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Whether you realize it or not, artificial intelligence (“AI”) is already a part of your life, and for sales leaders today, that’s a great thing!
The most basic way to describe artificial intelligence is it’s the idea of giving machines the capabilities to act like they have a human brain. AI is a pretty interesting and powerful tool, which is why the best sales leaders should be taking advantage of its benefits today.
There are some old school sales managers that may argue against it. They feel it seems backwards to be touting the positives of computers-as-humans in a world that stresses the importance of “people buying from people”. But, hear me out on this one. Artificial intelligence can help the sales world by; saving time, saving money, increasing effectiveness, and adding an increased level of accuracy to forecasting.
Artificial Intelligence Helps Sales Managers Save Their Team’s Time
Sales managers need their reps to log their calls and keep detailed notes on all their deals’ stages and estimated values. All of this helps the manager have an accurate view of their team’s pipelines and be able to manage them the best with insight into what deals they need to be working on .
An up-to-date CRM is a necessity for sales managers, but nobody wants salespeople to be wasting their time doing administrative tasks when they should be out selling and bringing in more money to the company.
This is where artificial intelligence can enhance the life of reps by giving them more time to stay focused on that important human interaction piece of sales – selling.
1. Getting sales notes into your CRM
After your rep finish a sales call, getting notes into your CRM on how it went and creating the next action can easily be handled with the help of AI. A program that conversationally walks the rep through a line of questioning about their call and adds notes to the database with just a few taps can save precious minutes.
Based on the salesperson’s answers of how the call went, AI can then provide proactive suggestions on next steps, which are then created with ease. Wasting valuable selling time on typing up long winded recaps of each call, and manually making a to-do lists, are things of the past.
2. Helping to schedule meetings
Let’s now pretend your rep has a wonderful sales call and is ready to schedule a follow-up meeting. Having a program help guide them along to set that action in your CRM is one step, but then they need to actually send a meeting request off to their client.
Very few reps have an assistant to schedule and confirm meetings for them. But a virtual assistant is available to anyone. Having a computer help set up a time that works for all parties can save a few minutes from a rep’s day, so they can focus on more calls and more deals. Sales leaders, like you, will surely like the sound of that.
3. Acting as a personal sales assistant
Just as AI can act as a meeting scheduler, it can also take on other secretarial duties that waste time for salespeople. In particular, imagine AI as a contact creator. If a sales rep has a possible lead from a business card they got at a networking party, chances are they’ll just shoot off a quick email before entering the contact’s information into your CRM. They probably do this for two reasons: they’re not sure if this is a worthy prospect to be part of your database AND they’re lazy. Entering new contacts takes time, valuable time.
Artificial intelligence can come into play here by culling through your sales reps’ emails and suggesting who they should add into your CRM as a contact. And then of course, creating that contact record and opportunity for them.
Some programs also allow you to forward emails to a generic email address that will perform the tasks you are asking, such as: add this contact, update opportunity, etc. Time saving stuff!
Related: Don’t Judge Your Prospects by Their Cover
4. Building out a smart pipeline
If your team currently is manually building out their pipeline, then AI is here to help.
Once your AI-powered sales platform has culled through your reps’ emails, calendars, and phone interactions to know what deals they are working on and created those opportunities for them, your CRM can then build out a pipeline.
Based on the sales stage, a Proactive CRM should have the capabilities to recommend different actions and forecast weighting. AI systems are so smart that they can determine a priority ranking for each opportunity. This not only saves sales reps’ time, but eliminates human emotions and error, thus keep your sales team’s pipelines clean and accurate.
For sales leaders, an accurate forecast is imperative, and this can only happen if each and every sales rep’s pipeline are up to date and correctly prioritized.