Last month, we ran a webinar as part of our new AI Advantage series. The event was led by Jonathan Kvarfordt (GTM Advisor & Ambassador) and featured Kyle Norton (CRO at Owner.com) alongside me, Ashley Wilson (COO and Co-Founder of Momentum).
This new series showcases how different leaders, like Kyle, leverage AI to solve real business challenges and drive measurable impact.
We’ve put together this blog post to recap what we discussed during the inaugural webinar. Prefer watching instead? Check out the replay below. 👇
Meet the Guest: Kyle’s Background and Expertise
To set the stage, let’s get to know Kyle Norton a little bit better. With over a decade of experience in sales leadership, Kyle is a seasoned pro at building and scaling sales teams, particularly in tech-driven environments.
At Owner.com, a vertical SaaS platform for small takeout restaurants, Kyle leads a $25 million ARR business with a team of 50+ sales reps.
Before joining Owner.com, Kyle held key leadership roles at Shopify, managing a quarter-billion-dollar business unit spanning sales and customer success. His expertise lies in integrating AI into sales workflows to drive efficiency, productivity, and growth.
Kyle’s approach to AI is rooted in practicality and real-world impact. He believes that AI should solve specific business problems and enhance the capabilities of sales teams, not replace them. This philosophy has guided Owner.com’s AI adoption strategy and delivered measurable results.
3 Key Pillars for Implementing AI in Your Sales Workflows Successfully
1. High-Quality Data: The Foundation for AI Success
When it comes to AI-driven strategies, data quality is everything. Kyle emphasized that AI is only as good as the data it relies on. Without clean, accurate data, even the most sophisticated AI tools won’t deliver reliable insights.
As Kyle put it, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If your CRM is filled with outdated or incomplete data, your AI tools will struggle to generate meaningful results. This is especially critical when using AI for tasks like lead scoring, deal risk assessment, or forecasting.
Kyle offered two actionable strategies for ensuring data quality:
- Maintain good CRM hygiene: Sales reps should regularly update and verify CRM data. Automate reminders and conduct routine data audits to keep your records accurate.
- Leverage AI for data enrichment: Use AI tools like Momentum to capture insights from unstructured sources—such as call transcripts and emails—and populate CRM fields with relevant data.
Kyle explained how Owner.com uses AI to enrich its CRM automatically: “We scrape call data and use prompts to fill in specific Salesforce fields. This ensures our data stays clean and comprehensive, allowing us to make better decisions.”
2. Start Narrow
Building on the importance of data quality, the discussion shifted to how to apply AI effectively. Kyle highlighted the need to start small and specific when adopting AI. He warned against broad, end-to-end applications, which often lead to unreliable results. Instead, focus on well-defined tasks where AI can excel at pattern recognition.
As Kyle explained, “The wider the surface area you give an AI tool, the more room there is for error and hallucination.”
For instance, use AI to:
- Summarize sales calls and extract key insights.
- Identify competitors mentioned during demos.
- Automate routine data entry tasks.
By narrowing the scope, you reduce errors and achieve quick, measurable wins. “Think of AI as the world’s best intern,” Kyle said. “It’s smart and hardworking, but it still needs oversight.”
3. Use AI to Augment, Not Replace, Your Sales Team
There is much debate about the future of AI and whether it threatens salespeople's jobs. Kyle has a clear stance on this. He emphasizes that AI should augment your sales team, not replace it. It should automate low-value, repetitive tasks so reps can focus on high-value activities.
As he put it, “Revenue-generating activities are everything.” By freeing up time, reps can connect with more customers and close more deals. Owner.com’s BDRs, for example, now generate three times more ARR than they did 18 months ago. And that’s all thanks to AI and automation.
Here’s a quick summary from Kyle showing what AI can do and where we still need sales reps’ input:
Next, let’s take a closer look at how Owner.com uses AI and Momentum, specifically in its sales operations.
How Does Owner.Com Use AI + Momentum?
Kyle shared several real-world AI use cases that have transformed Owner.com’s sales workflows.
Data Quality Automation with Momentum
One of Owner.com’s primary use cases for AI is improving data quality with Momentum. He emphasized that accurate, up-to-date data is crucial for effectively leveraging AI, and Momentum helps automate this process seamlessly.
Kyle explained how his team uses Momentum to scrape data from sales calls and emails and automatically populate Salesforce fields. For example, details like competitors mentioned, customer objections, or pricing feedback are captured without reps needing to enter data manually.
As Kyle put it, “We scrape in call data and use prompts to fill in specific Salesforce fields across different objects—accounts, opportunities, contacts. This way, we’re pushing as much data into our CRM as possible.”
This approach ensures that Owner.com’s CRM stays rich with relevant, accurate data, setting a solid foundation for AI-driven insights and decision-making.
Custom GPTs for Sales Efficiency
Kyle also described how his team uses AI to automate low-value tasks, allowing sales representatives to focus on high-value activities. For instance, they've developed an internal tool that scores leads based on potential deal size and win rate, automatically routing them to the appropriate sales cadence.
Call Auditing and Insights
During the webinar, Owner.com’s CRO also shared that Momentum is extremely useful for tracking rep performance. It captures actions during calls, such as how often reps attempt to close a deal or mention critical details like implementation fees or service fees.
As Kyle described, “We use Momentum also to audit and understand how our reps are working… things like how many times did they ask for the business or did they mention our 5% service fee to the guest.” This way, he can better understand which reps are performing the best and uncover other important information.
Risk Flagging and Alerts
Momentum flags specific signals during calls, such as a restaurant being under construction or a customer expressing hesitation. When these keywords are detected, the relevant manager is automatically notified to follow up.
Kyle explained, “If someone mentions they’re renovating, that gets flagged to the manager, who can then listen to the call clip and decide on the next steps.”
Wrapping Up
As AI continues to shape the future of sales and customer success, Kyle Norton's lessons provide a valuable roadmap for businesses seeking to harness AI's power effectively.
By focusing on high-quality data, specific use cases, and augmenting human capabilities, companies can position themselves to thrive in an AI-enhanced business landscape.
Want to see how Momentum can elevate your sales process? Chat with us today to get started.