Dr. Rich Rocco, Executive Director - Center for Sales Leadership - DePaul University Chicago, IL

June 2026

Navigating A New Sales Reality

In the time since co-authoring the Harvard Business Review article “Teaching Sales” (HBR July-Aug 2012) with my DePaul Center for Sales Leadership colleagues, we continue to recognize and emphasize the many benefits of helping students understand how to be an effective salesperson and graduate “job ready” to build a successful sales career. A key enabler of our success in developing better sales graduates and future sales hires for industry was fostering academia-industry partnerships to understand key sales competency needs (The What) and align those needs within our robust sales curriculum (The How).

At the time of our HBR article, few universities and colleges were teaching sales and even fewer were using technologies in their sales classes. Consequently, we proclaimed that sales had entered a new era requiring “new school” skills (that are teachable) involving areas like critical thinking, analytics, technology and communicating value. Now emerging from the post-pandemic reality, these areas are even more important. We recognize through our research as well as many sales executive conversations that sales is again entering another new reality (e.g. consider the rapid rise and importance of inside sales; analytics, and Artificial Intelligence) that requires furthering these skills that our Gen Z students need to be better prepared for the new sales realities in today’s challenging markets.

The following are some prominent areas that have emerged through our experience as sales educators as well as work with many sales organizations. The approach is to highlight both the challenges and some solutions that should be considered to better develop a salesperson today and ultimately support leading sales organizations into the future.

Revisiting Effective Communication

Challenge: More conversations This area refers to a need to get back to basics with customer conversations. With the increasing preference to utilize informal communications such as text, email, and social, there is an increasing reluctance or even anxiety to simply make a phone call. While buyers have an increasing range of preferences for communication with salespeople, the art of making an effective phone call (or leaving a decent VM) seems to have been lost along with handwritten or even timely “thank you” notes. While the popular press has noted this phenomenon with Gen Zs as “phone phobia”, the reality is that they just need better context and practice at initiating effective phone conversations.

Solution: Over the past six years we have been utilizing Koncert (https://www.koncert.com/) as our sales technology partner across hundreds of students in my sales classes. Students utilize Koncert to manage their sales campaign leads and make sales calls (including the use of effective VMs) utilizing solutions like AI Flow Dialer, which is an AI powered single line list dialing technology, as part of a hands-on, live 3-4 week project on behalf of many Chicago sports teams. While the noted phone call anxieties are real for many at the start, Koncert has proven to be very easy for them to use with little training time to start making calls. The accelerated experience of calling on hundreds of leads through Koncert results in many more conversations, meetings and ultimately sales. Simply, it enhances their confidence and capability as effective value communicators on the phone with their prospects. Koncert has been a key partner in helping my sales students have more conversations while the evolving AI features also significantly reduce wasted time spent with non-connected calls (e.g. hitting voicemail, IVR, failed calls, and disconnected calls). For B2B companies with large addressable markets, Koncert also provides AI Parallel Dialer, for higher volume dialing.

Leveraging Analytics

Challenge: Better insights for sales advantage Today’s sellers should have the capability to better leverage their sales process data to generate real time insights, but many are still challenged to make this connection as it is often “lost in translation” between simple data access and development of actionable insights.

Solution: One approach has been our ability to leverage Koncert’s real time analytics and advanced reports, which provide the salesperson with valuable insights on conversations and converting those conversation into positive outcomes. For many, its simply all about booking meetings and Koncert is a key partner in this effort through its evolving real time reports and analytics. Even the simple “best time to call” report offers insights that have improved the effectiveness of our calls…leading to higher percentages of call conversations as well as future meetings. The Koncert platform also provides visibility into each prospects profile to help the salesperson have the needed “why I’m calling you” information to further enhance effectiveness on each call.

In addition, Koncert has introduced Waterfall Enrichment, a data enrichment technology that leverages multiple data providers to deliver accurate mobile and email contact information for prospects. This capability has proven tremendously valuable, as we’ve seen a notable increase in dial-to-conversation rates by reaching prospects directly on their mobile phones.

Furthermore, Koncert’s advanced analytics provide everything salespeople and sales leaders need to gain actionable insights—enabling teams to better target prospects, refine their skills, and improve outcomes to ultimately build a stronger pipeline.

Improving Coaching and Development

Challenge: Not enough coaching. For over a decade, my sales effectiveness research supports that one of the top drivers of sales effectiveness for leading organizations is coaching. The challenge is that many sales leaders do not take sufficient time and effort to coach and develop members of their sales team. Technology is helping to address this common challenge for sales leaders.

Solution: Given the importance of coaching for salesperson learning and development, our use of Koncert’s “Remote Coach and Salesfloor" platform has proven to be as effective as traditional in-person coaching. This is a significant finding from our research and a true benefit for developing sales skills in online or hybrid sales class formats as well as applicable to general salesperson development in any remote selling situation. Having a technology platform like Koncert and using its features like Remote Coach, Salesfloor, CallBlitz rooms, and/or AI Pitchlab (AI Powered sales coaching) allow the manager to coach across their sales team in real time to help them become better and smarter sellers. Capabilities like call recordings and AI transcription add further to one’s coaching toolbox and capabilities. In fact, options like the Sales Blitz are the new school virtual technology equivalent to the old school “ride along” without the extensive time or expense. Sales leaders can now become as much a part of the process as the salesperson because they can actively engage with the Koncert platform on the team level in real time and not just rely on a review of the “stats.”

Partnering Sales with Tech + AI

Challenge: Better tech-capable sellers. This third area addresses the need to be “tech capable” across a range of selling situations to improve sales effectiveness. As sales has often lagged other areas in their use of technology, sales is ever more poised to leverage and benefit from the increasing range of selling technologies available today, including the rising inclusion of various AI capabilities. However, traditional academia often lags in both the availability and capability to integrate the latest technologies. Our partnership approach has overcome this challenge as we believe today’s new sales hires must be knowledgeable about leading sales tech capabilities + AI, comfortable with their use and ultimately become an advocate to incorporate them into their future roles/organizations.

Solution: Our program was one of the first university sales programs to partner and integrate Salesforce.com into a sales curriculum as we early recognized the value of technology within our curriculum. Since then, we have continued fostering partnerships with leading technology providers to introduce our sales students to a range of CRM and sales technologies in order to gain “hands on” experiences within sales classes including: Fundamentals of Sales, Analytical Sales, Sales Strategy and Technology, as well as Sports Sales (Inside sales). Ultimately, we have found sales “tech capable” students are better prepared and make better hires for sales organizations today.

Concluding Points:

Our many years of experience with Koncert across hundreds of our students provides a first-hand understanding of how sales technologies and its many benefits can enhance the effectiveness of sales students in real world selling situations. As we evolved from traditional phone selling into technology enabled call campaigns with Koncert over the past six years, the results have clearly enhanced our sales student’s capability to make more calls, more connects, more conversations and more meetings, ultimately resulting in better overall sales performance for each sales campaign. In partnering with Koncert, our sales students have also seen their communication, analytics, coaching, and overall technology experiences positively impacted to better prepare them for navigating the new sales realities ahead. In working with leading sales organizations, we know this can also directly translate to improved effectiveness with new or established salespeople within organizations willing to embrace these highlighted challenges. Are you ready?