Are You Leveraging the Power of AI in Your daily sales activities?
Imagine freeing up your time for more critical sales activities like preparing for a presentation, strategising with clients and nurturing client relationships?
Generative AI is driving a transformative shift in the B2B sales landscape that is impossible to ignore. And as salespeople, you have a massive advantage if you know how to leverage these tools.
Leveraging advanced algorithms, this technology can produce unique content, suggest personalised sales pitches, and even simulate human-like conversation, forever changing the dynamics of B2B selling.
The other day, my client and I were writing a difficult email to respond to one of their end-users. In the past, we could have spent hours writing the email, resulting in a difficult conversation. We wrote several versions using AI and sent the perfect email response in 20 minutes! It's undeniable that AI has assisted us in delivering a concise and clear email in a shorter amount of time.
Future of Work
In LinkedIn's Future of Work Report, 59% of a salesperson's tasks can be augmented by Generative Ai, including Cold Calling, Retail Sales, Outside Sales, Sales Processes, and Inside Sales. Scary right?
But instead of being scared, sales teams should think of Generative AI as hiring another sales team. Help the sales team increase productivity and efficiency while using data to build account profiling, prospecting, lead generation and sales strategies.
Click on the image below to download a copy of LinkedIn's Future of Work Report 2023.
Come to think of it, how much of the salesperson's time is spent in selling? These are human conversations, face-to-face, video or other channels?
Did you know that ONLY 32% of the average salesperson's workweek is spent selling?
-2022 report by Sales Mastery.
BCG (Boston Consulting Group) cited 4 use cases of Generative AI in sales.
1. The Ultimate Sales Assistant.
When I was an account manager, the most dreadful task for me was updating the CRM. While I acknowledge the importance of this task, it is not my jam!😆
I love sales because of the adventure of meeting new people, building relationships and the thrill of closing deals!
Now, Generative AI can brief salespeople before calls and updating the CRM system. Updating the CRM system is crucial because poor-quality customer data can prevent companies from realising the value of their CRM system. Research shows that many sales managers do not actively use their CRM system or only use it for data storage.
However, sales people often need to pay more attention to updating the CRM system after customer meetings, leading to the accumulation of rogue data and hindering data quality. Some account managers pass this task to an inside sales rep or admins, wasting time and resources. A GenAI assistant can scan emails, conversations, and client interactions to update or prepare the data for rep approval.
Microsoft Copilot is going in this direction, and I am excited to see how they can integrate this with third party CRMs.
How about reading RFPs (Request for Proposal)? Instead of going through tons of pages and manually highlighting the most important information and noting action items, you can use Notion.So to do this for you and streamline the process!
And recently, I have been using Beautiful.Ai for client presentations. It allowed me to create visual diagrams that improve communication and emphasize the important message.
2. A Data Scientist Extraordinaire.
You can have a rockstar data scientist at your fingertips:
Identifying top-priority prospects and the best time to engage with them.
Suggesting opportunities for cross-selling and effective strategies for similar prospects.
Determining the most impactful sales materials based on the solution or competitive positioning.
Offering advice on appropriate discounts based on customer behaviour and industry/regional trends to maximise conversions while avoiding excessive discounting.
The GenAI data scientist cuts through the overwhelming analytics and AI capabilities that can overwhelm sales reps with too much data or provide inadequate information. Instead, they provide clear and actionable guidance.
We use Otter.Ai in meetings and Loom for Asynch collaboration. Despite being in different time zones, we use our time better and are well-aligned as a team.
3. A Personal Marketer.
Another exciting use case of Generative AI in sales is its role as a personal marketer.
With the help of AI-powered algorithms, sales professionals can create personalised marketing content and campaigns tailored to individual prospects. Generative AI can analyse customer preferences, browsing history, and other relevant data to generate targeted marketing messages that resonate with each prospect.
A personalised approach and deeper understanding of prospects give us a bigger chance of getting a positive response. In my experience, cold emails and cold calling never work.
In my team, I use Jasper.Ai. This has been an incredible tool for me and my clients. You can use Chat GPT, Copy.AI and many more apps in the market. Creating AI prompts are key with these Ai tools.
4. The Best Sales Coach.
Lastly, Generative AI can be the best sales coach a sales professional could ask for.
It can analyse sales conversations, identify strengths and weaknesses, and provide real-time feedback and coaching. Generative AI can help sales professionals improve their communication skills, overcome objections, and close deals more effectively by analysing speech patterns, tone of voice, and other vital indicators. With its continuous monitoring and feedback capabilities, Generative AI ensures that sales professionals are always at the top of their game.
Have you tried rehearsing your slide show with Speaker Coach on PowerPoint? Check it out.
The snapshot below of my results using Speaker Coach 😊. Not too shabby eh?
More importantly, how can you stay relevant and highly effective as a salesperson in the age of AI?
Now that we have gained more knowledge about Generative AI, I strongly believe that it does not imply the redundancy of human salespeople.Quite the contrary, B2B salespeople have a crucial role in harnessing the potential of this technology.
Here are a three key ways:
Leverage AI, Don't Fear It: Embrace the capabilities of generative AI and use them to enhance your sales strategies. Utilise AI-generated content to supplement your pitches, but remember that the human touch is irreplaceable.
Focus on your Foundation Core Skills, like Emotional Intelligence: While AI can handle data and content, it cannot replicate the emotional intelligence of humans. Therefore, focus on building solid and genuine relationships with clients.
Constant Learning and Adaptation: As AI technology evolves, so should you. Stay abreast of the latest advancements in AI and continuously adapt your strategies to leverage these developments.
While generative AI revolutionises the B2B sales landscape, it does not make human salespeople irrelevant.
Instead, it presents an opportunity for salespeople to augment their skills and deliver more value to clients. By embracing AI and focusing on human-centric skills, practising empathy and building relationships, B2B salespeople can stay relevant and high-performing in the era of AI.
More than ever, the most emotionally intelligent salesperson who understands how to use AI tools will dominate the next exciting years ahead of us!
How do you use Generative AI to improve your sales productivity and efficiency?
Keep an eye out for our next week's edition, where I'll be sharing a cool framework on developing your emotional intelligence skills. You will be able to navigate your personal and professional relationships more effectively, communicate more empathetically, and help enable your clients to make decisions.
Also, an update on the Sales Maturity Assessment Project. I am thrilled with the progress we have made so far and are confident that the visual mental model will greatly enhance the Sales Maturity Assessment Project. Stay tuned for further developments!
Thanks for reading, I appreciate you.
See you next week!
Ren
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