There is a technology that is taking over millions of people’s lives, and they don’t even realize it’s happening. When you ask Siri to set a reminder or Alexa to tell you the weather, you are interacting with this fascinating technology of Artificial Intelligence.
From the filters that collect spam emails into your junk mail to the recommended watches that appear on your Netflix app, Artificial Intelligence is helping us save time, make decisions and plan for tomorrow. It is no longer a subject resigned to science fiction novels and futuristic movies. AI is here: in every field, every market, and almost in every home. Did you know it can help your business too?
AI can help you grow your business too. It can help manage sales, improve them, and hence, helps increase your overall revenue. Predictive sales AI is such a wonderfully valuable tool that you will soon come to question how you ever survived without it.
Foreseeing the Future
When you make decisions about your business and its future, you have a lot of responsibility on your shoulders. You must think about the repercussions to your customers, staff, financial stability, and reputation. You might think that the ability to tell the future is a pipedream, but predictive sales AI makes it possible to a certain extent.
If you feel like you’re drowning in a sea of data, sales AI will reach into the waves and pull you out and make your business a smarter one.
Sales forecasting is not a new tool – it’s essential in determining the future and long-term health and growth of a business. 74% of large business-to-business companies use forecasting on a weekly basis. While that is a large majority, the success isn’t guaranteed.
Despite the significant investment in time and effort, traditional sales forecasting methods are not an accurate art. A massive 69% of business-to-business companies, regardless of size, think that their efforts in sales forecasting are ineffective. So, what can be done to improve the process and therefore improve the results?
With the aid of artificial intelligence, you can create predictive models that use the data collected to tell you more about the behavior of your customers, the trends of the market, and any new sales opportunities on the horizon.
Predicative analytics gathers historical data and statistical algorithms add in the element of machine learning and remarkably anticipates outcomes based on patterns. There are several major areas in the field of sales where AI and predictive analysis can play a particularly useful role.
Major Areas Where Predictive Sales AI Can Be Very Useful
#1: Lead Scoring
You can gain a more precise grasp on sales prospecting with the help of AI. By gathering the data and information about corporate background, demographic and more, you can easily see customer profiles and thereby identify characteristics that suggest a successful sale.
As timing is key, you can also use analytics to predict when to close sales as the analysis can reveal the customers’ needs and point to a successful point on a timeline that will lead to a successful close.
#2: Guiding Sales Prospects
Customers want personalization and customization, and AI can help to provide this kind of experience. With the power of machine learning, steps can be programmed to automate the nurturing of leads and even handle questions until a sales representative can take over the pitch.
This technology can also monitor lead progress and alert when the prospect is ready to buy. By considering the size, budget, and needs of a company, sales AI can create the right sales offer to appeal to them.
#3: Improving Sales Management
The predictive analysis comes into its own in the management of sales and offers insight for the sales team. You can develop more accurate sales quotes based on sales representative performance so that quotas remain attainable. With the wealth of knowledge at your disposal, analytics will help you to match sales expertise, resources, and sales territory to get the best results.
Furthermore, predictive analytics can help you to adjust when unexpected changes in the sales chain arise. New products, features, and pricing can be factored into the predictions in an effort to analyze the potential impact these changes will have, so as to limit the impact on sales.
In order to survive and thrive, a successful company needs to both prepare for AI and embrace the changes it introduces. Companies that don’t will simply be left behind. While the marketing field has been much quicker in its adaption to AI assistance, the area of sales has been a little more hesitant.
To stay ahead of the competition in the sales world of today and the future, sales teams must start taking full advantage of the multitude of benefits that AI can bring.
The Future of Artificial Intelligence in Sales
The full potential of AI’s assistance in sales may be decades away, but there are various ways the technology can be incorporated into current sales operations and bring a host of rewards for those willing to take the leap. Almost 90% of businesses that utilize AI are reporting as using – or preparing to use, AI for sales forecasting.
The increase in AI use by sales teams has been remarkable over the last few years. In 2018, 21% of sales teams used AI, yet by 2020, just two years later, the figure increased to a staggering 54%. The progress is expected to just continue increasing.
The fear surrounding AI in business is that it will develop to the point that it will take the jobs of humans, making our roles as “real-life” workers redundant. A lot of this depends on the requirements of the role – if a sales role involves tasks such as easy-to-answer conversations or functional scheduling, it’s easy to see how AI could cause dramatic changes to these roles or even remove them entirely.
Bearing this in mind, sales roles will shift into performing tasks more focused on human relationships and connections where AI can’t show the interpersonal skills that the task requires. On the other hand, in order to benefit from the capabilities of sales artificial intelligence, many will have to resist the urge to distrust the technology and allow it to do the reliable work it is programmed to do.
