Some of the most valuable conversations in the sales cycle happen face-to-face. In a hospital corridor. On the factory floor. Inside a research lab.

In many industries, in-person meetings aren’t just preferred — they’re essential. They build trust and move deals forward. They unlock nuance that’s impossible to capture over Zoom. And yet, this part of the sales process remains stuck in time.

While the rest of the revenue engine has evolved with automation, AI, and data-driven systems, field selling is still stuck in the 1980s: Reliant on seller memory, scribbled notes, and manual updates. The cost of this legacy approach isn’t just inefficiency. It’s a business liability. 

Picture this: your rep leaves a customer site after an in-person meeting. There’s no call recording, no shared notes, no CRM update. Just a vague “I’ll follow up.” If it’s not captured, it’s lost.

“While the rest of the revenue engine has evolved … field selling is still stuck in the 1980s.”

Meanwhile back at HQ, you’re preparing for a quarterly business review. You need to assess pipeline risk, identify enablement gaps, and plan for growth. But you’re flying blind, disconnected from what’s happening in the field. And you’re not alone.

Field sales has been left behind, operating without the tools, systems, or visibility the rest of the revenue org relies on. And for too long, we’ve treated that gap as business as usual. But it’s not. Every invisible meeting puts revenue at risk, fractures alignment, and turns forecasting into guesswork.

You can’t manage what you can’t see

Forrester reports that 45% of B2B leaders cite missing or poor data quality as a major obstacle to confident decision-making. Without clear, consistent insight into what’s happening in the field, revenue leaders are left with more questions than answers:

  • Are we talking to the right stakeholders in our largest accounts?
  • Why did that renewal stall?
  • Where are the risks hiding in our pipeline — and will we see them before it’s too late?

And when frontline context lives only in a notebook or a rep’s memory, there’s no way to scale that information across the org.

The impact goes beyond missed revenue. Reps burn out. Coaching loses context. Strategy drifts from what’s actually happening on the ground. This is the field sales disadvantage. And we’ve accepted it as the cost of doing business for too long.

Your CRM won’t save you (and sellers aren’t the problem)

Let me be blunt: no amount of CRM hygiene is going to solve this. The problem isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s the design of our systems.

Your sales team didn’t sign up to be data entry clerks. They’re in this business because they’re great at building relationships and navigating complexity. Every manual task you pile on is time stolen from the work that actually drives revenue.

So the question isn’t: How do we make reps log more notes? It’s: How do we build systems that do it for them, so everyone can act on what matters, in real time?

This isn’t just a sales problem. It’s a growth problem.

When field visibility breaks down, so does your ability to execute on the things that matter most:

  • Revenue efficiency: You can’t allocate resources or optimize your GTM motion without knowing what’s happening on the ground.
  • Customer retention: Sellers miss early warning signs — new stakeholders, shifting priorities, growing blockers — until it’s too late.
  • Cross-functional alignment: Marketing, enablement, and ops are out of sync with what buyers actually need.

Without field insight, you’re not just missing data. You’re missing leverage.

Showpad Assist: A new era of connected, confident selling

That’s why we built Showpad Assist, the first AI agent built for field sales. It’s embedded in the seller’s day-to-day, preparing them with account context before a meeting, capturing what happened in real time, summarizing action items, and updating the CRM. Automatically.

Sellers stay focused. Managers get real signals. And leaders finally see what’s really happening, across every conversation, every territory, and every deal.

In a world where efficiency, expansion, and account health are make-or-break, this is what resilience looks like.

“Without field insight, you’re not just missing data. You’re missing leverage.”

Out of sight doesn’t have to mean out of mind

We’ve reached a turning point. For decades, in-person selling has defied digitization. But it no longer has to come at the cost of consistency, visibility, or scale.

With Showpad Assist, you can unlock a new era of connected, customer-centric growth — and finally close the field sales gap.

Break through the field sales disadvantage with Showpad Assist.