AI… It is everywhere, and the corporate world is in a scramble to try and figure out how best to use it. For sales professionals like us, we are left wondering if AI will eventually replace us.
So I asked AI that exact question, I typed:
“My name is Matthew Head, I am a Relationship Manager for Avrion, here is my website: https://www.avrion.co.uk/. Are you going to replace me in the future?”
The answer, although not surprising with some reflection, certainly took me by surprise. The response from AI was simply:
“No, I won’t replace you BUT someone who adopts me quicker than you do will certainly replace you.”
So what we have here is a bit of a “sliding-doors” moment similar to that of the .com boom a few decades ago. There were a lot of businesses that felt that they would never need a website. Fast forward to today and those companies either have a website or they have ceased trading.
AI and the use of it will be following a similar vein, companies can either adapt to keep up or get left behind by their competition. It is the same for us in Sales, we either adopt this now or watch the early adopters leave us in their dust.
So, how can AI help us in general?
The best way to understand how AI can support us is to look at some basic examples of how it is already assisting us in our everyday lives.
Music is a good place to start. All of the streaming services out there today allow us to build playlists and then we can “enhance” those playlists through the streaming service suggesting other songs from the same artists or similar genres and, if we like the suggestion, we can add it to the playlist.
Google, and the way we use it, is also another example of AI. If you ask standard Google a query, none of the answers provided would have been peer-reviewed. If you absolutely need to trust the results then you are better off using Google Scholar as everything from Google Scholar has been peer-reviewed and it is all referenced.
These are just simple examples of asking AI to look at specific sets of data and make suggestions based on the data that exists. So for us in Sales, that is perfect. If we can just teach AI how we work and then throw it at our own data, the names that companies are giving AI start to make sense. Maybe AI is the perfect “Co-Pilot” or perhaps AI can be called “Digital Talent” and it probably is the perfect Sales Support Assistant.
Now, if we get specific about Sales, how does AI actually help us?
This article will focus on 4 key areas:
- Lead Generation
- Customer Engagement
- Sales Automation
- Analytics & Forecasting
1. Lead Generation
We spend far too much time applying our ideal customer profile to huge amounts of data in an effort to find high quality targets. With AI, all we need to do is to teach it what our ideal customer profile looks like and let AI apply it to the data sets, flagging anyone worth engaging.
After being flagged, let AI enrich that data before bringing it back and, for the love of data management, let AI enter the data into your systems for you. It is a massive time saver and AI won’t make any spelling mistakes.
Depending on how much data we are able to get, the lead may be “Sales-Ready” and can just be handed over. Or perhaps the lead needs further nurturing. Let AI decide – based off of our rules of course – which nurturing campaign to assign the lead to.
If one of our nurturing strategies is to drive people to our website, we have another great example of where AI can help us – Chatbots. Rather than having sales staff swan diving into webchats with prospects, let AI handle those FAQs so that we can focus on taking actual orders and retaining existing accounts.
2. Customer Engagement
Hooray! We have a new prospect to engage and hopefully a new client to manage. Marketing did their thing and now we have to do ours.
The only way that we meet our customer’s expectations is to give them exceptional experiences and the only common ingredient when baking an exceptional experience is time. We never have enough of it and making more time in sales has always meant having to do a ‘half-job’ somewhere else.
Have you ever heard the phrase “Robbing Peter to pay Paul”? Paul will be happy but Peter won’t be and how long will it be until we have to “rob” Paul too? How long will they stay with us if we keep giving them a sub-par service?
Retention is one the key areas for all of us in sales. It costs companies half as much to retain a relationship as it does to go out and build a new one. We work so hard to bring a new customer in, we can use AI to help us to engage that client strategically so that we can maximise our chances of retaining them.
From data-driven recommendations to customer journey optimisation, AI ensures our interactions are more personalised and efficient whilst helping us to better understand and anticipate our customer’s needs.
3. Sales Automation
This is where we start to get a whole bunch of our time back. Imagine we have sent out a quotation to a new prospect. We need to build the quote, make sure it is accurate and it has everything that they could potentially need. The quote needs to be sent and saved into our CRM and we will need a reminder to follow-up with the prospect in a few days.
The scenario is similar if we are taking a request for a quote or a PO from an existing client. There are emails of thanks and a host of tasks that we will need to remember to set if we are to give them that exceptional experience that they crave.
Not only can our AI set the tasks and automatically send out emails of thanks. Our AI could even make suggestions to us based on all of the quotations and purchase orders we have done for our other clients and prospects.
If a client is requesting supply of product A and product B, then AI could suggest that they also take product X, as typically products A,B and X all go together. Now your client may not have even been aware that you supply product X, so not only has AI supported us in giving an exceptional experience, it has given us a load of time back that we can use to ensure that we are giving exceptional experiences to our clients across the board.
4. Predictive Analytics & Sales Forecasting
That is just a swanky way of describing reporting. All of the important things we do in sales land up on a dashboard or in a report somewhere – and it is incredibly important as the data contained within is used to make educated, data-driven decisions.
The ability to accurately forecast sales, as well as predict things like customer churn, is critical. If we can teach AI about our Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), then AI can help get us there, on time and full of energy.
Will you embrace AI?
I will close with what I said at the top of this article. This is a sliding-doors moment, we either take the leap or get left behind. AI is far from perfect and the only way it is going to get close is if we adopt it now. We need to be the pioneers that drive how AI is used in sales so that we can make sure that in 3, 5, 10 years’ time AI is saving us as much time as possible, leaving us to focus on the only thing that matters, our customers.
