How to Enhance Sales Using AI

Ready or not, Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. While certain aspects of an AI-driven future might seem somewhat scary, AI can, when used strategically, empower sales organizations to gain a competitive advantage. But just what is AI, anyway? How can it enhance sales efforts and optimize results? And how can your sales team get started with AI? The answers below should make it easier to leverage the power of AI

What Is AI?

Simply put, AI is the ability of machines to perform tasks previously only possible with human intelligence. Thanks to these capabilities, AI can influence sales processes and operations by automating human-like reasoning, communications, and customer interactions.

What are Some Benefits of AI for Sales?

When it comes to sales, AI can make communication with prospects and customers quicker and easier. Beyond this, using AI wisely can help streamline the sales process. AI can also increase overall productivity, accelerate response time, automate lead generation, and, as a result, reduce costs. All of these benefits make it possible to gain a competitive edge.

Using AI in Sales

Drilling deeper into benefits of using AI in sales, consider the following:

• AI can improve communications and accelerate response time. How? By helping sales reps respond more quickly to prospects in a way that respects and mirrors their language of inquiry so the prospect can move easily and comfortably through the sales process.

• AI can automate certain repetitive sales tasks such as lead scoring, appointment scheduling, and sending follow-up emails. AI can further increase productivity by simplifying the creation process for personalized interactions when direct engagement is required. This way, sales reps can serve more customers in less time while still adding the personal touch.

• Using AI in tandem with CRM system data can help a sales organization automate lead generation, too. It can empower sales teams to predict and target high-quality leads by analyzing data from prior customer interactions and behavior. Pursuing leads most likely to buy helps sales teams direct their efforts more effectively.

• Because of these efficiencies, using AI tools for sales can reduce customer acquisition costs and increase margin. By targeting prospects likely to convert, businesses can significantly reduce the number and cost of resources dedicated to low-potential sales and marketing initiatives.

AI Prompts for Sales and Marketing

Let’s go beyond the big-picture benefits of using AI in sales and spotlight some prompts that could be entered into an AI application to automate common sales and marketing tasks. Using ChatGPT, Google Bard, or similar AI programs, here are 10 sample prompts that can be adapted to your specific needs and goals:

• Develop a content marketing strategy to appeal to and engage our target audience

• Generate a personalized sales email for a prospect who has provided contact information on our website

• Create a social media ad relevant to our target audience

• Generate a lead nurturing communications program to keep prospects engaged until ready to purchase

• Generate a list of ways we can automate our sales process to improve productivity

• Create buyer personas that represent our ideal customers for the specific products and services we offer

• Create a Unique Value Proposition that addresses prospect pain points

• Develop a compelling 30-second sales pitch

• Generate a list of possible sales objections a prospect might have along with ways to overcome them

• Create a “call to action” statement that compels prospects to move to the next step in the buying process

Power Players in AI

ChatGPT is the most well-known early AI application. In a natural way, it can generate text, translate languages, write creative content, generate code, answer user questions, and much more. Other AI platforms are also rapidly expanding. For content, these include Jasper, Bard by Google, RYTR, and Writesonic. For graphics, look into MidJourney and Stable Diffusion. Synthesia is an AI application that can generate videos, while Soundraw can generate music. Meanwhile, Slides AI can create slide presentations. The list goes on. If you have a specific task at hand, search to see if there’s an AI app for that!

Proceed With Caution When Using AI for Sales

While using AI tools for sales can produce many benefits, proceed with caution. AI-generated text comes from the enormous data set of online information, not all of which is accurate or current. Also, using AI-generated text as presented could inadvertently replicate information that is rights-protected. Be sure to edit and adapt AI-suggested information to avoid violating rights associated with original source material.

The Bottom Line:

Using AI for sales can yield many benefits for businesses in competitive markets. AI can help streamline the sales process, increase productivity, accelerate response time, automate lead generation, and reduce costs. While AI can create a competitive advantage, it must be used strategically and with caution. Doing your homework is essential.