One of the most annoying things for sales executives were logging in your CRM and continuously writing the same kind of emails and outreach to leads. With the rise of generative AI, the everyday steps of sales processes are undergoing a massive transformation. AI tools are vital in every step of the sales process as it increases efficiency and saves so much time. Measuring my own current ratios and comparing that pre-ai shows me the value of using AI in every step and gives me more time to focus on the human-side of sales. In this blog an overview of different tooling for different stages of the sales process are provided.
1. Lead Generation
Traditionally, lead generation involved manual search, cold calls, and educated guesses using tools like Linkedin Sales Navigator. AI streamlines this by analyzing large amounts of data to identify potential leads based on behaviors, interests, and online patterns. Tools like InsideSales predict which leads are most likely to convert, helping to prioritize efforts.
2. Email or Linkedin outreach
AI can create personalized emails based on a lead’s behavior, preferences, and past interactions. Tools like Boomerang for Gmail can predict the success rate of your email outreach, suggesting changes to increase open and response rates. This saves a lot of time writing emails and Linkedin connection requests. ChatGPT is also great for this if you use the 4th version.
3. Meeting analyzers
The first meeting with a lead is mostly focused at gathering as much information as possible and to identify the problems a potential lead is facing in order to come up with a great solution in the next meeting. Pre-AI the first meeting consists of typing everything out in notes to make sure you keep all the information for the upcoming solutions and meeting. Nowadays, tools like Gong.io (English) and Carve.com (Dutch) make an overview of everything said in the meeting and provide you with recommendations how to do better next time.
4. Follow-ups
Gong.io provides you with a generated follow-up email stating answers to all the questions asked in the meeting. This also saves times and makes sure you do not forget important things to mention in the email.
5. Automated logging for CRM systems
AI streamlines CRM logging for salespeople by automatically capturing and updating customer interactions from various channels, ensuring data accuracy and completeness. This automation allows sales reps to focus more on selling and building relationships, while the AI ensures that their CRM data remains current and insightful.
Wrapping It Up
The mix of AI and sales is a match made in heaven. From generating leads to closing deals and maintaining customer relationships, AI tools are making every step of the sales process more efficient, effective, and, importantly, more human-centric. I believe that every sales team can benefit from using AI in their sales process.
