Introduction: the end of the sales profession?

Long gone are the days of cold calling and door knocking. With the rise of advanced digital capabilities, automation, and now artificial intelligence tools, many of the original functions of the salesperson can be handled with much greater efficiency and accuracy. For instance, AI can identify a quantity of high-quality prospects and start the conversation all by itself. In fact, AI can help sales managers handle the whole sales process, from pipeline development to closing deals. AI in sales is clearly the future.

The question, then, is what role is left for the salesperson? The answer: the automation of time-consuming, repetitive, and inaccurate methods will leave sales teams with the freedom to focus on high-value activities and best sales techniques, such as strategizing and making the calls that really count. Of course, we’re also going to look precisely at how this will happen and how to use AI in your sales workflow.

‍

Sales: why the changing landscape?

The nature of sales has certainly changed, and it’s not difficult to see why. Sellers are still largely associated with their cold-calling ancestors, and cold-callers have a bad reputation. They are remembered for pressure selling too good to be true cure-alls or dubious wares thinly disguised as useful. Even if this reputation is largely unfair, it comes from a core truth about cold callers: they focus on volume rather than quality. 

Even though cold-calling has been surpassed by more modern selling techniques, the problem of quantity over quality has remained - up until the introduction of AI. Manual email outreach (essentially cold-calling V2) brought about a marginal improvement in terms of time taken, and certainly allowed sales reps to reach prospects at higher quantities, but this didn’t result in any noticeable quality improvement. This is a problem in the modern day where, as an article in Forbes points out, ‘it’s not about volume anymore; it’s about providing value to the customer and only contacting those people who are potentially interested in your offer.’ Thankfully, this is where artificial intelligence and the unique capabilities of machine learning come in. Recent developments in AI have changed the game, enabling business owners to discover highly qualified leads and message them at scale.

AI for lead generation is now one of the best sales techniques. AI can identify leads which are likely to be interested in your business whilst filtering out those less likely to buy and, on top of that, AI can do it at volume. By providing value to the customer in this way, the reputation of salespeople becomes one of expertise – in market analysis and customer satisfaction – rather than of individuals only focused on making a sale, no matter what. 

‍

Sales automation process: the rise of the new salesperson

The main reason sales have changed with the advent of digital advances is due to the ready availability of customer data. Data and digital techniques now lie at the heart of both marketing and sales teams. Accordingly, the new role of salespeople has now more to do with understanding buyer behavior. As Firestarter suggest, this enables salespeople to align specific content, or sales propositions, with stages in the customer trajectory through a company’s sales funnel. As a result, tools such as Mixpanel or HubSpot which enable businesses to track user engagement with their product and provide clear visualization of this data, have now become invaluable to the sales process. 

‍

Artificial Intelligence: the transformation of automation

Data is hugely valuable and has revolutionized the ease and effectiveness of the sales process, yet it does come with its fair share of downsides. Due to the large quantities of data which needs to be maintained in CRMs, there is a corresponding need for time-consuming data entry and maintenance. Thankfully, artificial intelligence is particularly good with data. 

Artificial intelligence can, in the words of the Harvard Business Review, ‘reverse administrative creep’ by automatically updating CRM data, analyzing sales conversations, lead generation, reaching out to prospects, and crafting the perfect emails.  Indeed, AI – unlike standard forms of automation – doesn’t rely solely on historical data but utilizes data-driven insights to optimize results, all while making mundane manual techniques redundant. 

‍

AI and sales: a match made in heaven?

Sales is a profession which is, in fact, perfectly primed to incorporate AI into its processes. This is largely due to the specific nature of the data generated during sales processes. Selling utilizes a variety of language mediums, such as text from emails or audio from calls. All these language-based forms of data, although useful, are immensely time-consuming to go through. Thankfully, these are ‘exactly the types of unstructured data [generative AI models] are designed to work with,’ (Harvard Business Review).  In short, machine learning really shines when applied to sales functions.

AI is primed to optimize sales processes based on the forms of data that sales generate. For instance, AI can automatically use this data to write perfect emails which use relevant information lifted from prior sales conversations or emails. It can also gather and utilize this data to provide insights to sales teams which helps them maximize their ability to meet customer requirements. This can improve your conversion rate, which means more revenue for your business.

But it’s not just language-based data that AI can use. AI can also track how a lead interacts with a company’s digital touchpoints, identifying certain behaviors that would signify genuine interest which allows sales teams to customize their strategies accordingly. Or it can reach out to key leads automatically, both improving a sales teams’ targeting and expanding their reach. 

In short Artificial Intelligence provides the tools to gather sales information, optimize data analysis, and ultimately boost what sellers do best – sell. 

‍

AI tools: AI for sales teams

The pace of developments in AI is truly unbelievable, and there are now a multitude of AI tools springing up. However, this choice-overload, coupled with a misunderstanding over what ‘artificial intelligence’ actually is, can make it difficult for businesses to start seriously considering it as a viable option for their teams. 

To help with the skepticism, we’ll list three AI sales tools that can automate some crucial sales processes and unlock the potential of sales teams. We’ll also show how to use AI in sales and how easily these can be integrated into a workflow with revolutionizing effect.  For an article on the five most useful AI tools for businesses, this one focuses on five completely unrelated areas of business where AI can help.

‍

Microsoft Viva Sales: the perfect sales emails

The first AI sales tool we’re considering is Microsoft’s Viva Sales. This AI tool produces the perfect emails by leveraging sales information taken from calls, as well as data residing in a company’s CRM. It will automatically pick out information relating to the product being sold, such as number of units and price, for instance. It will also capture a variety of other details, such as meeting highlights, questions asked, and follow-ups. From this information, Microsoft’s Viva Sales can then produce the perfect email, such as one detailing follow-up steps for the customer to take. If this doesn’t seem helpful enough, the AI sales tool can even analyze conversations to provide the sales team with a recommended best action. 

‍

Outreach: sales information all in one place

Another excellent AI sales tool is Outreach. This AI tool goes one step further than Microsoft’s Viva Sales by aiming to keep all relevant sales information in one place. A notable capability is its ability to identify the efficiency of your team’s pipeline conversion in each sales stage or forecast category, and its ability to keep this updated on an ongoing basis. It will also keep information up to date for all deals, such as the size of the opportunity, the close date, and the vital next steps. Outreach also creates success plans which helps buyers and sellers ensure their plans are aligned and that their  deals are closed on time. The AI sales tool even provides analytics on teamwide performance. 

One of Outreach AI’s most useful features is its forecasting function. AI uses vast historical data to accurately predict future sales trends and to indicate those deals or prospects which are most likely to be successful. This is striking given that ‘as many as 80% of sales organizations admit to having a forecast accuracy not greater than 75%’ (HubSpot). Outreach strives to improve this figure with its AI powered forecasting. This is valuable to sales teams because it can provide recommendations for prospects, based on likelihood to buy and sales-size. 

Since the above only captures a handful of the myriad functions Outreach offers, we recommend watching this video to get a full sense of its capabilities. 

‍

Kular: the final word in cold calling

Unlike the other two tools, Kular focuses on optimizing efficiency from the very start of the sales process. Kular uses a custom AI algorithm to find customers best suited to your company and it can then instantly follow up with automated AI generated emails. In short, the AI sales tool can automate the whole process up to the point of making that all-important call which closes the deal. The flawless execution of this task, made to look easy by the AI tool, belies the hours it would normally take to manually identify so many high-potential leads.

Whereas the first two AI tools are particularly useful for fully developed sales teams, Kular really comes into its own for smaller teams. In fact, it is even more useful for business leaders than sales executives. Consider for instance a professional service firm where a skilled consultant with limited sales experience is setting up an enterprise, or any small business or startup trying to get off the ground. In these contexts, Kular can replace a large function of a sales team by handling lead generation, cold emailing, and call booking - thereby unlocking time to focus on the conversations that will lead to a sale. With Kular, the days of cold-calling are well and truly over.

‍

The future: harmony of artificial and human intelligence

As we’ve seen, sales teams have come a long way from the days of cold-calling, door-knocking, and manual email outreach. AI is increasingly able to replace sales teams for early-stage and smaller companies. But there’s no doubt that sales experts will maintain a vital role in the process going forward. Even in smaller companies, a human touch is still important, in building rapport with clients and closing demos

This is certainly the case for bigger companies with more complex sales processes. Current events make this clear: why else did Google Cloud Services triple its sales force within a year to compete with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft which stood at ten times the size? As The Harvard Business Review shrewdly puts it, ‘in such complex situations, digital connections alone can’t match salespeople’s ability to bridge mutual knowledge gaps with new customers.’ 

So it’s certainly not true that AI will replace salespeople. In fact, AI even fosters a human-first approach which helps companies engage customers in far richer and mutually beneficial interactions. Sales teams can now focus their energy and expertise on calls with people who are truly interested in the product. This means that salespeople can build relationships with the buyer instead of just trying to make a sale. In turn, this creates a mutual respect between buyer and seller which makes selling more enjoyable and beneficial for both. 

Even though the sales call is all-important, let’s not forget the work that goes on before that call is reached which AI helps with. Advances in technology have helped sales teams become market experts, skilled in the use and understanding of advanced analytics and data-driven methods. Meanwhile, only the most painstaking tasks such as scouring the internet for the right leads are being handled by AI assistants. The future is about sellers really understanding their customer base and providing value to those customers through quality human interactions, and it is human-AI symbiosis that opens the door.

‍