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Discover how arming your reps with AI encourages more successful conversations and closes more sales.

It’s getting more difficult for sales leaders to make their numbers. Why? According to Salesforce’s State of Sales report, it’s because prospects and customers are becoming inundated with messages that compete for their attention. Customer needs have grown more sophisticated, their motivations have shifted from price to value, and they expect consistent service across every interaction with a sales rep. Other challenges facing sales teams include inconsistent training and having to adhere to admin-heavy sales processes.

The good news is that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a powerful weapon in these ongoing battles. By generating and analyzing high-quality data at scale, AI can guide reps to target the right leads, have better conversations with prospects and boost sales. Here are some key ways AI is helping sales professionals make every conversation great.

Structuring raw data

Almost all the information brands and customers produce in today’s data-rich world is unstructured. Social media feeds, email, reviews and phone conversations are all potential data goldmines that reps can use to extract valuable insights. However, the unstructured nature of this data makes building an overall picture to spot patterns extremely difficult.

One of the biggest benefits AI offers sales teams is that it can process huge amounts of data quickly and easily. In a fraction of the time it would take a human, AI-enriched computer systems can add structure to unstructured data, opening new avenues for analysis and arming your sales team with the tools needed to make conversations more productive.

For example, using AI in conjunction with a speech analytics solution allows sales managers to easily access the once abstract insights captured during thousands of hours’ worth of sales calls. Speech analytics can quickly transcribe these conversations into data that AI can mine to review and understand customer sentiment and motivations, as well as how sales reps are communicating with customers and representing the brand during sales calls.

Sales leaders can use these insights to document the customer motivations that impact purchase, improve their processes, and foster more personalized, helpful and positive conversations that lead to higher conversion rates. They can also use the data to identify top sales performers, analyze the behaviors that make them successful, and build training and onboarding programs that help underperformers replicate the best practices of the top performers. Gamification software is a great tool to incentivize and encourage top-performing behavior, and arm your reps with the knowledge and motivation to say the right things to the right people at the right times.

Matching the right sales rep to the right lead

As far as technology has advanced, closing sales still comes down to establishing personal connections with customers. AI’s machine-learning capabilities can help fuel these types of connections by pairing reps with specific customers.

By tapping into the data in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform, AI can analyze trends in your data to help you pick the leads that are most likely to convert. This enables you to build outbound call lists that target your hottest prospects. By coupling AI with technologies like gamification you can also identify the behaviors of your best performing reps and then create motivational incentives to encourage under performers to replicate the practices of your sales winners. Plus, having the right data-driven context and history for inbound and outbound sales calls enables reps to tailor their call cadences to the best calling times to the next-best prospects.

More time for building quality sales relationships

More than 60 percent of sales teams say too much time spent on admin tasks is their top sales challenge, according to Salesforce’s State of Sales report.

Take a minute to think about how much time your team spends researching prospects, dialing phone numbers and entering information into the CRM. If you’re like most sales teams, your reps will only have a third of the day left to dedicate to selling. AI can help inside sales teams achieve higher productivity by automating these processes.

By embracing the new era of AI-powered lead generation, teams can eliminate the obstacles of trawling through call, email and customer data, and spend more time talking with leads. During these AI-guided conversations, reps can quickly surface insights, relevant offers and product information that will allow them to build better customer relationships and establish the emotive interactions that are so key to converting leads.

Generating clearer upselling opportunities

It’s widely accepted that it costs between four and six times more to acquire a new customer than keep an existing one. To remain successful, this means every business needs to find the right balance between chasing new sales and engaging loyal customers. AI can provide a helping hand by generating clearer upsell opportunities.

The AI powering Salesforce’s Sales Cloud Einstein, for example, includes an Opportunity and Accounts feature. It analyzes your CRM data, looking for unique patterns and customer trigger points, identifying when deals are on track or at risk. As a result, the intelligent software offers sales reps recommendations in real-time, shaping conversations that close sales.

Final thoughts

AI-enhanced selling can lead to higher team productivity, more consistency in performance and increased potential of hitting sales goals. By enabling their teams to make every conversation great, sales leaders can create an army fit to bring into any sales battle with the confidence they will win.   

About the Author: Olivier Gachot is Executive Vice President of North America Sales at NewVoiceMedia (News - Alert), responsible for accelerating growth through new customer acquisition and maintaining successful and trusted partnerships with existing customers. Olivier is a proven leader in building and transforming SaaS (News - Alert) companies at scale on a global basis. His 20+ years of experience include leading several companies from early years to successful IPO and acquisitions.