AI has slowly infiltrated most companies’ daily operations. Leaders are adopting this new technology in the hopes that it will set their business apart from the infiltrated market. Executive assistants are leveraging numerous AI tools to help with travel planning, research, transcriptions, and more. Content creators and marketers are leaning on AI to help in the brainstorming process. And sales reps are using AI to save time, find leads, and close more deals. Here’s how.
AI Can Save Sellers’ Precious Time
With only 24 hours in a day, it can be a challenge for sellers to get everything off their plate in a day or a week’s worth of time. Sourcing potential leads, logging calls, emailing current customers, and strategic planning sessions all take time. While AI can’t reduce the amount of work on sellers’ plates, it can optimize how sellers work and reduce redundancies.
In its most basic work, AI can automate administrative (and somewhat tedious) tasks. This includes everything from data entry into CRM systems, meeting scheduling, and transcriptions. Instead of taking notes during a client call, you can focus on the conversation, knowing that your AI tool is working behind the scenes, noting important details. After the call, you’ll have a clean, easy-to-read, formatted transcription with key takeaways and to-do items. If needed, AI can also help draft up follow-up responses, ensuring you’re always staying top of mind with clients and customers.
Outreach is another category that can be very time-consuming. Most sellers know that writing personalized emails can make a difference in their business, but composing all of these messages can be cumbersome. Instead, let AI handle the work for you, brainstorming different types of messages to send to different pools of customers. It can even suggest which platform — email, LinkedIn, SMS message, or social media DM — may be best based on prior conversation history. These few examples show that AI can give sellers more time to focus on strategic tasks and less time on the mundane day-to-day tasks that come with the job.
AI Can Help Find and Nurture Leads
Many sellers will likely agree that finding leads can be one of the most time-consuming parts of their job. However, having a pipeline of leads is essential to a thriving, profitable business. No matter how well you’re doing now, you always need to be looking ahead. Doing so will set you apart from competitors, ensuring stability and growth.
Finding leads often begins by identifying ideal customers within the current market. Depending on the industry, it may mean scouring LinkedIn or seeking referrals from current customers. Outreach via cold calling and social media may also be required. This alone can take an entire workday without actually finding a genuine lead. But with the help of AI, sellers can find ideal customers within a few minutes.
AI can help analyze current customers and predict future leads by scanning websites and social media. With the help of intent data, AI can find companies and eventually contact information for people that match your ideal customer profile, or ICP. These tools can go a step further in scoring leads to identify which ones are most likely to convert and when.
Furthermore, it will even help draft outreach emails and suggest marketing campaigns to reach your ideal consumer base. Creating personal email subject lines and crafting the right type of content for different audience segments will ensure your message is hitting their inbox at the right time and with the right sentiment. Soon enough, you’ll likely see higher engagement rates even though you’re spending less time on the task. AI technology can be used in nearly every industry, from securing auto leads and getting potential customers scheduled for a test drive to engaging potential real estate buyers.
AI Can Assist in Closing More Deals
Going off gut instinct only works some of the time — even if you’re a lucky person. AI provides reps with data-driven insights needed to refine and optimize their sales strategy. This, in turn, should lead to higher conversion rates.
AI can’t be beat in terms of analyzing vast amounts of data quickly and efficiently. This encompasses a range of activities, from customer interactions via email and phone calls to campaign results and sales records. It can even look at prior consumer behaviors and trends, providing more accurate revenue predictions. This can be vital in a business’s success. For example, if AI anticipates a slower spring season, it may be a sign to ramp up a marketing campaign to drive more conversions during a typical slow time of year.
For any current deals, AI can look at the health of current deals in the pipeline. It can monitor deal progression, flagging any potential risks to sellers. Anticipating a potential client’s needs can help secure the deal, as opposed to losing it to a competitor. Additionally, AI tools can assist with next best action recommendations. It’s always nice to get a second opinion on something, and AI can be there for even the most successful sellers to help land the deal.
Conclusion
The job of a sales rep isn’t obsolete because of AI; in fact, sellers are becoming more efficient with their time, which can contribute to more leads and more deals. This is just the beginning of AI, so sellers who leverage this technology wisely today will be better prepared for whatever the future brings.
