revenue and improve seller efficiency, sellers themselves are still worried about the accuracy of outputs and the security of inputs. Revenue teams may be all in on buying AI, but sellers haven’t reached that next phase of confidence. Now, the challenge is how to enhance trust while proving the measurable impact of AI adoption.
DGR: Why are concerns about AI output quality, ROI, security, and integration slowing broader AI adoption in enablement workflows?
Tarkoff: Sellers are bombarded with information – everything from product updates to buyer data to training creates endless pools of resources. When sellers are on the ground, speaking with prospects, they have to move quickly and accurately. While AI can help surface information quickly, it won’t have access to all the information it needs to make an accurate and quick recommendation until it’s fully embedded into how teams work.
So, why aren’t we just embedding AI into more workflows? AI can improve speed and drive insights, but that value breaks down if leaders are still concerned the technology isn’t secure or compliant with their industry’s regulations/restrictions/standards. Today, organizations are inadvertently layering AI on top of already disconnected tools. Most customer-facing teams haven’t even experienced AI’s full potential because these tools aren’t speaking to one another. Enterprises will never reap the full ROI of AI if they fail to solve leaders’ underlying concerns of security and privacy.
DGR: What does it mean that only a small share of organizations say AI is fully embedded into core workflows and decision-making?
Tarkoff: To put it simply, it means we’re up against a big challenge. The fact that only 9% of organizations have fully embedded AI into core revenue workflows tells us there’s a major underlying confidence issue in AI.
Many organizations continue to treat AI like an experiment while expecting board-ready results. Teams are asking the right questions about output quality, measuring ROI, and system integration, but they’re stuck in this curiosity phase. It’s time to enable AI.
Leaders need to start defining use cases for sellers, embedding AI into workflows, and training teams on how to quickly use AI alongside their own judgment. Revenue teams have made it clear they need more confidence in the tools they’re using, but that will never come if we’re still piloting AI. Organizations have to make the leap and bring AI into governed, measurable workflows sellers can trust.
DGR: Why is proving ROI still one of the biggest challenges in evaluating revenue enablement technology?
Tarkoff: Every organization is under immense pressure to prove ROI right now. The challenge for enablement is that while the technology is fantastic at measuring activity, many organizations still struggle to tie those activities back to business impact. You could have great year-over-year training completion metrics, but how does that impact the revenue outcomes leaders care about?
The root of the problem is that too often, organizations treat enablement as just a support function rather than a strategic function. Instead of measuring enablement by activity-based metrics, like the number of trainings completed, enablement should be aligned to business priorities, such as pipeline acceleration, quota attainment, or faster onboarding.
When enablement is measured against the numbers leaders are tracking, its value becomes easier to prove. Until that tie to business outcomes is clear, organizations will continue to underestimate enablement’s true ROI.
DGR: Why are customer retention and account growth now as important as new customer acquisition for GTM leaders?
Tarkoff: Traditional channels are struggling to drive growth like they once did. Digital channels are saturated with content, which hurts marketing, and customer expectations change so rapidly that they’re souring on self-service and AI bots. To offset this, leaders are zeroing in on expanding existing relationships – 50% of revenue leaders note customer retention and account growth as their top priority. In a world where prospects are bombarded with AI-generated content, businesses are leaning on customer-facing teams and those human-centric relationships to retain and grow their customer base.
DGR: What unmet needs are GTM leaders identifying in their current revenue enablement platforms?
Tarkoff: According to our survey, leaders are struggling with poor CRM and tool integration (43%) and difficulty proving ROI (51%). These two issues go hand-in-hand with one another. When organizations struggle to integrate their tools, they have a challenging time measuring and proving results across the full revenue cycle. Historically, enablement platforms were viewed as training systems or content repositories. Today, leaders are expecting them to play a much larger role in revenue execution, from pre-sales to renewal and everything in between.
DGR: How is the strategic role of revenue enablement changing as executive, revenue, and IT leaders become more involved in platform decisions?
Tarkoff: Once viewed as a training function or content management repository, enablement platforms have transformed into a core element of GTM performance. The report shows that platform decisions are now influenced by multiple senior stakeholders, ranging from revenue and sales leads (23%) to IT leaders (11%). Enablement has moved beyond just one department as it continues to play a key role in organizational performance across teams.
The reason we’re seeing this shift is straightforward. Enablement is shaping the activities executives care most about: speed to revenue, tech stack integration, and trusted AI adoption. When one platform has the potential to shape board-level results, it would be senseless not to involve key stakeholders in these conversations.
DGR: How should GTM leaders rethink enablement if the future of the category is moving toward AI-native revenue execution?
Tarkoff: It’s an exciting time to be in the enablement space, to say the least. The category is changing rapidly as it matures into a key system for revenue operations and performance. It’s no longer just a function that prepares sellers to do their best work. According to the data, 43% of respondents believe enablement will become an AI-native revenue execution category under a new name while another 24% believe enablement will be absorbed into a broader revenue operations or executive category.
Over the next year, the enablement category is going to shift and so will its mandates. The technology’s success will be measured on key business outcomes, including whether sellers are moving deals forward, growing accounts, and creating consistent customer experiences.
For this shift to happen, GTM leaders must address the elephant in the room. When AI is layered on top of already fragmented systems, it risks driving more challenges. AI-native revenue execution depends on organizations’ ability to connect enablement with everything from content, coaching, data, and governance. Meeting the expectations of this changing category will only be possible when sellers can confidently use AI as part of how they engage and drive revenue.
