Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to machines that have been programmed to think like humans and imitate their actions. This term also applies to machines that demonstrate characteristics associated with the human mind, such as learning and problem-solving.
Businesses around the world are discovering that AI can take care of a variety of sales-related tasks. As a result, sales teams can focus on building relationships instead of entering data or crunching numbers. For example, you can use AI to automate various processes, including automatic sales territory creation.
Here are five ways that AI is changing the sales game in 2021.
- Increasing Lead Generation
Generating leads is a challenge facing many businesses. After all, companies have to compete against the myriad of brands that are constantly vying for consumers’ attention. Fortunately, AI is already making it easier for sales teams to find qualified leads. How? You ask.
Well, to begin with, AI can nurture leads, offer customer support, and provide information to prospects. AI can also help sales teams discover new leads by analyzing the people who visit their website, tracking leads as they engage with content, and exploring which leads have the most value. Finally, AI-powered automation tools such as chatbots and CRMs can gather leads and automatically assign them to salespeople.
- Improving The Quality of Leads
In lead generation, the golden rule is quality over quantity. Fortunately, AI makes it easy to qualify leads. For instance, an AI-powered chatbot can ask leads qualifying questions. As a result, only qualified leads will be passed on to the sales team, saving everyone time. AI can also help sales reps get closer to the close by providing resources to prospects that educate them and help overcome their objections.
- Providing Valuable Lead Information
AI makes it possible for sales teams to learn valuable information about a lead’s chances of converting. This is accomplished by tracking and interpreting lead behavior. For example, AI can track the pages a prospect visits on a website and the amount of time they spend reading a blog post. Using this information, AI systems can provide sales reps with information they can use to further move a prospect along the sales funnel or close the sale. For instance, by indicating that a prospect has visited the website several times and what pages they looked at, the sales rep will know how best to approach them. Alternatively, the AI might provide a list of leads that visited the service page, indicating to sales reps that these prospects are close to converting.
- Nurturing Leads Like a Human
Lead nurturing used to require that a salesperson engage directly with a prospect. It was not something that could be automated because the persuasion techniques of closing a sale required a human touch. Then AI came along and changed all that. With AI, it’s now possible to program chatbots to respond to leads as a human would. These AI chatbots can hold a natural-sounding conversation and respond appropriately to queries. Their capabilities include explaining complex problems, telling stories, and coming up with answers that they haven’t been programmed with. Plus, AI chatbots can collect and input all the lead information they collect into a CRM so a sales rep can connect with a lead without missing a beat.
- Taking Care of Preparing Contracts
A time-consuming task that many sales teams face is preparing contracts. Fortunately, the sophistication of AI programs makes it possible for a contract to be prepared automatically for you. AI programs can go through emails, chat messages, and phone calls to create a contract based on what the customer and sales reps agreed on. They can also pull renewal dates, organize information to prevent disputes and highlight areas that need renegotiation.
Summary
From gathering customer information to qualifying leads to interacting with prospects and creating contracts, AI is changing the sales game by streamlining and automating processing. As a result, the sales process is becoming more efficient and more effective. Therefore, it would behoove all companies to start investing in AI so as not to be left behind.
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