Small Business Guides

Artificial Intelligence and the New Sales Process

Gone are the days when the prospecting of CRM systems and cold calling existing customers to upsell them were the primary sales tactics used to hit revenue targets. Artificial intelligence algorithms have revolutionized the entire process of lead generation. "I think the future of Lead Generation is in using sales automation to identify qualified and interested leads better," says Scott Smith, the CEO and President of Launch Leads. "Initial lead prospecting typically involves a simple script focused on achieving a basic goal, such as scheduling an appointment. These aspects make the process of initiating an AI system and teaching it your prospecting model fairly straightforward." But how do the various parts of sales automation help improve your sales results?

Artificial Intelligence

Negotiating pricing during a sale with both existing and potential clients is always a slippery slope. Sales reps can often feel pressured to offer significant discounts to ensure that a potential client doesn't pursue a better price elsewhere. Artificial intelligence, however, minimizes this pressure. AI sales automation enables a vendor to access data such as the annual revenue of a prospect's company as well as what quarter of the year they're most likely to spend — knowing what a client's size of purchases, as well as the amount they paid for them, gives sales teams greater leverage over their competitors.

AI has also become a tool for Lead Prospecting and Lead Scoring that goes well beyond the typical data found in sales software. Artificial intelligence can process significantly more information on a client than a person, including details such as their social media posts and content preferences. Inclusion of this information takes lead scoring to a whole new level.

The advantages of using AI doesn't stop with members of a sales team. One of the most complex challenges for a manager is determining of what their sales team has achieved, where clients are in the pipeline, and lead nurturing on at risk accounts.  Where this process involves retrieving and analyzing detailed data from the CRM, AI can help improve the processing of this information. Through AI's insights into a representative’s quality of work, client data, and anticipated incoming revenue, management is able to better focus their efforts, and improve its performance.

Machine Learning

Machine learning is a form of data analysis that surpasses any prior form of sales and market research. An offshoot of AI, Machine learning enables a company to extract details about a potential buyer's past purchases from other businesses, including how much they spent. This process can provide valuable insights into possible future investments a prospect may consider. Recent research closely links access to Machine Learning technology to a sales team's long-term success. Data from Gardner shows that by 2020, 30% of B2B companies will use Machine Learning to facilitate sales

Automation

Identifying leads is how sales reps and account executives once spent the better part of an average day, even after quality, online CRM programs were in use. Millions of dollars go down the drain when sales processes are slow and involve hours of labor that Artificial Intelligence tools perform at a higher speed and with faster results. Sales automation platforms can help:

  • handle tasks that a single human being would take hours or longer to complete while yielding more meaningful results.
  • frees reps from their desks; it allows them to get out in the field for face to face meetings with clients.
  • improve your sales team's ability to arrange these meetings.
  • liberate account execs from the small but constant daily tasks that range from data entry to spreadsheet creation.

When sales reps are relieved of the responsibilities that artificial intelligence solutions are designed to deploy better, companies reap longer lasting and more profitable results from the talent they have on board.

More than Maximized Effectiveness

Data has never been more plentiful but using it to leads towards profit is proving to be more effectively handled by Artificial Intelligence than human beings. AI doesn't just maximize the effectiveness of a company's sales process. It can enable symbiotic efforts such as sales and marketing to coordinate better, and since they're both fingers of the same hand, their increased ability to integrate their separate functions into a single successful outcome is that much more possible.

About the Author

Richard Overmyer is a copywriter for Launch Leads. Richard spends time finding ways of improving customer and brand relationships throughout the entire lifetime of a product. He helps develop strategies that businesses can implement immediately for real-time results. In his spare time, he enjoys skiing, hiking, and pretty much anything that gets him active in the mountains.