AI Takes Center Stage, Transforming Sales and Beyond

This year's event, with over 4,500 exhibitors and 141,000 attendees, was a clear indicator of the tech landscape's direction. As Anna Peggram observed, AI was the undisputed star, weaving its way into nearly every major company's showcase.

From personalized beauty experiences to groundbreaking agentic AI, the message was clear: AI is not a trend; it's a fundamental shift.

AI Everywhere: A Deep dive into key innovations

The sheer breadth of AI applications at CES 2025 was impressive. Here are a few standouts that caught Anna's attention:

L'Oréal's Beauty Genius:

This technology is a prime example of how AI can personalize the customer experience. By offering AI-driven beauty advice, skin diagnostics, and virtual product try-ons, L'Oréal is setting a new standard for customer engagement in the beauty industry. This is particularly relevant for us at Hive, as it showcases how AI can be used to create highly tailored experiences.

NVIDIA's Agentic AI:

NVIDIA's keynote focused on the imminent shift towards agentic AI, which is a game-changer. Their blueprints for this technology highlight the potential for AI to handle routine tasks, freeing up sales reps to focus on high-value activities. This aligns perfectly with Hive's mission to empower sales teams by automating non-sales tasks.

Accenture's View: Data takes the lead Accenture's talk gave us a good way to see how business is changing.

They talked about how we're moving from "People, Process, Technology" to "People, Process, Technology, and Data." This means data is now super important for how we work and plan.

1. Growing Skills: Accenture's focus on building skills is key. They use a skills database to keep track of what people can do and guide training, which is very much like Hive's Facilitator for sales skill growth.
2. Data is King: Adding data as a core part shows how vital it is now. This matches how Hive sees sales data, where we pull insights from call recordings and CRM info to make better forecasts.

What sales leaders are saying: Speed and Clear Info Talking with sales leaders at CES 2025, both at the booths and in ClickZ interviews, a few things came up again and again:

1. Too Much Data: Sales leaders know data and reports are important, but they also know it takes too long to get through it all. Sales reps want to spend their time selling, not doing paperwork.
2. Simple Insights: There's a big need for clear, easy-to-understand info from sales data. Sales leaders need to see how their reps are doing without having to dig through complicated reports.

“CES 2025 showed us the best of what's coming in tech, with a big focus on how companies can sell more by using AI.” Anna Peggram - Business Development Director/ North America.

CES 2025 was a strong reminder of how much AI can change things. From making customer experiences personal to using AI agents to automate tasks, the new ideas we saw are set to change industries.

For sales leaders, the message is clear: AI is here to stay.