AI Revolution: Where does AI leave the role of the salesperson
I recently delivered a presentation at a Private Equity firm’s conference for its portfolio companies, and one topic everyone wanted to discuss was Sales and AI. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has emerged as a game-changer across various industries, modifying established processes, fostering efficiency, and spearheading innovation. AI’s imprint is progressively prominent within the sales landscape, redefining conventional sales models and methods. Is AI used in common sales activities the silver bullet some teams think, or is it another tool to improve sales effectiveness?
Understanding AI and Gen AI
Before diving deeper into AI’s role in sales, it is essential to differentiate between AI and General AI (Gen AI). The AI that permeates our lives and businesses today is specialized or narrow. It is designed to perform specific tasks, such as providing customer support via chatbots or predicting sales trends using complex algorithms. I recently spoke with someone who described AI as a junior assistant or college intern that can perform many tasks and gather and review large amounts of information for you to turn into actionable insights.
On the other hand, Gen AI, also known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is a theoretical concept that currently needs to be fully realized. It refers to highly autonomous systems capable of outperforming humans in most economically valuable work, not limited to specific tasks but adaptable across a broad range of activities. While our current focus is narrow AI, the potential emergence of Gen AI carries profound implications for the future of sales and numerous other sectors, much like a trained virtual assistant identifying your ideal prospects, contacting them, and booking meetings for you. It can also answer common questions you train it to answer. For sales managers, it will review your data and make suggested next steps with your salespeople and customers.
Sales and AI: A Symbiotic Evolution
On average, salespeople spend less than 20% of their sellable time selling today. AI will take sales activities and tasks to improve sales effectiveness, opening up more selling time for salespeople. Sales teams are increasingly adopting AI to streamline their operations and drive growth. For instance, an AI tool could automate repetitive tasks like sending follow-up emails to potential clients. This automation allows sales representatives to focus their efforts on strategic tasks that add more value.
In addition, AI algorithms can sift through vast amounts of past sales data to identify patterns and predict future trends. With such predictive capabilities, sales teams can proactively strategize, prepare, and position themselves advantageously.
As I shared at the recent conference, we do not want salespeople being librarians looking through mountains of data we want them to sell. Ai tools can review your ERP transaction data and deliver actionable insights and specific task recommendations for each salesperson, customer, and prospective customer.
Outcomes and Benefits of AI in Sales
AI’s increasing role in sales opens up new horizons for business operations and customer engagement. It’s an exciting time for sales teams, as AI brings multiple benefits ranging from increased efficiency and precision to the ability to predict customer behaviors.
- Efficiency Enhancement
One of the most significant benefits of AI in sales is its remarkable efficiency enhancement. AI-powered tools can perform manual and repetitive tasks, like sending follow-up emails, data entry, and lead generation, much faster and more accurately than human counterparts.
The often-quoted statistic is that the average salesperson only spends 20% of their time selling, and these mundane tasks consume the rest of their time. AI takes over these activities, freeing salespeople to focus on what they do best, engaging in customer conversations and closing deals.
- Smarter Customer Targeting
Moreover, AI in sales leads to smarter customer targeting. AI’s advanced predictive analytics capabilities can examine past sales patterns, customers’ online behavior, and other factors to pinpoint potential leads. Armed with these insights, sales teams can then focus their efforts on high-probability prospects, reducing wasted time on unlikely leads and improving overall conversion rates.
Some tools offer a predictive receptivity score based on each prospect’s profile, online activity, and comments made on social platforms. This tool lists hundreds of ideal prospects and ranks them based on a receptivity score to your message helping sales teams spend more time with prospects who likely want and need to engage.
- Personalized Customer Experience
Beyond mere efficiency, AI can help create a more personalized customer experience. By processing massive amounts of data, AI can generate comprehensive insights into customer behaviors, preferences, and needs, allowing sales representatives to tailor their approach to each customer. A sales pitch that resonates with the customer’s unique needs and interests will likely be more engaging and successful.
Some AI sales tools also predict the contact’s personality based on the person’s online profile, how they interact online, and the word choice and tone they consistently use. Is your prospect a high D, driven wanting bullet points, or a High I wanting a much longer conversation? Or is your ideal prospect a High S or C, and you will need to lead with data? AI can deliver insights resulting in more time selling and improved sales effectiveness.
- Cost Reductions
Furthermore, implementing AI in sales can lead to significant cost reductions. Automation means less time spent on each task, lowering labor costs. Enhanced decision-making, facilitated by AI’s ability to process and analyze vast amounts of data, can also decrease costs associated with human error.
To sum up, the integration of AI in sales processes delivers a host of tangible benefits. It makes operations more efficient, improves the targeting of leads, enables a more personalized customer experience, and ultimately reduces costs. Adopting AI in sales is more than just a trend—it’s an impactful shift towards smarter, more efficient sales processes.
What are some of the current AI Sales Platforms?
Clari: Provides AI-driven insights for sales forecasting, pipeline management, and deal execution. It helps answer the question: Are you leaving revenue on the table?
Chorus: Offers conversation analytics to help sales teams understand customer interactions and improve call quality. It helps salespeople make every conversation count.
Insidesales.com Utilizes AI for predictive analytics to prioritize leads.
People.ai : uses AI to capture and analyze sales activities.
Spiro: AI-powered CRM that helps salespeople activity tracking lead management and opportunity prioritization. They focus on manufacturers.
Gong.io: turn customer conversations into strategic insights. Helps sales teams improve customer communication and deal strategies.
Seismic: AI-empowered content management and sales enablement solutions delivering relevant content to prospects.
X.ai: Focused on understanding the universe. Watch for more updates.
Outreach.ia: Sales Engagement and revenue intelligence.
Salesforce Einstein: Gen AI for CRM, insights, recommendations, and automation for sales processes and motions.
The above are just a few new AI tools, and many more are being launched daily to improve sales effectiveness and ultimately increase revenue at higher margins.
I remember when CRMs were introduced into the market, and they were to be the sales silver bullet. However, many teams do not have CRMs today, and for those that do, very few use them to their full potential. So why will AI and sales be any different?
Potential Risks and Considerations with AI
Despite the extensive benefits, AI integration in sales is not risk-free. Overreliance on technology can expose sales teams to vulnerabilities during tech failures or cyber-attacks. Additionally, data privacy is a critical concern. As AI systems manage massive amounts of data, there’s a heightened risk of data breaches or misuse of customer information.
To mitigate these risks, sales teams should implement robust data security measures. A balanced approach to AI adoption, where human involvement remains central to the process, can help prevent overdependence on technology.
I suggest a human still review the information and content accuracy to avoid AI Hallucination. AI Hallucination is when the AI tool provides false information or information that does not apply.
We can also foresee intellectual property concerns and possible litigation. There are AI tools today to check your content to ensure it has not been plagiarised and this tool can even change your content to different adult reading levels.
Best Practices in Integrating AI into Sales
Some practices can significantly improve the chances of success when adopting AI in sales. Importantly, regularly updating and training AI systems with new data helps to enhance their accuracy and effectiveness. These systems improve with each new piece of information, learning from data and progressively refining their operations.
Sales teams must also strive to balance AI and human interactions. As I shared in my new book: Driving Explosive Growth: A No Smoke and Mirrors Approach to Profitably Growing Your Business https://a.co/d/0BNNFGZ, human-to-human sales skills will become a key differentiator in the future. While AI can handle automation and provide valuable insights, the human touch remains critical for building relationships and managing complex or sensitive client interactions.
However, sales teams should only rely on AI for some decision-making. Despite AI’s predictive capabilities, it cannot fully account for all variables or replace human intuition. Ethical considerations and adherence to data privacy laws are also non-negotiables, as any breaches can lead to legal issues and irreparable damage to a company’s reputation.
Future Role of Salespersons in an AI-Dominant Environment
Just as 79% of top-producing salespeople use social selling today, and I anticipate the data will show in the future, over 80% of top-producing salespeople will leverage AI sales tools in some capacity. With AI becoming deeply entrenched in sales, the salesperson’s role is evolving. Instead of just disseminating information, salespersons are morphing into trusted advisors, providing counsel to their clients based on comprehensive insights drawn from AI-powered tools.
In the future, successful salespersons will need to augment their skills. They must be capable of interpreting and applying AI-generated insights, necessitating a higher degree of data literacy. Soft skills such as empathy, effective communication, building business relationships, and active listening will become even more crucial, as these are areas where AI cannot replace human interaction.
In conclusion, while AI is set to become an indispensable part of sales, it does not eliminate the need for skilled salespersons. Instead, it provides powerful tools that, when used effectively, can significantly enhance sales performance. To thrive in this evolving landscape, sales teams must strategically embrace AI, comprehend its implications, and adapt their skills and approaches accordingly.
Top-performing salespeople will have strong sales skills in creative problem solving, situational awareness, asking great questions, active listing, empathy, business acumen, and the ability to design and deliver a business case.
Do Your Salespeople Have the Right Skills, Beliefs, and Motivations Today to Thrive in an AI-Dominant Environment?
If you would like to understand the level of your sales team’s skills today and the skills they will need to improve as AI generates more conversations that could lead to revenue, let’s schedule a call. AI may make more conversations, but the salespeople must have the selling skills to create conversations that lead to revenue.
