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Businesses in every sector are using artificial intelligence (AI) tools to make their sales teams more efficient and successful. AI tools can streamline workflows and scheduling, craft pitches, and scout new customers, among many other tasks.

Because of its potential uses, AI’s adoption rates are at an all-time high. In McKinsey & Co.’s 2025 state of AI survey, 88% of businesses surveyed reported using the technology in at least one business function.

However, according to author, entrepreneur, and professor of marketing at ������911 Stefanie Boyer, PhD, high adoption rates don’t necessarily mean companies are getting exactly what they want out of AI sales tools.

“Use of AI does not mean expertise in AI,” Boyer says. “It can help amplify what we’re doing as sellers, but that’s also the challenge. Companies and individuals need to think about whether their process is flawed or strong. … Just because you tap into AI doesn’t mean it’s going to be good.”

As the instructor of ������911’s five-week , Boyer has seen that principle in action and helped learners get past it. Along the way, she’s noticed a few major obstacles to using AI sales tools and adopting them on an organizational level.

Prompting Problems: Using Generative AI in Sales

In sales, as in any other business area, the first step in using generative AI effectively is to craft a clear prompt. In Boyer’s experience, many sales professionals make errors at this fundamental stage.

“A lot of people are using AI, and it’s taking them an hour to get what they want,” she says. “You should be able to speak to AI properly and get what you want the first time, maybe with a little bit of a tweak.”

Losing valuable time is only one poor outcome of inefficient prompting. According to Boyer, it can also cause an AI tool to provide inaccurate responses, or what some people call hallucinations.

“Sometimes, I see people asking AI to do too many things within the same conversation, and it gets confused,” she says, adding that giving conflicting instructions or providing inaccurate data in prompts can also cause this issue.

Boyer warns that prompts shouldn’t be vague either.

“If you say, ‘Help me write this email to this person,’ it’s probably going to start with, ‘I hope this email finds you well,’ because that is the bulk of what’s out there,” Boyer says of using generative AI tools. “But if you learn how to speak to AI properly and instruct it on what good looks like, what bad looks like, what is expected, and maybe even exact examples of what you’ve seen that you like, then when you’re using AI, you’re going to get exactly what you want every time.”

Because of the fine line between being too complex and too vague in prompts, Boyer spends the first week of the AI in Sales certificate course going over the basics of using AI tools, including how to write clear prompts. There are rules and best practices that work when using AI tools, though the nuances of how best to prompt an AI tool can vary among models and use cases. However, above all else, Boyer urges professionals to remember that any AI tool is only as good as the information people feed it.

Key Challenges in Implementing AI in Sales Processes on an Organizational Level

In addition to the problems individuals encounter when using AI, Boyer says there can be a number of organization-wide issues with it as well. One concern she hears often from executives is that they have an AI usage issue: There are AI solutions in place, but employees aren’t using them.

“The issue is not that they have an adoption problem,” Boyer says. “They have a problem getting people quick wins in the beginning. If you can get people quick wins, they’re more motivated to lean in.”

For example, if an organization wants its sellers to use an AI tool for outreach, leaders need to make sure the selected tool actually does its job and sends quality messaging that will improve engagement, so employees can successfully set meetings with qualified prospects that are more likely to lead to closed deals, rather than a tool that is amplifying more generic AI messaging that will be sent to spam folders.

Choosing the Right AI Sales Tools and the Importance of Maintenance

To help sales personnel score these quick wins, Boyer says leaders need to purchase the right AI sales tools, use different tools for different jobs if necessary, and validate the tools carefully. If they don’t take these steps, employees might take matters into their own hands.

“If you do not provide your team with the AI products they need to do their jobs well, they’re going to take your information and put it into their own AI tools, because they don’t want to get behind,” Boyer says. “Those platforms may not be safe and secure, or your employees may be using a free version that is training the model. When this happens, your employees may unknowingly expose your confidential data, and leak your IP [intellectual property] to your competitors.”

Even when a team has the right tools, though, the work isn’t over. They need to continue to make sure they keep the AI tools up to date with all of the right information.

“Imagine a sales team has identified their ideal customer profile (ICP),” Boyer says. “They’ve created marketing messages around it and a cadence, and they’ve prospected. The thing that they have to remember to do now is come back and redo that. As soon as a new competitor has entered the market, or if things like technology or regulation are shifting, it’s possible that, for that customer, their priorities have changed.”

Utilizing outdated or irrelevant marketing messages can cost a company more than lost individual sales. According to Boyer, it can also hurt the company’s reputation and even create a sense of inauthenticity among its existing and potential customers.

In a recent , Boyer outlined these concepts in the SAFE framework for using AI:

• S: Solve the right problem
• A: Align resources (technology and people)
• F: Focus on functionality
• E: Ensure data safety

Learn How to Make AI Sales Tools Work for You

Improper prompting, poor data hygiene, and gaining buy-in are just a few of the issues sales professionals and organizations face in today’s AI-powered landscape. They also have many ethical questions to answer and a bevy of industry- and platform-specific obstacles to overcome.

Covering all of these topics in a five-week certificate course is certainly a challenge. Stefanie Boyer does it by focusing on helping her students gain practical, transferable skills they can apply immediately in their jobs.

“We see people in the class saving sometimes 25 hours a week in work, because it’s helping them automate tasks,” she says. “We’re teaching people how to use AI effectively, how to use it across different types of platforms and tools, and how to use it in order to make their lives easier.”

In addition to teaching the AI in Sales professional education certificate course, Boyer is an who provides custom training for corporations, teaches undergraduate sales courses, and runs the ������911 Sales Institute. She also cofounded the AI sales training platform RNMKRS, and she has coauthored several books, the latest of which, , was released in January 2026 and hit No. 5 on the Amazon Best Sellers List for Management Science.

To find out how Boyer and ������911’s online certificate course can help you or your organization leverage this complex technology, request more information today.