Search engines rely on machine learning to generate optimal results. Doctors harness algorithms to diagnose illnesses and predict their spread. And businesses use artificial intelligence to boost their sales. Sales representatives are often maxing out on productivity. On average, they perform 95 activities a day, almost two-thirds of which aren’t even revenue-generating. Many waste half of their time fruitlessly prospecting customers. To stay competitive, businesses are turning to AI tech for help. According to recent data, artificial intelligence is the top growth area within sales. Over a third of sales teams are already leaning heavily on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Here’s exactly how they are using this tech to boost their productivity and sales.
Predicting Customer Behavior
For one thing, AI helps businesses stay ahead of the curve through predictive analytics. This approach uses existing data to outline likely future scenarios. For example, AI applications can analyze data of past customer behavior to predict what they will do in response to certain factors. This makes it possible to get the timing just right on anything from sales calls to product releases. It also helps businesses fine-tune marketing strategies, email campaigns, and social media advertising.
Personalization
Customers’ expectations have never been higher when it comes to personalization. Statistics show that 75% of people expect companies to tailor content, products, and offers to their interests. To live up to these expectations, sales AIs analyze huge amounts of data on every single customer: their browsing behavior, social media interactions, and previous purchases. As a result, businesses can fine-tune their marketing to your personal preferences. These AI algorithms are the reason you get ads related to your recent Google searches and blog posts that answer questions you didn’t even know you had. They’re also responsible for the 10% coupon in your inbox for a gadget that you thought about buying.
Generating and Qualifying Leads
One of the hardest tasks for sales agents is to identify people to target as potential customers, find out more about them, and then approach them to promote their company’s product. This is called generating and qualifying leads – and AI can make this typically time-consuming process a lot more efficient. In fact, a study in the Harvard Business Review found that companies using AI can increase leads by over 50%. The way it does that is by creating customer profiles.
These days, businesses gather massive amounts of data on anyone they interact with. Most of that data is stored in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. AI can dig through these gigantic databases and help businesses gain insights into average and individual customer behavior. It can filter out which kinds of people are interested in particular products and which sales strategies have worked on which type of customers in the past. Using this knowledge, sales representatives are better able to gauge who is a promising potential customer and how best to approach them.
Processing Natural Language
Most modern business phone systems use Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. This means that audio signals are transmitted as digital packages via the web rather than through traditional phone lines. As a result, AIs can harness these spoken interactions for sales purposes through natural language processing (NLP). For example, NLP can transcribe sales calls in real-time and analyze them in-depth. It can then give sales agents insights into customer sentiment, provide important background info – and even assess if a deal is won or lost. After the call, the same AI can break long conversations down into highlights, giving agents actionable feedback for future interactions. One study found that using AI in such a way reduced call time by 60-70%.
Automating Sales Tasks
Automating repetitive tasks saves time and increases sales for businesses. From tracking social media ads and scheduling follow-up sales calls to sending automated emails, countless sales activities can be handed off to an AI. This leaves sales reps with greater amounts of time to deal with more challenging, revenue-generating tasks. It also ensures that potential customers won’t feel neglected.
Smart Assistants for Sales Reps
It sounds a lot like Jarvis – a virtual assistant that places all the information you need at any given moment at your fingertips. For many sales reps, AI has made this a reality. Smart assistants can automatically pull useful data from a CRM during customer calls, chats, or email exchanges and feed new information back into it. Whether it’s data on past exchanges or particular personal preferences, this info helps agents tailor communication and make it more effective.
