Prospecting has always been the part of sales people pretend to enjoy but secretly avoid. Most reps know it is essential, they know it drives revenue, and they also know it can consume half the day before they send a single targeted email. It feels like slow, manual work that should have been automated years ago.

Here is the part no one says out loud. Teams that prioritise prospecting see 58 percent higher revenue growth. The number is so large that it should change how leaders think about research. And the gap keeps widening because buyers move faster than sellers. They expect sellers to show up informed, relevant and accurate from the first touch.

The shift happening now is simple. AI powered research is collapsing the time between “I need to understand this account” and “I am ready to reach out.” What used to take hours is turning into seconds. If the last decade forced sales teams to get information into CRMs, the next decade will be about pulling the right insights out instantly.

This matters for one reason. Prospecting speed has become a competitive advantage.

The research bottleneck every seller knows too well

Most sales reps start their day with the same exhausting routine.

Open LinkedIn.
Check the CRM.
Scan the company website.
Look for recent news.
Search Slack for anything relevant.
Dig through old decks.
Skim past call transcripts for context.

By the time a rep has enough clarity to write one informed email, thirty minutes are gone. Some days it is closer to an hour. And it is not a motivation problem. No human can scan ten sources, interpret everything and maintain accuracy under pressure.

The result is predictable. Outreach turns generic. Messaging feels flat. Follow-ups get slow. Not because reps lack skill, but because the research overhead is too heavy.

AI is finally removing this bottleneck. Studies already show that AI powered prospecting cuts research time by 30 percent. And analysts predict that by 2027, 95 percent of seller research will begin with AI instead of Google, PDFs, Slack threads or outdated internal notes.

How sellers already use AI for prospecting without realising it

If you watch strong AEs and SDRs, you will notice something interesting. Many have quietly shifted early-stage research to generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude. They type broad questions, let the model compress hours of reading and start their day clearer and faster.

Common examples include:

1. ICP definition
Describe the ideal customer profile for a mid market retail operations platform. Include size, triggers, buying committee and likely objections.

2. Industry overview
Explain how telco billing operations work in North America and the biggest pain points of a VP of Billing.

3. Competitor scan
List the top competitors in the workforce management category. Group them by segment and note one weakness relevant for a sales cycle.

4. Outreach writing
Write a first touch email for a VP of IT at a biotech company. Mention their usual cloud migration problems.

Prompts like this save hours. What used to require deep Googling turns into a two minute summary. Reps get a quick understanding and can immediately tailor their messaging.

But there is still a missing piece. Public AI tools cannot see the information that matters most during a real sales cycle. They cannot read the private knowledge inside your company. And this is where Tenali fills the gap.

Where Tenali fits in: your private research engine for internal sales knowledge

Public research gives you the macro view. Internal research gives you the truth. The real truth lives in documents, Slack conversations, Confluence pages, pricing sheets, call transcripts and old product notes.

Tenali becomes the instant research layer for everything a company already knows.

Tenali searches:
PDFs.
Google Docs.
Slack messages.
Confluence spaces.
Internal wikis.
CRM notes.
Every past sales meeting your team has ever done.

A rep asks a question. Tenali returns the exact answer pulled from the company’s actual knowledge.

Need to see how an AE explained your API rate limits to a huge enterprise prospect. Ask Tenali.

Need the difference between two pricing plans from an old deck. Ask Tenali.

Need to confirm a compliance capability before you speak to a CISO. Ask Tenali.

Tenali also detects repeated buyer questions across meetings, which helps teams identify what prospects care about and where messaging needs improvement.

This is the layer that public models cannot access. Tenali closes the research loop by giving reps immediate access to the information that actually moves deals.

How ChatGPT and Tenali complement each other

Many reps think they need to choose between ChatGPT and Tenali. They do not. These tools solve different parts of the same job.

Use ChatGPT or Claude for public context:
Industry research
ICP sketches
Competitor summaries
Role breakdowns
Outreach drafts

Use Tenali for internal accuracy:
Past call context
Product capabilities
Pricing details
Compliance answers
Customer examples
Internal process descriptions

Together these tools create a complete prospecting system. Public insights meet private truth. And the combination produces faster, more accurate outreach.

A simple AI-first research workflow for sellers

Here is a workflow a rep can start using tomorrow.

1. Start with ChatGPT. Ask for an industry and role breakdown. Two minutes.
2. Ask for a sample outreach message to understand tone.
3. Switch to Tenali. Ask for information that only your company would know. Past calls, feature details, pricing notes, customer stories.
4. Combine both sets of insights into a single targeted message.
5. Save the Tenali answer so you can reuse it later.

This turns a twenty five minute research cycle into something closer to five. Sales teams using this workflow see the difference immediately.

The teams that adopt AI research will win

Every team uses the same tools and the same playbooks. What separates top performers is how quickly they can learn, personalise and respond.

Prospecting will not return to the old way. Manual research is too slow for the pace buyers expect. AI does not replace sellers. It removes the friction that slows them down.

Whether you use ChatGPT to understand a market or Tenali to pull internal answers instantly, the reps who embrace AI will build stronger pipeline faster than everyone else.

Start your research with AI. Finish it with Tenali. Try Tenali free for 14 days and see how fast your research time drops.AI Powered Research for Sales: Prospecting in Seconds