A Sneak Peek Into 2026

In 2024, only 21% of commercial leaders had adopted generative AI across their B2B sales organizations. Yet, within a year, day-to-day behavior told a different story. Around 45% of sales professionals use AI at least once a week, most often within their CRM. The gap is clear. Enterprise-wide AI adoption lags, but frontline sales teams already treat CRM as the primary surface where AI shows up in real work.

This shift raises a more complicated question. If AI now lives inside CRM workflows, why do many teams still struggle to see meaningful gains in forecasting accuracy, pipeline quality, or rep productivity?

The data highlights a reality that teams often overlook. AI in CRM only performs as well as the data it learns from. Poorly structured customer data and outdated pipeline signals limit what AI sales tools can deliver. This reality challenges the idea that teams can simply switch on AI and expect revenue to rise.

This article explores the state of AI in CRM through that lens, separating real impact from hype and focusing on where value actually breaks down.

*Data points used above are referenced from McKinsey and ZoomInfo.

The ZoomInfo report found that sellers who used AI reported substantial improvement, such as:

• 81% of respondents said it made their deal cycles shorter.
• 73% of respondents agreed that AI helped increase their deal sizes.
• 80% of respondents reported an increase in win rates.
  

These responses definitely develop an encouraging narrative for using AI in sales. However, if we go more specifically into the CRM and go-to-market intelligence side, there’s an angle that stays far from the limelight, but it’s well-grounded in common logic.

ZoomInfo’s Chief Data Officer, Brandon Tucker, made a comment in the report, stating, “We’ve been focused on building the best quality, most comprehensive universe of B2B data and buying signals for nearly 20 years, and we’ve seen from the beginning that applying AI tools to incomplete CRM data or poorly sourced signals can lead to poor results. If you’re going to invest in AI, it’s absolutely critical to have the go-to-market intelligence infrastructure to support it.”

On the other hand, a Bain and Company insights report talks about focusing on data, but with a bias toward speed over perfection. It encourages concentrating on what’s good enough data and moving fast. The report suggests that the first step can be to eliminate old, inaccurate, or confusing data and content, which could account for as much as 80%. 

Is AI in customer relationship management all about productivity and efficiency only?

Yes, it’s a well-established narrative that AI saves time. But is it just limited to delivering efficiency gains in sales and customer relationship management?

I feel AI isn’t just saving time. It’s redistributing power. The statistics echo a similar story. A Bain report suggests that sellers may spend 25% of their time actually selling. AI could double it. AI also improves conversion rates at every step in the sales funnel, resulting in more than a 30% increase in win rates.

McKinsey reports on a customer experience story, where the use of gen AI led to a 20% to 30% improvement in customer satisfaction for a large European telco. It developed a gen-AI-powered dashboard for managers and sellers where they analyzed scripts, scored conversation performance, and identified skill improvement opportunities. Then, gen-AI created a dedicated coaching program for sellers.

This freed up managers to focus on the entire process of allocating salespeople to coaching programs tailored to their specific needs. The manager can now switch their focus to revenue expansion or optimization opportunities.

Although this is based on one example, isn’t it suggesting a change in what salespeople would be valued for going forward?

What are the commonly used examples of AI in CRM?

According to a HubSpot report, 42% of salespeople utilize a combination of generative software and CRM integrations to enhance their communication with prospects. The same report suggests that salespeople are tapping into personalization capabilities.

This personalization is largely possible due to the integration of AI with the CRM. It pulls data directly from past interactions, including sales, marketing, and customer service.

Below is a list of the best CRM software on the market based on G2’s Winter 2025 Grid® Report.

• Salesforce Sales Cloud’s Sales AI guides sellers at every step of the sales cycle with Einstein-informed intelligence built into CRM.
• HubSpot Sales Hub’s AI streamlines outreach when surfacing the most relevant leads.
• Pipedrive’s AI helps prioritize deals, streamline communication, and effortlessly generate sales reports.
• Close offers an AI Notetaker, an AI Enrich tool that pulls real-time customer information from the web, AI Summaries that summarize the lead’s activity and information, and a rewrite assistant for emails.
• ActiveCampaign’s Active Intelligence enhances your strategic thinking with AI agents amplifying output on content creation, marketing execution, and performance analysis. 

What is the impact of AI on customer relationship management?

AI is definitely empowering strong growth for organizations through CRM integrations and performance support. Among the people surveyed by HubSpot, nearly 50% believe that forging ahead with AI believe that AI enables scalability in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

BearingPoint reported that Klarna has cut its sales and marketing spend by 11% in Q1 2024. It puts a spotlight on AI, saying the technology is responsible for 37% of annualized cost savings, or approximately $10 million.  The report also states that Klarna has smartly trimmed its spending on external marketing services by 25%, covering translation, production, CRM, and social media, leading to impressive annual savings of $4 million.

In the same vein, McKinsey suggests that implementing generative AI could increase sales productivity by approximately 3% to 5%  of current global sales expenditures.

All of these indicate a positive impact. But, there’s another aspect to consider, too.

How do salespeople feel about AI in CRM and sales?

More than 85% of surveyed commercial leaders who have deployed generative AI in their organization report that they’re very excited about the technology. However, the HubSpot report claims that 59% of salespeople are concerned that AI will displace them from their jobs.

Although 48% of surveyed sales directors predicted that AI would have no impact on their account executive staffing decisions, a concerning 44% of salespeople said they might seek changes in their careers due to AI.

There are mixed feelings about the negative impacts of AI on people in the relationship management side. 39% of surveyed people say that they have already experienced the negative impact, while 38% feel they have had no negative impact yet.

This suggests that some salespeople are experiencing fear or speculation related to job security due to the increasing presence of AI. You need to address this proactively. Or else,  you might risk some of your best salespeople walking out.

If you do it effectively, there’s a lot you could gain.

What are the benefits of AI in CRM?

At the end of a dark tunnel, where clarity is a scarce asset, there’s a bright light. It’s the benefit that AI-powered CRM software rolls out for its users.

According to the HubSpot report, 44% of surveyed salespeople with AI-powered CRM say that AI integrations make them more likely to use their CRM.

Additionally, there are other benefits, for example, 73% of salespeople who use AI-powered CRM report that AI tools have made their team more productive.

Caution: According to the report, while 74% of salespeople believe AI is useful at work, they warn that people shouldn’t rely on it too much.

If you’re in sales, you have the grit, humanity, and inventive problem-solving abilities to take your industry forward. Use AI-powered tools to become a better salesperson, but avoid over-reliance on the tool in a way that it replaces what you do.

Learn more about bridging the performance gap created by AI in sales and customer success roles.