Using AI For Sales? Forget The Hype
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new buzzword du jour. It seems everyone has “AI” software or services that will help you accomplish your objectives. But you run a sales team. And you have to deliver results this quarter and the next quarter and the one after that — you don’t have time for marketing hype. Here’s a way to think about how to build AI into your approach simply and easily, without risk.
For sales leaders, Artificial Intelligence can be an abstract concept that doesn’t really mean anything unless it produces tangible business results. AI, like any other technology, is supposed to help them hit their quota numbers.
AI Results In Business Growth
Because of all the hype around AI lately, everyone seems to be advertising it as a component of their sales and marketing technology stack. These claims are thin, if not strictly aspirational.
Sales managers and directors can benefit today by introducing AI software into their process – but only if they follow a phased approach and rely on accurate data. AI implementation should start with the fundamentals and add capabilities and value along the way, with each phase being self-funding.
In our view, “Four Phases to Sales AI” meets the practicality hurdle of any good CRO and the “future-proofing” hurdle of any good CEO. You can have both.
The XANT Way to Do AI
You can benefit from AI today by following four simple phases.
Phase I: Productivity
Get better data by giving your team productivity tools. You can increase your revenue up to 10 percent, just by increasing productivity for sales reps.
Phase II: Profile Buyers
Use AI to figure out what the heck you should be doing and who you should be targeting. This can lead to around 20 percent revenue increase.
Phase III: Profile Sellers
Learn from what your A players are doing and coach all of your sales reps to repeat these results. The revenue increase is up to 20 percent in this phase.
Phase IV: Custom AI Implementation
Now you can use even more data data to start answering other tough questions across the customer lifecycle. This means tapping into external, cross-company data to understand and predict attrition, loyalty or expansion rates in your business.
This is where we really get to the meat, and can optimize activity for up to 30 percent revenue increase.
Read The Full Article On Forbes Magazine
I dive in deep to explain each of these phases of AI implementation in my Forbes article: “Using AI for Sales? Forget the Hype.” This article was written in collaboration with XANT President, Ken Krogue.
I encourage you to give it a read, you will understand more about how Artificial Intelligence can help sales and marketers make better decisions and lead to real business growth.
