AI in Sales Statistics (2026)

By the Della AI team · Updated October 2026

Key takeaways: AI is now standard in sales: 54% of sales teams use AI agents and only 8% of reps use no AI at all. Teams using AI report more revenue growth and higher win rates. But reps still spend about 60% of their week on non-selling work, and 46% say they rarely get feedback on their sales conversations.

Jump to: How many sales teams use AI? · How much time do sales reps actually spend selling? · Does AI improve sales results? · Does conversation intelligence improve win rates? · Does real-time AI guidance help reps during live conversations? · Are sales reps actually being coached? · How does AI coaching affect rep ramp time? · Why do AI sales tools fail? · What do buyers expect? · Our own data · What this means for managers · FAQ

How many sales teams use AI?

• 54% of sales teams already use AI agents, and another 34% expect to within two years.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• 8% of sales reps said they don’t use AI at all; AI tools were the most-used sales tool category in the survey.Source: HubSpot, State of Sales Report (2025)
• 81% of sales teams were experimenting with AI or had fully implemented it in 2024.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition (2024)
• Nearly 9 in 10 organizations report regular use of AI in at least one business function, across all industries.Source: McKinsey, The State of AI: Global Survey (2026)

How much time do sales reps actually spend selling?

• 60% of a sales rep’s average workweek goes to non-selling work such as data entry, planning and quotes; 40% goes to selling.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• About 25% of a seller’s time is spent actually selling to customers, and Bain estimates AI could roughly double that share.Source: Bain & Company, Technology Report (2025)
• 84% of sales professionals say AI saves time and optimizes their processes.Source: HubSpot, State of Sales Report (2025)
• 88% of sales pros whose teams use AI agents say AI makes them more productive.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)

Does AI improve sales results?

• 3.7x Sellers who effectively partner with AI tools are 3.7 times more likely to meet quota than sellers who don’t.Source: Gartner, sales survey of 1,026 B2B sellers (2024)
• 83% vs. 66% of sales teams with AI saw revenue growth in the past year, compared with teams without AI.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition (2024)
• 30%+ Early AI deployments in sales have improved win rates by 30% or more, according to Bain.Source: Bain & Company, Technology Report (2025)
• 65% Teams that use AI as a core driver of revenue strategy are 65% more likely to increase win rates.Source: Gong, State of Revenue AI report (2025)
• 77% more revenue per rep is generated by AI-driven teams than by teams that aren’t.Source: Gong, State of Revenue AI report (2025)
• 75% of sellers who hit quota say they use AI to help them get there.Source: LinkedIn, B2B Sales Playbook (2024)
• #1 Marketing and sales is the business function where companies most often report revenue gains from AI.Source: McKinsey, The State of AI: Global Survey (2026)

Most of these numbers come from surveys and from vendors that sell AI, and they show correlation, not proof that AI caused the gains.

Does conversation intelligence improve win rates?

• 35% higher win rates on deals where teams used Gong’s Smart Trackers, and 26% higher where they used its Ask Anything feature, versus deals without them.Source: Gong Labs, analysis of 1M+ sales opportunities (2024)

Gong compared deals with and without its own AI features across more than one million opportunities at 1,418 companies; it is a correlation study by the vendor.

Does real-time AI guidance help reps during live conversations?

• 15% more issues resolved per hour, on average, when 5,172 customer-support agents got a generative AI assistant suggesting responses during conversations; less experienced agents improved in both speed and quality.Source: Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond, Generative AI at Work, The Quarterly Journal of Economics (2025)
• 34% productivity gain for novice and low-skilled agents in the earlier working-paper version of the same study (14% on average across 5,179 agents), with minimal gains for the most experienced agents.Source: Brynjolfsson, Li & Raymond, Generative AI at Work, NBER Working Paper 31161 (2023)

This is the strongest published evidence on live, in-conversation AI help. It comes from customer support chat; published studies on live sales calls are still scarce.

Are sales reps actually being coached?

• 38% vs. 90% of sales reps say they are rarely or never coached, while 90% of sales leaders say they coach their team at least once a month.Source: MySalesCoach & Aircall, The State of Sales Coaching in 2025 (2025)
• 19% of sales reps rate the coaching they get internally highly.Source: MySalesCoach & Aircall, The State of Sales Coaching in 2025 (2025)
• 50% Reps who rate their coaching as “excellent” or “very good” are 50% more likely to hit or exceed quota.Source: MySalesCoach & Aircall, The State of Sales Coaching in 2025 (2025)
• 66% of sales reps say they would prefer external coaches as part of their development.Source: MySalesCoach & Aircall, The State of Sales Coaching in 2025 (2025)
• 75% of sales reps say they’re more likely to hit their targets with a coach or mentor.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• 46% of sales reps say they rarely get feedback on their sales conversations.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• 41% of sales reps say they don’t get enough opportunities to role-play before customer calls.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• 40% of sales reps say their manager’s lack of time is an obstacle to enablement.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)

The MySalesCoach and Aircall figures come from a survey of more than 1,600 sales professionals; both companies sell coaching or sales software.

How does AI coaching affect rep ramp time?

• 34% of sales teams with AI agents use them for coaching, such as role-playing sales calls; high performers are 1.4x more likely than underperformers to do so.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• 3.0 months is the average SDR ramp time, the lowest since 2010, while only 60% of SDRs are at quota, the lowest in the study’s history.Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Metrics & Compensation Report (2025)
• 40% median annual SDR turnover (2024), so many teams are ramping new reps every year.Source: The Bridge Group, SDR Models, Metrics & Compensation Report (2025)

We found no independent, published study that measures how AI coaching or AI role-play changes ramp time directly. The closest evidence is the support-agent study above, where the least experienced workers gained the most.

Why do AI sales tools fail?

• 66% of sales leaders report low trust in AI-generated insights inside their organizations; Gartner ties this to AI that lacks the company’s own deal data.Source: Gartner, AI for Sellers: Building Trust With Proprietary Data (2026)
• 10%+ lift in quota attainment for the middle 60% of sellers is the target Gartner sets for grounded AI seller tools.Source: Gartner, AI for Sellers: Building Trust With Proprietary Data (2026)
• 4.8 hours a week is the average time AI tools save sellers, yet 72% of sales organizations report low reinvestment of that time into high-value selling.Source: Gartner, survey of 210 CSOs and sales leaders (2026)
• 25% vs. 20% of sales organizations report a 50%+ positive return on AI investments, while 20% report a 50%+ negative return.Source: Gartner, survey of 210 CSOs and sales leaders (2026)
• 31% of chief sales officers cite difficulty proving the ROI of AI-driven tools as a top challenge for 2026.Source: Gartner, survey of 227 CSOs (2026)
• Under 40% of sellers will report that AI agents improved their productivity by 2028, Gartner predicts, even as AI agents come to outnumber sellers tenfold.Source: Gartner, sales predictions (2025)
• 42% of sales reps are overwhelmed by too many tools; sales teams without one platform use an average of eight standalone tools.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• 84% of sales teams without an all-in-one platform plan to consolidate their tech.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)
• 59% of software buyers regret at least one software purchase made in the past 18 months.Source: Gartner Digital Markets, 2025 Software Buying Trends (2025)
• 62% of software buyers say the product trial is the top factor in their final purchase decision.Source: Gartner Digital Markets, 2025 Software Buying Trends (2025)

The software-buying figures come from Gartner Digital Markets’ survey of 3,500 software buyers and cover all business software, not only sales tools.

What do buyers expect?

• 61% of B2B buyers prefer an overall rep-free buying experience.Source: Gartner, sales survey of 632 B2B buyers (2025)
• 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach.Source: Gartner, sales survey of 632 B2B buyers (2025)
• 59% of buyers say sales reps don’t take the time to understand their business’s unique challenges and goals.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition (2024)
• 86% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy when a company understands their goals.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 6th edition (2024)
• 69% of sales professionals say measurable ROI matters more to customers than it did a year ago, and 57% say customers take longer to decide.Source: Salesforce, State of Sales, 7th edition (2026)

Our own data

What this means for sales managers

• Protect selling time. Reps spend most of the week away from selling, so tools that remove admin pay off first.
• Coach during the call, not only after it. Nearly half of reps rarely get feedback. Real-time objection handling, like Della Live, puts the answer on screen while the prospect is still talking.
• Put a number on missed objections. The objection cost calculator estimates what unanswered objections cost your team each month.
• Give reps more practice. 41% of reps want more role-play. See how an AI sales coach works and our guide to real-time AI sales coaching software.

Della AI is an AI sales coach with live objection handling for sales teams of 5+ sales reps: Della Live puts the best objection answer on screen during real calls, and Della Practice is AI voice role-play.

How we chose these statistics

Every number above links to the original publisher’s page or report, not to a statistics roundup. We left out figures we could only find second-hand. Most are self-reported survey results, several come from companies that sell AI software (Salesforce, HubSpot, Gong), and older figures are labeled with their year.

FAQ