In B2B sales, speed and preparedness are everything. Yet the data shows a sobering reality: 51% of deals are lost because the seller misses a follow-up step or can’t share information the buyer needs when they need it. Nearly half of salespeople (42%) admit they don’t have sufficient information before even talking to a prospect, a knowledge gap that can stall momentum from the very start. And when a hot inbound lead comes in, waiting just 30 minutes to respond can make your team 21× less likely to qualify that lead, since 78% of buyers ultimately go with the first vendor to respond. In short, the cost of delay is measured in lost deals.
Frustration on the Front Lines
While working for a company pre-ChatGPT era, I lost count of how many times I’ve heard this from sales teams: “We had a willing buyer… but we couldn’t get them the answer they needed fast enough.” As a business leader, it’s frustrating to see well-intentioned sales reps scrambling through emails, SharePoint, or Slack, hunting for the latest case study or a technical answer while a buyer waits. Despite Marketing’s best efforts to create great collateral and IT’s investments in CRM and knowledge systems, too often the front-line seller is left empty-handed at a critical moment. I recall one deal review where a rep openly vented, “The content exists, but I just couldn’t find it when the customer asked, so they moved on.” These experiences underscore a painful truth: even with hard-working teams, our processes have left sellers flying blind at the worst times.
A Breakdown Across Systems and Silos
This isn’t just a sales rep problem, it’s an organizational breakdown. When marketing content lives in one portal, product info in another, and customer data in yet another, silos get in the way of responsiveness.
Sellers want to move fast, but internal systems often slow them down. We’ve had situations where Marketing says “the sales portal has everything you need,” and IT says “the CRM is up-to-date,” yet in practice the information is scattered or outdated.
So, Sales, Marketing, and IT all feel frustrated. It’s a classic case of the left hand and right hand not coordinating. The buyer doesn’t care which team drops the ball, they just feel the delay. If a deal slips away because a rep couldn’t get a pricing exception document in time, that’s not a sales failure alone; it’s a failure of enablement across the board. We clearly need a more unified approach to keep momentum alive.
How AI Is Already Stepping Up
The good news is we’re no longer stuck fighting this battle with just good intentions. AI has rapidly emerged as a momentum guardian in the sales process. Today’s new breed of AI copilots and assistants are tackling the very gaps that slow us down.
Real-Time “Copilot” Assistance
AI copilots in CRM and email act as 24/7 support, ready to help draft a quick follow-up or answer product questions. For example, these assistants can instantly summarize a sales call and suggest next steps, or pull key facts from a knowledge base to answer a buyer’s query on the fly.
They serve as knowledgeable sidekicks that ensure sellers always have something smart to say or send, even on the tightest timeline.
Intelligent Knowledge Retrieval
Instead of combing through folders, reps can now ask an AI assistant to find that one-pager on the new feature release or the latest compliance FAQs. Advanced AI systems can sift through thousands of documents in seconds and surface exactly the snippet or slide you need.
98% of Morgan Stanley’s financial advisors now use an internal GPT-4 “Assistant” chatbot to get faster answers from over 100,000 internal documents, enabling them to respond to client needs without delay. That kind of on-demand info access was unheard of a few years ago.
Never Miss a Follow-Up
Some AI tools sit on top of email and CRM to watch for tasks or inquiries that need a response. If a buyer asks for pricing or a demo after a call, the AI can automatically draft a personalized email with the requested info, or set a reminder in your calendar.
Modern sales copilots can even update CRM statuses, create follow-up tasks, and schedule meetings automatically when certain triggers are hit. The result is that no follow-up falls through the cracks, the very issue that causes that 51% deal attrition.
Instant Lead Engagement
AI is also shrinking lead response times down to near-zero. Chatbots on websites, AI-driven schedulers, and automated lead routing mean a prospect can get an immediate reply or meeting booking, even if your human team is asleep. Being first to engage is half the battle, and AI is making “always-on” responsiveness possible.
I’ve seen companies implement automated routing (like an AI that instantly qualifies and schedules a demo) and dramatically increase their conversion rates. Speed-to-lead is finally becoming a reality rather than a KPI everyone misses.
Beyond Sales – AI’s Impact on Marketing and IT
It’s not only the sales department feeling the change. Marketing teams are embracing AI to prevent delays upstream. Content generation that used to take weeks can now happen in days or hours.
Early adopters of generative AI have cut content creation times by as much as 30–50%, meaning marketing can deliver that tailored case study or proposal while the deal is still hot.
I’m seeing marketers use AI to whip up on-demand product videos, customize pitch decks for a specific industry, or even generate a micro-site for a big prospect meeting, all at a speed that would have been impossible in the past. This agility from marketing feeds directly into sales momentum, ensuring the latest and most relevant assets are ready when sellers need them.
Meanwhile, IT organizations play a crucial role in making all this magic possible. For IT, the rise of AI copilots and real-time data means a renewed focus on integration and data readiness.
AI can only be as quick and smart as the data it can access. I’ve been working closely with IT leaders to break down data silos and connect systems so that the AI tools have a “single source of truth” across CRM, ERP, support databases, and more. In practice, this looks like upgrading data pipelines, implementing real-time syncs between platforms, and ensuring strict data governance so that these AI assistants can be both fast and accurate. IT is also exploring how to use AI for data cleanup and migration.
By investing in these areas, IT is turning into an enabler of speed, making sure that when an AI needs to fetch an answer or update a record, nothing stands in its way.
Speed as a Competitive Advantage
Reflecting on all this, one thing is crystal clear: if speed is the difference between winning and losing, then AI belongs at the foundation of how we operate, not as a future add-on, but right now as a core part of our sales, marketing, and IT strategy.
Every day your team spends waiting for information or juggling tools is an opportunity for a faster-moving competitor to swoop in.
We finally have technology that can close those gaps, connecting the dots in real time so that no buyer is left waiting and no seller is left searching. It’s time to embrace that.
Whether it’s equipping your sales reps with an AI copilot, enabling marketing to produce content at the pace of conversation, or empowering IT to unify data for instant access, acting with urgency is the key.
In the end, sales momentum thrives when information flows freely and immediately. AI can make that possible. The companies that treat AI-driven speed as a foundation rather than a fancy experiment will be the ones celebrating more wins. Let’s make sure we’re in that camp. After all, in today’s market, momentum is everything, and we now have the tools to never lose it again.