The arrival of generative AI has profoundly transformed companies’ business processes, including the practices of salespeople and teams responsible for developing products and bringing them to market. The massive implementation of these new tools brings with it its share of uncertainties and questions about the approach to follow to promote and exploit their capabilities. A recent Seismic study shows that 78% of sales leaders believe that companies are failing to effectively integrate AI into their go-to-market process. Likewise, more than a third of them report a lack of understanding of the uses of AI (37%), as well as concerns about the security and confidentiality of information (34%). The implementation of AI technologies therefore does not go smoothly and requires time and investment from teams, but also from sales departments.
When properly leveraged, AI has the potential to deepen buyer engagement by gathering content usage metrics, streamlining the sales process, and helping sales leaders coach and improve the skills of their teams. However, this tool should also be approached with caution. Uncontrolled implementation of AI in the sales function risks jeopardizing long-established trust with customers and prospects. So how can salespeople integrate AI to improve their workflow and performance?
A now essential ally for commercial relations
Success in sales relies on the ability to build relationships, build trust, and provide personalized interactions. But, contrary to what one might think, the adoption of AI in sales does not go against the prevalence of humans in exchanges. On the contrary, tools like AI-assisted transcription, sentiment analysis, and conversation awareness are designed to improve them and save them time!
For example, generative AI can take notes during prospecting meetings and offer them to salespeople the next time they speak to that prospect. This way, they will never forget to tell them about their new promotion or an important personal event. This is a way to ensure that prospects feel like they are truly listened to and considered. There’s also no need to take notes, allowing sales reps to focus their full attention on the prospect.
In addition to these helpful tips for building relationships, AI-powered tools can help salespeople perform well across communication channels that all pose unique challenges. In the case of email, it’s about efficiency in personalization. Salespeople often have to send very similar emails to multiple prospects or customers. Rather than engaging in this repetitive process, AI allows them to use templated invitations to generate recommended personalizations that they can review and approve before sending. AI is also an effective support to address the lack of creativity when it comes to producing eye-catching and relevant content on social networks.
An effective response to the challenge of personalization
Prospects want to feel like their individual situation and needs are understood. In reality, buyers now expect to see personalized content across all digital touchpoints and channels – social media, email, digital sales floors, and more. Developing an approach that emphasizes personalization is a real sales catalyst. In fact, according to McKinsey, personalization can increase revenue by 40%.
AI can also play a vital role in enabling this personalization, helping salespeople make tailored suggestions based on the prospect’s situation and the flow of the conversation. For example, AI can automatically capture meeting action items and make intelligent content recommendations based on persona in order to generate conversations conducive to sales and accelerate the conversion of a deal.
But what about the process of personalizing content assets? Unsurprisingly, AI can help here too, by gathering and distributing personalized content based on existing templates – sales briefs, tenders, how-to guides, market research, etc. With the right tool, sales teams can create content by selecting elements that are relevant to the intended audience. The AI can then instantly recommend scripts, slides, case studies, data, disclaimers and even check prices. This not only saves sales and marketing teams a lot of time, but also ensures that they remain 100% compliant with the brand and current regulations.
Support and offer coaching adapted to salespeople
Repetitive and often lackluster sales training videos are becoming a thing of the past. To replace them? An intelligent platform that provides just-in-time training and ongoing, personalized coaching in the workplace. For example, companies can implement Large Language Models (LLM) to enable salespeople to quickly aggregate peer coaching and access recommended answers to customer questions.
With a personalized approach, an AI-powered skills development platform can also use data to highlight the do’s and don’ts at the individual level. With AI-driven personalization, businesses can reduce new sales rep onboarding times. At the same time, existing salespeople can benefit from continuous and iterative training, which improves their efficiency and retention.
Using AI requires upfront thinking
The Seismic study demonstrates the potential of AI and the interest of management teams, particularly in marketing and commerce, for its application. However, it also identifies a significant gap in their understanding of how AI works in Go-to-market processes. Although the majority cite AI as a key driver of their investments in driving sales, less than half of those surveyed in this recent study said they were fairly familiar with it. or very specific applications of AI. Additionally, nearly 80% of those who adopted AI tools reported initial obstacles before seeing positive effects, showing that implementation can be a complex and time-consuming challenge.
In other words, there is a clear need for support. To implement and use AI in sales effectively, compliantly and responsibly, companies must take the time to develop their AI roadmap. This includes the transparent implementation of robust enablement programs that define the value that AI is expected to bring to salespeople. And who are then able to measure it. In this way, companies will enable their teams to perform better and achieve the desired business results.