All You Need To Know About Using AI In Sales (Role & Impact)
Using AI in sales can save your month. This will help you boost your business and make better decisions. Know more about its benefits.
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Imagine this: you’re nearing the end of the month, and your sales numbers are lagging. You have a decent pipeline, but there’s a good chance that many of those deals will fall through. What you need is a way to turn things around fast. You might save your month if you could figure out which deals to focus on to boost your sales numbers quickly. This scenario is where AI in sales can help. Sales intelligence tools leverage artificial intelligence to help sales reps uncover actionable insights about their prospects and existing customers. These insights can help sales teams make better decisions and turn their performance around, often in record time. In this article, we'll explore the role and impact of AI in sales to help you better understand how this technology can help your team achieve its goals.
Aomni’s Sales intelligence software can help you quickly become familiar with sales AI and its benefits.
What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is becoming more a part of our daily lives than most people realize. You’re probably interacting with AI without thinking about it, whether binge-watching Netflix, using Uber to get around, or chatting with virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri.
These platforms all use AI to make smart recommendations, anticipate your needs, and provide a better experience.
Machine Learning
At its core, AI refers to a broad set of technologies that allow machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence.
This includes everything from:
- Machine learning (where algorithms improve as they’re exposed to more data)
- Natural language processing (which helps machines understand and respond to human speech).
Autonomous Improvement
Traditionally, software only improved when humans made manual adjustments. But AI flips that script, machines can now learn and improve on their own. AI can automate tasks like prospecting, following up with leads, or even generating proposals without human intervention.
More than just automation, though, AI can sift through massive amounts of data, pull out patterns, and make predictions that humans might miss.
Rapid Adoption
According to Gartner, 70% of customer interactions will involve some form of machine learning in the next three years.
AI isn’t just making a splash in consumer apps; it’s also empowering sales teams to work smarter and more efficiently. So, AI isn’t just the future, it’s already here, making our lives easier and more connected.
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What Is AI In Sales?
AI in sales refers to the use of artificial intelligence technologies to enhance various aspects of the sales process. It's a broad term that encompasses how both buyers and sellers utilize AI to improve:
- Decision-making
- Communication
- Efficiency
From the buyer’s perspective, AI serves as a powerful tool that provides valuable insights, recommendations, and product comparisons, making the purchasing process smoother and more informed.
Enhanced Efficiency
AI-driven chatbots can help answer customer questions instantly, or algorithms can recommend products based on past buying behavior. For sellers, AI is a game-changer in terms of streamlining tedious processes. It automates repetitive tasks like:
- Data entry
- Scheduling
- Lead generation, allowing sales teams to focus more on strategic activities like closing deals and nurturing relationships.
Intelligent Insights
AI can analyze large sets of customer data to identify:
- Trends
- Predict behavior
- Offer personalized insights, making sales efforts more targeted and effective.
AI in sales isn’t just about automating tasks; it’s about elevating the entire sales process for both parties involved. Buyers get more personalized, data-backed recommendations, and sellers get the tools they need to sell more efficiently and effectively.
The Need For Artificial Intelligence In Sales
Artificial Intelligence is a vital tool in sales not because it will replace salespeople but because it dramatically enhances how sales teams work. It:
- Streamlines workflows
- Frees up time
- Helps teams make smarter decisions
The stats from HubSpot's 2023 survey highlight just how impactful AI can be.
AI Boosts Efficiency by Automating Repetitive Tasks
AI automation takes care of repetitive tasks that often distract salespeople from their core job—selling. According to HubSpot's data, sales professionals save two hours and 15 minutes every day by using AI to handle routine tasks like:
- Data entry
- Scheduling
This time saved can be redirected to more strategic efforts like building client relationships and closing deals. 78% of salespeople say that AI allows them to focus on the most critical aspects of their role.
AI Enhances Decision-Making
AI also enhances decision-making by helping teams extract insights from massive amounts of data. 73% of sales professionals say AI uncovers insights they wouldn't have been able to find on their own.
This data-driven approach leads to better, more informed conversations with prospects. 65% believe AI helps them understand their customers better, which can directly lead to improved sales outcomes.
AI Personalizes the Sales Experience
In terms of personalization, AI plays a pivotal role in crafting tailored experiences. 69% of salespeople agree that AI helps them create more personalized customer interactions, which is key for building trust and loyalty.
AI also helps with prospecting, as 61% of professionals believe it makes this process more personalized and effective.
AI Transforms Sales
AI in sales is about boosting efficiency and improving the quality of work, making sales teams more productive and customer-focused. While it's not going to replace human expertise, AI is transforming how sales are done in a way that maximizes both time and results.
Aomni Platform
Aomni is an AI agent platform designed specifically for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. Our key features include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- AI-assisted Account Based Sales/Marketing campaign execution tool
Enhanced Performance
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to:
- Larger deal closures
- Increased promotion opportunities
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Try Aomni Today
Our platform transforms the way B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction:
- Fully prepared
- Strategically positioned for success
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
The Benefits Of Artificial Intelligence And Automation In Sales
AI is becoming increasingly essential in sales, not because it's going to take over but because it significantly enhances the way sales teams operate. Sales professionals are recognizing the benefits, and the stats back it up.
For starters, AI automates many of the mundane, repetitive tasks that salespeople often get bogged down with, allowing them to focus more on what they do best—actually selling.
Time Saved
According to a 2023 survey by Hubspot, salespeople save about two hours and 15 minutes each day by using AI to handle manual tasks.
And 78% of them believe AI helps them focus on the most critical parts of their role. That’s a lot of time that can be redirected toward building relationships and closing deals.
Enhanced Insights
AI doesn’t just free up time; it also helps sales teams work smarter. 73% of sales professionals say that AI helps them find insights from data they wouldn't have been able to uncover on their own.
In today’s data-driven world, that’s a huge advantage. 65% say AI makes them understand their customers better. This means more informed conversations and, ultimately, better sales outcomes.
Personalized Sales
Personalization is another area where AI shines. 69% of salespeople agree that AI helps them tailor the customer experience, which is key to building strong, meaningful connections.
And 61% believe that AI helps make prospecting more personalized, a critical step in turning potential leads into loyal customers.
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9 Ways Your Team Can Use AI In Sales
Nearly 4 of 5 sales leaders (78%) are concerned that their company is missing the boat on generative AI, according to Salesforce’s Trends in Data and Analytics for Sales report. One of the most impressive aspects of generative AI is that it creates new content almost instantly.
It can create emails and sales pitches as well as give real-time guidance for next steps that are indistinguishable from, or even better than, content created by humans. And with an AI sales guide built directly into your CRM, it can help do all sorts of other useful things:
1. Prospecting and Account Research
AI helps sales teams cut down on manual data entry and research tasks so they can focus on strategy. Generative AI quickly:
- Gathers information from multiple sources
- Creates concise summaries
- Gives you competitor insights
Imagine hopping into a call with a prospect already armed with a detailed overview of their business challenges and goals, and AI can make that happen.
2. Enhancing Communication
One of the standout features of AI is its ability to improve communication. AI can transcribe and summarize sales calls in seconds by adding conversational intelligence to your CRM. But it doesn’t stop there, it also flags key moments like:
- Objections
- Pricing discussions
- Mentions of competitors
With this kind of real-time feedback, sales teams can focus on what’s working and fine-tune their conversations for better outcomes.
3. Optimizing Sales Strategies
AI’s ability to analyze sales campaigns is a game-changer for strategy. It can track the effectiveness of your sales efforts and provide personalized close plans tailored to your specific sales process.
AI can guide you through the steps needed to close a deal based on CRM data and offer real-time adjustments to increase conversion rates. Think of it as having a personal sales coach giving you step-by-step advice during the entire process.
4. Personalizing Customer Interactions
Personalization is crucial in today’s sales environment, and AI makes it easier than ever. Whether it’s crafting customized:
- Product descriptions
- Case studies
- Sales proposals, AI can instantly create content that resonates with individual prospects.
It can even recommend specific products or services based on a customer’s history and preferences, which helps build stronger connections and trust.
5. Prioritizing the Healthiest Deals
AI doesn’t just help with gathering data, it also helps you prioritize which deals are most likely to close. By summarizing lead opportunities and analyzing CRM records, AI can:
- Identify hot leads
- Pass them directly to sales reps
This kind of data-driven prioritization helps teams focus on the deals with the highest chance of success, ensuring that no opportunity is overlooked.
6. Creating More Accurate Forecasts
AI excels at making sense of large datasets, which makes it perfect for creating accurate sales forecasts. It analyzes historical sales data and business trends to predict future outcomes.
AI can spot potential gaps in your sales pipeline and suggest corrective actions, ensuring that your forecasts are as precise as possible.
7. Developing Close Plans
Closing deals can be tough, but AI simplifies this by creating action plans tailored to each customer. It doesn’t just offer suggestions—it gives sales teams context by:
- Summarizing calls
- Identifying customer sentiment
This makes it easier to understand the client’s mindset and take the right steps to move the deal forward.
8. Generating Insight and Analytics
AI doesn’t just help automate tasks; it provides deeper insights. By analyzing customer data, it allows reps to prioritize promising leads and understand the following:
- Customer behavior
- Preferences
- Purchasing patterns
This makes it possible to individualize the sales approach, leading to better results.
9. Personalized Sales Skills Training
AI can even help improve your team’s skills. Whether it’s onboarding a new sales development rep or creating a simulation for an experienced salesperson preparing for a high-stakes negotiation, AI can create customized training programs. This keeps your team sharp and continuously improving, no matter their experience level.
8 Popular AI Sales Tools To Check Out
1. Aomni: Revolutionizing B2B Sales with Advanced AI Technology
Aomni is an AI agent platform designed specifically for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness. Our key features include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- AI-assisted Account Based Sales/Marketing campaign execution tool
Enhanced Performance
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose Account Executives, Account Managers, and Customer Success Managers must perform better and include quotas. By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to the following:
- Larger deal closures
- Increased promotion opportunities
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
Try Aomni Today
Our platform transforms the way B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction:
- Fully prepared
- Strategically positioned for success
Try our sales intelligence software for free today!
2. Crayon: Stay One Step Ahead of the Competition
Crayon is an AI competitive intelligence platform. It tracks competitor activity in real-time across millions of online data sources, giving you a clear picture of a competing company’s online footprint.
Crayon uses AI to then automatically surface these insights daily in your inbox, summarize news stories about competitors, and score the importance of competitive intelligence items. That means no more manual competitor research, all thanks to AI.
3. Drift: AI Chatbots for Sales Enablement
Drift offers hyper-intelligent conversational AI chatbots that are of huge benefit to salespeople. Using Drift’s AI, you can automatically converse with, learn from, and qualify incoming leads. That's because Drift’s chatbots engage with leads 24/7 and score them based on their quality, so no good lead falls through the cracks because you lack a human rep manning chat.
When the time is right, Drift passes qualified leads to human salespeople for a warm, high-touch engagement.
4. Salesforce: The Reigning Champ of Sales Software with AI Superpowers
Salesforce is a giant in sales software and, like other leading solutions, has gone all-in on baking AI into every aspect of its platform. The company’s Einstein Copilot, an AI assistant, unlocks huge productivity and personalization opportunities across Salesforce’s sales tools.
Using it, you can do things like:
- Automate account and prospect research
- Surface insights to quickly prepare for meetings
- Automatically update CRM records
- Generate sales emails
- Summarize sales calls
5. Gong: Uncover Sales Intelligence Hidden in Conversations
Gong uses AI to capture and analyze all of your interactions with prospects and customers, then turns that information into intelligence you can use to close more deals. That includes surfacing the key topics and questions discussed with prospects and customers, as well as the actual relationship dynamics that matter to closing the deal.
Gong’s AI can then be used to coach reps on what works best, making each subsequent customer engagement even more successful.
6. Quantified: AI Coaching for Sales Team Performance
Quantified is a sales AI coaching tool that uses AI-generated avatars that can conduct roleplaying and sales coaching with your sales team at scale 24/7.
It does that by simulating sales calls with realistic AI avatars that help reps practice until they’re perfectly on-message and effective. Quantified also scores rep skills, such as visual and vocal delivery, enabling coaching and improvement even when a human trainer is unavailable.
7. Trender.ai: Find B2B Leads Hiding on Social Media
Trender.ai is an AI tool for B2B contact intelligence. With Trender.ai, any sales professional can automate finding top leads across the social web by giving the tool’s AI your ICP.
The tool also provides AI-powered research capabilities that surface deep insights about these leads so you can close them more effectively.
8. 6sense: Predictive Sales Analytics for Account-Based Sales
6sense is an AI-powered sales platform that sales leaders can use to predict and identify in-market accounts.
6sense will also prioritize which ones matter most, based on their propensity to buy. 6sense’s AI can even uncover third-party buying signals to predict when you should engage with these prospects.
Is AI A Substitute For Salespeople?
AI is transforming the sales space, but it isn't a substitute for salespeople, at least not entirely. Think of AI as a highly efficient assistant rather than a replacement. Just as AI tools have boosted the productivity of copywriters and programmers by more than 50%, they’re beginning to do the same for salespeople by automating tasks like:
- Lead generation
- Prospect prioritization
- Follow-ups
Human Expertise
Inside sales teams are also seeing more power thanks to AI’s ability to handle repetitive tasks, allowing sales reps to focus on higher-value conversations. When it comes to more complex offerings, those with intricate buying cycles or requiring a deep understanding of customer needs, salespeople still have a crucial role.
AI can handle a lot of the groundwork, but for trickier scenarios that require:
- Identifying latent needs
- Tailoring solutions
- Navigating multi-stakeholder decisions
- Human touch remains irreplaceable
Growing Demand
Ironically, as AI becomes more prevalent, the companies creating and selling AI technologies are building larger sales teams to manage the growing demand and complexity in this space.
While AI will take some tasks off a salesperson's plate, it won’t replace the need for human expertise in those challenging, high-stakes situations.
6 Effective Strategies For Creating A Strong Sales AI Strategy
1. Set Realistic Expectations
Sales AI isn’t going to solve all your problems overnight. As with all business goals, you should ensure sales objectives are:
- Clear
- Attainable
- Measurable
Everyone should know what’s expected and why it’s important. Don’t expect results in a short time, be realistic about targets while reps are getting to grips with the AI technology. Make sure they know it’s Okay to ask questions or request extra help.
2. Customize AI to Your Business Context
There’s no point grabbing at cool-sounding AI solutions if they’re not suited to your business needs! And with more and more AI tools on the market, it’s worth looking carefully to choose the best ones for you.
Align your AI strategy and tools with your overall goals, whether that’s:
- Business growth
- Improving brand awareness
- Specific targets like reducing wait times
3. Target Quick Wins, Especially in the Beginning
If you want to see the difference AI makes to your business, focus on a project showing results in six to 12 months. As well as proving the worth of AI to the suits upstairs, it’ll also help motivate your team.
Look for reps who excel at harnessing AI for customer service and customer success. Use their calls or interactions as a learning resource for the team.
4. Partner with the Right Experts
To make AI work for you, you have to choose the best tools from the best providers. Look for a sales platform that incorporates the following:
- Communications suite
- Deep CRM integration
- Sentiment analysis
You also need to know how to make these tools work for you and evaluate the benefits that AI brings to your business. Just to get you off the ground, it might make sense to bring in an AI expert who can help launch and analyze the initiative.
5. Ensure Compliance
- Follow generative AI regulations to ensure the use of AI complies with data privacy regulations.
- Establish guidelines to ensure the ethical use of AI-generated content created for your team.
6. Evaluate Operations
- Monitor the performance of your new generative AI tools and their impact on sales metrics, such as conversion rates and lead response times.
- Collect feedback from your sales team and customers to identify areas for improvement.
- Regularly update and retrain generative AI tools with new data to ensure they remain effective and accurate.
What Is The Future Of AI In Sales?
AI in sales is all about efficiency, helping sales teams do their jobs faster. Right now, sales professionals are already saving hours by using AI to automate tasks like data entry and follow-ups.
Soon, it will go even further. AI will help sales teams analyze customer behavior in real time, make smarter decisions based on predictive insights, and suggest the best action to take with each lead.
AI in Sales Will Personalize the Sales Process
The future of AI in sales isn’t just about efficiency. AI will make sales more personalized. Right now, 61% of salespeople say AI helps them personalize prospecting efforts, but that personalization will become even more sophisticated in the future.
AI will understand each customer’s unique preferences and buying patterns and help craft pitches that feel tailor-made. It will be like having a personal assistant who knows every client's details.
AI in Sales Won’t Replace Salespeople But Help Them Do Their Jobs Better
Some salespeople fear that adopting AI tools will replace their jobs. That’s not the case. AI isn’t going to replace salespeople. Instead, it will work alongside them, amplifying their efforts.
While AI can handle data-crunching and automation, the human touch, building trust, understanding emotional cues, and navigating complex negotiations will always be irreplaceable.
Try Our Sales Intelligence Software for Free Today
Aomni is an artificial intelligence agent platform for B2B sales intelligence software. Our solution empowers enterprise and strategic account executives to execute account-based sales and marketing strategies with unprecedented efficiency and effectiveness.
Helping Sales Teams
The key features of Aomni include:
- AI-powered prospect and account research
- Comprehensive account mapping and planning
- Data-driven sales strategy development
- Automated call preparation
- Personalized AI agents for sales optimization
- An AI chat interface for streamlined sales processes
- An AI-assisted account-based sales
- Marketing campaign execution tool
Aomni Addressing Pain Points
Aomni addresses critical pain points for sales managers whose account executives, account managers, and customer success managers are:
- Underperforming
- Missing quotas.
By leveraging our advanced AI technology, sales professionals can significantly enhance their preparation for customer conversations, leading to larger deal closures and increased promotion opportunities.
Providing Tools and Insights
For individual sales professionals, Aomni provides the tools and insights needed to:
- Elevate their performance
- Close more substantial deals
- Accelerate career progression
For B2B Sales Transformation
Our platform transforms how B2B sales teams operate, ensuring they enter every customer interaction fully prepared and strategically positioned for success.
The Role of AI in Sales
AI in sales isn’t about replacing salespeople. Rather, it’s about giving sales teams the tools to perform better and work more efficiently. AI sales tools can analyze vast datasets to identify patterns and trends that can help sales teams understand their prospects better and predict how those prospects will respond to sales outreach.
AI in sales can also automate repetitive tasks, freeing up valuable time for sales professionals to focus on building relationships with prospects and closing deals.
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