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How can sales leaders best leverage AI to drive increased revenue?


“Sales is a fundamental driver of our economy but, ultimately, it’s about picking up the phone and engaging with a customer to address needs. Data-driven AI must play a larger role in sales to ensure reps are better informed with intelligent engagement of customers.” Chris Harrington, CEO, XANT LinkedIn profile


Shea argues that AI can also automate much of sales forecasting – saving reps and managers time. “Sophisticated organizations spend hours each week on forecasts.” That could turn into selling time or high-value coaching time.


Hidden Data


“The power of AI is that it can make your life easier while also making you better at your job. For sales leaders, that means having an ac- curate forecast at the tips of your fingers. For sales reps, it means having an AI assistant keep you focused on the high-priority deals, not the loudest prospects.”


Adam Honig, CEO, Spiro LinkedIn profile


And AI can also automate the entry of data into CRM tools – sav- ing time and aggravation. “It can extract data from emails, chats, and in-person meetings, loading it into Salesforce.com. That is happening now.” Shea thinks prescriptive analytics’ potential to guide selling is sub- stantial. “AI can advise sellers on where to take conversations based on customer talk in real time. This is nascent now, but will move forward as technology develops.” Like Travis, the Forrester analyst sees AI tools not as replacements for current sales tools but as enhancements to be embedded in these tools to make them smarter and more useful. That is why ma- jor sales IT vendors are seeking to buy or partner with AI specialists. Dan Cilley, CEO of VendorNeutral, says AI is already blurring the lines between sales and marketing. New leads from Website visits or other contacts used to pass to marketing for qualification and addition to CRM systems. Now AI can take at least some new leads and pass them directly to reps based on automated analysis of lead characteristics. For managers, AI can also remove, from pipelines, those pros- pects who are not going anywhere – based on the lack of any favor- able activity. “Reps can no longer hide behind big opportunities, thinking there is hope when there is no real hope.” AI algorithms can hunt for prospect actions or status and spot the hopeless ones. Like Shea, Cilley says AI call monitoring and transcribing is hap- pening today. And he predicts AI tools will also analyze transcripts – looking for tips on next steps. “It’s heading toward providing the right questions to ask in the near future.”


“Thanks to digitalization with sales, we have no shortage of sales-related data – sales activity, contact information, and more. AI captures and understands this vast amount of complex data and provides actionable insights, like when a deal is at risk or why star reps are outperform- ing. AI isn’t the future; it’s here now.” Ryan Longfield, Chief Revenue Officer, Gong.io LinkedIn profile


“Start with AI that improves sales productiv- ity: automated activity logging, intelligent search, contact upkeep. That’s the lowest hanging fruit with immediate revenue impact. Then, as a long-term investment, look for a data-driven platform with AI at its core that will improve with time.” Sergey Medved, Director of Product Management, ClearSlide Linkedin profile


16 | MARCH 2020 SELLING POWER © 2020 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION. In addition to analyzing customer contacts with a selling com-


pany, AI tools can put cookies in competitors’ Websites and learn what a prospect does and asks for on these Websites. That is true competitive intelligence. “That is where the market is heading,” Cilley predicts.


All about Priorities


Again like Shea, Cilley sees AI setting smart priorities for which pros- pects reps should pursue based on their likelihood of buying and the likely amount of purchase. Even when well along in the process of a complex sale, AI can identify all the stakeholders in the prospect’s buying process and alert a rep on whether any of these have been missed in personal contacts already made.


For distributors that sell thousands of products to hundreds or thousands of customers, AI tools can do what reps cannot practically do. It can help optimize prices based on each customer’s ability to spend and other massive data sets sales reps could never effectively analyze without AI tools. Cilley stresses the importance of AI’s machine learning capabilities. These will constantly improve the performance of all AI processes. In a sense, machine learning is like embedding AI in AI itself. Jason Eatmon, chief sales officer of the sales consultancy Sales


Gravy, is skeptical about whether some AI tools really go far be- yond analytics. But Eatmon says one true AI solution is already here – often associated with B2C selling. The AI used on Websites like


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