According to Pew Research, only 10% of Americans are more excited than concerned about AI in daily life. And listening to our colleagues, friends, and family, it’s easy to see that most people are fearful of today’s AI technology… let alone tomorrow’s AI technology.
So while 90% of folks are cowering at our rapid progress, there are 10% who are embracing AI in their lives. They have wisely decided not to stick their heads in the sand. Among this group are B2B sales leaders and salespeople. Sure, most are resisting AI, but a few are leveraging it for massive success.
Look — we know that AI isn’t replacing salespeople. I hope we’re past that. I hope we’re past seeing AI as a direct competitor. (Remember, robots don’t build relationships… Humans do!) AI is not here to compete with us. It’s here to lend a helping hand and supercharge our abilities.
With the help of AI, we’re better equipped to:
- Prospect and generate leads more effectively
- Score leads and qualify more efficiently
- Personalize our approach with cold outreach
- Predictively forecast sales with accuracy
- Improve our closing skills with the help of AI coaching
- Automate mundane tasks for greater productivity
We’re not here to make quota. We’re here to smash quota. So today I’m going to share more about how YOU can use AI in your everyday life to increase your sales numbers.
Some of these tech advancements will surprise you. And my hope is that you leave with practical tips and tricks to put AI to work in your sales role. So buckle up and let’s get into it!
RELATED: 5 AI Sales Tools That Will 10x Your Productivity
Prospecting and Lead Gen
Using tools like Gong.ai, you can prioritize deals, generate outbound cold call briefs and ideal outcomes, and even craft (decent) quality sales scripts and cold emails. Of course, you’ll want to vet everything created by generative AI and put your own human touch on it. But AI does make for a great springboard or launch pad.
Free AI tools are popping up left and right, but the most powerful software is usually locked behind paywalls. That said, it’s worth a day of research (and it’s worth the money!) to find these sales tools that make sense for your sales process and goals. Read my roundup of the best sales stack to level-up your game when it comes to prospecting and lead generation.
Lead Scoring
It’s all about the algorithm. The better AI tools out there can sift through the data and analyze for demographic, role type, company revenue, number of employees, and even prospect engagement with your sales or marketing materials. It can then give you a score from 1-10 — with 1 being the least likely to convert to a customer and 10 being the most likely to convert. Lead scoring is critical in B2B sales, as this allows your team to prioritize your outreach and strike while the iron’s hot.
I always recommend putting a lead-scoring system in place. Even if you decide to do this manually, it’s almost guaranteed to keep you organized and going after the right opportunities at the right time.
RELATED: How to Take the Temperature of Your Leads
Personalized Approach
With the right prompt inputs, generative AI (ChatGPT and Bard) can spit out decent cold email copy and cold calling scripts. But again, the right prompts matter. The more specific, the better. You’ll then take these outputs and put your own human touch on them. This step is important — and I never recommend taking anything from AI as gospel. It does get things wrong. And it can generate really awkward or robotic phrasing. (It is a robot after all.) So it’s imperative that you take a “human-in-the-loop” approach with AI technology.
Also keep in mind that generative AI can also help to automate things like note taking, CRM optimization and scheduling, and other mundane tasks. This allows you to spend less time on busy work and more time on sales activities that actually move the needle.
Predictive Sales Forecasting & Analytics
How much revenue or how many units sold will you or your company generate this week? This month? This quarter? This year? If you’re scratching your head and thinking “I have no idea,” then rest assured there are AI tools that can help.
In fact, one thing that AI is great at is numbers and quantifying data. AI analytics tools can help you predict future sales with amazing accuracy. It can analyze your sales cycle for different buying stages, flag prospect buying signals, and look at past sales numbers to model future sales.
Armed with this intel, you can expand and scale as needed. Predicting sales and forecasting into the future is the perfect use case for AI, and it’s only getting better.
Sales Coaching
Another beautiful thing about AI is that it’s useful for sales coaching. Do you know how your team is performing? What opening lines are most successful? Are your salespeople listening to prospects at least as much as they’re talking? You can get this intel with various sales analysis tools.
Sales analysis tools not only record sales calls, they can give you actionable insights on them. Take the feedback and make small changes over the course of several months to start closing more deals.
Final Words
The net-net of using AI is that you’re almost guaranteed to be more productive and more impactful. And these days, in the competitive sales environment, I bet you’ll take any help you can get.
So don’t shy away from leveraging AI for prospecting and lead generation, lead scoring, personalizing your outreach, predicting and forecasting sales, and coaching up your team (and yourself!). You can even use AI to build out a sales team and scale it to the moon.
Just remember, AI is neither good nor bad. Just like money, AI is a tool. You can wield it for great things if you’re willing to learn how it works. And I highly recommend you do. It could be a pivotal decision you make in your career and life.
Until next time…
Johnny-Lee Reinoso