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Driving sales takes a lot of hard work. It’s a very time-consuming process, where you have to research potential clients, pitch to prospects, and keep following up with them before you close a deal.
Anything that can automate this process will certainly help salespeople close more deals and grow their business faster. The recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI), coupled with the availability of big data and deep learning, have given rise to a few interesting ways that can make it easier to grow your sales.
1. Schedule Meetings
AI-based calendar management tools like x.ai and tevorai.com can help your sales team manage their calendars and appointments automatically. They analyze the calendars of other employees to find free time slots when you can set up a meeting, and they also suggest alternative times, in case of unexpected delays. This saves a lot of time every day and fosters efficient collaboration. You don’t have to waste human hours trying to get the right people together at the right time.
2. Make Notes
One of the most important, yet tedious, aspects of every sales meeting is to take notes. Whether you’re meeting your prospects in person or through an audio call or a videoconference, it’s essential to make detailed notes, so you can effectively follow up later. Tools like clarke.ai and wrapup.co provide a powerful AI-based listening and note-making system that enables you to confidently preside over your sales meetings without the fear of losing any important points. Some of these tools even analyze client behavior and engagement to help you personalize your future communications.
3. Predict Customer Behavior
Did you know that AI systems can even create a customer profile for your business, based on user habits and behavior? By taking into account factors such as gender, age, location, demographics, and sentiments, they can predict what people need or are looking to buy. Salespeople can use these insights to refine their sales pitches and convert more leads into customers.
4. Target Customers Efficiently
If your salespeople don’t target the right prospects, they won’t be able to close many deals. AI-based platforms like Albert.ai use big data to help businesses target a specific group of potential customers, instead of going after a large pool of people. This allows you to execute marketing campaigns more effectively. While a data analyst would take hours to sift through big data sets and find the right prospects, an AI-based tool can do it in a matter of seconds. By empowering data analysts with AI systems, you can quickly and accurately sort through this information and improve your sales performance.
5. Increase Engagement
Today, instead of showing news in chronological order, companies are using AI to show people what they’re interested in. By learning user behavior and interests, companies like Facebook are using AI algorithms to make news feeds smarter and more personalized. What does this mean for your salespeople? This provides businesses more opportunities to put themselves in front of their target audience by posting updates that are related to people’s interests, resulting in more sales opportunities.
6. Provide More Selling Time
AI-driven, voice-controlled digital sales assistants like People.ai make it easy to manage your sales data, while your salespeople can spend more time on the actual process of selling. From managing leads to updating your CRM to improving forecasting, a digital assistant can take care of it all. By eliminating the need to manually enter data, AI-based systems not only ensure better data accuracy, but also leave your sales representatives more time to convert leads.
7. Close More Deals
With AI, you can improve every step of your sales process. You can start by identifying the right prospects. Furthermore, you can use AI-powered CRM systems like Salesforce’s Einstein to get detailed insights, smart recommendations, and predictions. Such powerful information will empower your salespeople to target the right people, personalize their sales pitch, add more value to every sales meeting, and close more deals faster. As data management is completely handled by AI, it will reduce errors and boost efficiency. With the availability of error-free data and actionable insights, your sales team can develop more effective strategies that drive conversions.
AI systems have changed the way businesses operate, and can improve the sales team performance by intelligently automating many of your day-to-day tasks, while adding a personal touch to your prospect interactions. By combining human behavior and AI-based tools, you can certainly organize and even optimize your sales processes.
Originally published at The Association for Talent Development Blogs
