How to score your first AI quick wins: Sales AI

Making big changes in your organisation or department such as kick-starting Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a risky move if things don’t go to plan. Getting your team on board from the start is key to longterm success, which is why it’s so important to have an easy way in, such as one of our quick win AI projects. Not only do quick wins provide immediate value for your company or department, but they help build momentum among your team and change attitudes toward your projects. In this edition, we will discuss how to infuse your sales process with AI for ultimate results.

Data-driven sales

You’ve probably heard that AI is going to transform every industry, and naturally it is already taking off in some more than others. Using AI to boost sales has been one of those hot areas, with companies such as Netflix and Uber using sophisticated algorithms to increase engagement, boost the user experience and generate more sales. But you don’t have to start with mind-blowing AI projects to optimise your company model and bring in the deals, you can use some far simpler tools to start practicing AI within your sales department to build up confidence around AI for the bigger projects your company might want to take on later.

The value

It is every salesperson’s dream to speed up sales, increase conversion rates and close more deals, and with AI tools such as Sales Insights for Microsoft’s CRM, Dynamics 365 and Einstein for Salesforce, that is entirely possible. While salespeople go off past experience and intuition to decide who to target and when, AI tools bring a lot to the table (tonnes of anonymised data, to be precise) to help salespeople better understand how people will perceive their sales advances and choose the right moments to engage with certain leads.

AI tools can suggest when to offer discounts, for how much, and to who to increase the likelihood of them being accepted without giving away more than necessary in order to seal the deal. They can also identify which prospects are more likely to take you up on upsells and suggest products they are likely to be interested in. In fact, some tools can handle prospecting from start to finish, nurturing the customer relationship and freeing up salespeople to focus on that final detail where some human input might be necessary and make the sale.

AI tools for sales can help determine which leads need your attention and which deals are likely to complete, they can pick up patterns of success and help you replicate these tactics throughout your team, they can even track things like sentiment, helping your team step in at the right places more often leading to greater success.

Some offer the ability to evaluate sales calls. Both our recommended CRMs offer this feature allowing you to identify statistics like a talk-to-listen ratio, talk speed, customer sentiment and even topics of conversation among top sellers on the team. Tracking things like brand mentions can bring to light up and coming competitors, or featured keywords might surface new sales opportunities. Being able to analyse these statistics means that sales teams can replicate what is working for top sellers and avoid techniques or topics that are producing negative sentiment to carry out more successful calls.

A simple off-the-shelf AI CRM solution costs little to implement but can bring huge gains.

The project: choosing an intelligent CRM tool

Choosing an AI sales tool will largely depend on systems that you already use and your preferences as the two we recommend have a lot of similar features. For those using Office 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365 will be an obvious choice, while Salesforce has been a strong contender for many years and is only just being challenged by Microsoft. Both tools have similar offerings and of course there are other AI-infused CRM tools available which may relate more to your business or be easier to transition to.

It doesn’t matter so much which tool you use, as long as you start using AI in your sales process! We have already discussed the benefits of many of these features, so here is a list of some of the best AI features to look out for when choosing an intelligent CRM tool.

• Ability to evaluate sales calls
• Lead prospecting and prioritisation
• Predictive forecasting
• Expert recommendations
• Performance and productivity hacks
• Coaching insights

In addition to using an AI-infused CRM tool, there are plenty of other sales tools on offer that can smooth over individual processes like scheduling meetings or assessing a prospect’s personality. Nudge assists with relationship management and identifies risk of churn while Crystal offers personality insights and suggests the best ways to speak to certain leads and Clara Labs and Calendar offer automated meeting scheduling. There are plenty of timesaving AI tools or all-inclusive packages that can automate admin, save time and allow salespeople to focus on what matters, all while winning at AI.

More quick wins

If this gave you a clearer understanding of AI , we hope that you try this project in order to automate some processes and make the most of AI in your sales process. If you already jumped in the pool with an AI infused sales process, perhaps you’d like to try another project. Check out our free downloadable 7 Quick Win Projects guide - link no longer works for getting your business started with AI projects.