Decipher intentions, predict results: A data-optimized sales strategy
Ten years ago, unlocking insights with data was a competitive advantage. Today it’s a competitive necessity for a successful sales strategy.
Most of us are familiar with the term “time is money” and how it seems like we don’t have enough of either. For a sales rep, this can be especially true when so much of their performance and earning potential is tied to outcomes and not actions. A hundred good conversations or emails might result in nothing, but the right conversation with the right prospect can seal the deal.
Organizations have tried to help their sellers by automating early-stage engagement via marketing. But as B2B leads flow into the sales funnel, engagement needs to be far more focused and tailored to the prospects. Enter generative AI for sales.
Boosting sales engagement with generative AI
Sellers don’t tend to be the earliest adopters of technology, but generative AI might be the exception because it could have the power to effectively add more time back in their day.
Selling is about consistent engagement and tailored, often routine, interactions with prospects and customers. Often that engagement is very similar across clients with only a few copy/paste changes, but it can also be highly tailored to address specific challenges or concerns that crop up during discovery.
Generative AI has the power to accelerate these highly customized engagements without losing the critical details the prospect or customer needs to hear. This can happen when AI technology is linked effectively to company-specific data such as:
- Meeting transcripts
- Audio recordings
- Product messaging
- Competitive differentiators
Fine-tuned customer engagements help sellers navigate the hard questions to determine the strength of buying intent, effectively helping the seller and the intelligent sales automation platform segment opportunities by strength.
Intelligent selling hinges on good data
AI-powered sales solutions are quickly becoming one of the most effective tools to help sellers identify where they should focus and what they should focus on.
Generative AI will play a large role in future sales engagement, impacting all aspects of selling, including:
- Customized cold outreach
- Account and opportunity highlights
- Email and meeting responses
- Proposal request responses
- Intelligent scheduling
But like all other forms of intelligence, outcomes are only as good as the inputs.
Intelligent selling is all about helping sellers focus on the right subset of opportunities and taking the right actions to progress each from pipeline to forecast to close. However, predictive scoring, data-driven recommendations, opportunity insights, relationship intelligence, and more are all driven by information.
The better information AI-enabled sales automation systems utilize, the better recommendations and insights they produce for sellers.
Sellers still in control
All the recent news about AI has created a lot of fear about potential job loss across many industries and professions. However, generative AI isn’t about replacing salespeople. Rather, it’s about easing the seller’s daily work, enabling customized sales engagement more scalable.
As organizations leverage generative AI for sales, they need to communicate the benefits clearly and assure sellers that robots aren’t taking their jobs. Training needs to show how AI can help streamline sales processes and that sellers will be able to organically use AI capabilities within their natural sales flow.
For example, sellers will want to tweak content generated by AI to add their flavor in most situations. They can accept or reject recommendations and provide feedback to improve AI results.
Once sellers see how AI can relieve some of the more routine parts of their job to boost their effectiveness, they’ll be on board. Then they can focus on becoming the trusted advisors that customers value.
Managing sales content to create confident sellers and buyers
With limited time in front of a buyer, content can be the secret weapon. It does the selling when the seller isn't in the room, but must be well-planned, engaging, and relevant.
The brave new world of B2B sales
Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize B2B sales engagement. By helping sellers create compelling messages for every prospect and situation, AI will improve response rates. With better engagement, sales velocity can soar, helping organizations reach their goals faster.
