Guide
How to Infuse AI Into Your Current Sales and Marketing Processes
Generative AI and its applications have staying power in the business world—don’t get left behind
September 18, 2023
Guide
Generative AI and its applications have staying power in the business world—don’t get left behind
September 18, 2023
Following previously hot consumer pushes in VR and crypto, it’s valid to be skeptical of the most recent fad in the business world: generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI). Since you’re not wearing VR goggles today to engage with customers, it’s safe to say you made the right decision in not overturning your sales organization to a virtual sales process.
Seventy percent of organizations are in exploration mode on Gen AI, and that fervor has prompted executives to begin investing in AI for sales solutions. That might leave you feeling unsure of how to proceed, with questions regarding use cases, benefits, risks—and how you can explain it to your spouse, let alone your Sales & Marketing teams. We believe Gen AI has more staying power—and have been building AI solutions for clients for quite some time.
Currently, only 37% of all sales organizations use any AI in their sales process. Sales leaders are now being pressured to respond to noise from both shareholders and the market with a comprehensive plan to integrate Generative AI into their business. So, what is gen AI, and how can it impact your sales organization?
Generative AI represents AI systems that can generate innovative solutions and strategies, altering how sales approaches are developed. This differs from traditional AI, which refers to the integration of technology to automate, optimize, and enhance processes with pre-determined rules.
In other words, traditional AI recognizes patterns while generative AI can create new patterns—giving you the ability to curate custom content, including generating personalized proposals and offering tailored pitch intelligence.
Consider an e-commerce company that sells fashion apparel. They’ve had difficulty with lead conversion rates and retaining customers after a one-off purchase from their site. The company aims to create a highly personalized shopping experience to increase customer engagement and conversions. Let’s consider the options of AI vs Generative AI:
| Sales AI (Lead Scoring) | Sales Gen AI (Hyper-Personalization and Content Generation) | |
|---|---|---|
| Objective | Predict Lead Conversion likelihood | Enhance customer engagement and conversions through hyper-personalized content |
| Data Collection | Lead’s demographics, behavior, engagement, interactions | Customer preferences, purchase history, browsing behavior, social media interactions |
| AI Preparation | Machine learning model for lead scoring | Advanced language learning model (LLM) for content generation for personalized product recommendations and marketing emails |
| Key Process Steps | Data collection and extraction, model training, scoring, sales prioritization | Customer data analysis, model training and testing. AI content generation, dynamic personalization |
| Sales Focus | Prioritizing leads with higher conversion likelihood | Enhancing customer experience with personalized content, leading to increased engagement |
| Benefits | Improved lead conversion and sales efficiency | Increased CSAT, retention, revenue |
| Impact | Optimizes lead management | Elevates customer engagement, sustainable sales growth |
In this example, "Sales AI" optimizes the lead management process by predicting conversion likelihood, while "Sales Gen AI" takes personalization to the next level by dynamically generating content that resonates with each individual customer. Both solutions provide valuable insights, but Sales Gen AI ultimately drives higher engagement and retention. This hyper-personalization does come at a cost; as the impact and complexity of solutions increase, so do the money and time investments required to play.
The AI Tools market has many offerings to address the “low-hanging fruit” administrative tasks in the form of extensions on your favorite CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Oracle, Zoho etc.) or productivity suite (Microsoft, Google, etc.). The problem to consider here is whether these out-of-the-box solutions meet your organization’s needs, or if your business will benefit from and your data is pointed and proprietary enough to warrant custom built solutions (more on the Build vs. Buy decision here). Determining this correctly can help solidify your sustainable competitive advantage for years to come.
Generative AI is set to boost productivity growth across functions. Operating, capacity, and compensation modeling will all be affected by the improved efficiencies and capabilities enabled by AI. Because of the heightened efficiency and tools at the disposal of Sales & Marketing organizations, groups will be able to operate leaner. This will alter the landscape of performance ratios across the industry, and force sales leaders to adapt expectations for their future results.
We estimate that account executives will see up to a 20% gain in efficiency from automating tasks such as crafting first drafts of outreach communications, preparing client presentations, updating CRM systems, and drafting contracts. This opens their time for more impactful activities like prospecting for new clients and deepening existing relationships. With more free time, these AEs will have additional capacity for larger books of business, leading to more revenue generation opportunities and less headache from administrative tasks.
Contrary to popular belief, sales organizations that use AI increase headcount in sales ops, channel sales and sales support roles. Supporting the point of view that AI does not replace knowledge workers in sales organizations, instead it serves as a digital assistant that helps employees with mundane tasks, allowing them to focus on maintaining relationships with their clients.
We’ve noticed many organizations are thinking about their customers more holistically and want to ensure they have an excellent experience throughout the entire customer journey. Gen AI can help orgs achieve that by providing customers with ultra-personalized marketing content that keeps them engaged at the right time, enabling salespeople to automate administrative tasks, and leveling-up contact center agents to contribute to the overall delight of their clients. Sales support organizations, historically cost sensitive, have been leading the charge to adopt AI technology in efforts to automate highly administrative tasks. Organizations that prioritize their customers and invest in optimizing the customer experience through sales, marketing, and customer service are both investing in their employees and enabling their workforce to improve interactions internally/externally. This is mission critical because, after all, people buy from people.
There are many generative AI use cases that your organization can harness to improve efficiency in your sales and marketing processes. But most organizations are ill-prepared for adopting AI tools due to lacking sufficient data infrastructure and strategy. Read more here on where to begin.
Instead of jumping into the marketplace to buy bolt-on solutions, we recommend understanding your organization’s specific pain points in sales and marketing. To see how your Sales & Marketing Organization stacks up against the industry, use our sales maturity assessment tool.
Contact us to determine your best fit future with AI.
KEY:
BUILD: ■
BUY: ▲
BOTH: ✭
Top Front Office Use Cases: (Build, Buy, or Both)
BBB designation determined by: Complexity of the use case, implementation, budget, resource requirement, and long-term impact.
Impacted roles: Sales Representatives, Marketing Managers, Account Executives, Business Development Rep, Content or Digital Marketing Rep, Brand or Product Manager, Sales Trainer, Customer Success Manager, Public Relations, eCommerce Merchandisers
Top Back Office Use Cases: (Build, Buy, or Both)
BBB designation determined by: Complexity of the use case, implementation, budget, resource requirement, and long-term impact.
Impacted Roles: Sales Operations Manager, Marketing Analyst, Sales or Marketing Coordinator, Demand Planning/Forecasting, Compensation Planner, Inventory Analyst, Marketing Operations Manager, Sales Support Analyst, CRM Administrator