Is Your Sales Team Ready for AI-Assisted Selling?
Today, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used across industries to help managers draw insights from vast quantities of data. And now, AI has come to the profession of sales.
AI-based sales enablement systems are used by a growing number of organizations to analyze and transform sales-related data to help sales leaders, trainers, managers, and coaches make better decisions.
The most advanced platforms mine this data to make real-time, actionable recommendations. And soon, these systems will be able to execute those recommendations independently, enabling even the largest sales organizations to reach goals that seem out of reach today.
AI-Assisted Sales Solutions Are Here
AI-assisted sales solutions are here—and not a moment too soon. We’ve entered an era of hybrid selling, with prospects and sellers meeting both in-person and virtually. In this new environment, AI has far-reaching benefits for sales teams, allowing executives to be better leaders, at pace and at scale, and helping organizations move beyond “one-side-fits-all” training so that sellers have the flexibility to do business with empowered buyers.
According to Forbes:
- 63% of executives whose companies have adopted AI report that it resulted in increased revenues in the business areas where it is used
- 44% of executives say AI has reduced costs
To leverage the power of AI-assisted selling, organizations must first prepare their sellers for this technological revolution. You must equip your team to meet every buyer where they are and provide a personalized solution based on the data. Yet, AI adoption challenges remain a roadblock for many businesses. 76% of executives report they struggle with how to scale AI.
4 Ways to Prepare For AI-Assisted Sales
We’re entering a new era as AI-assisted selling becomes reality. Selling is changing and those relying on traditional approaches will be left behind. The most successful sales teams will adapt to these changes, relying on sales enablement solutions with strong AI capabilities.
AI-powered systems will enable sales managers to lead more accurately, efficiently, and insightfully by surfacing the relevant information, suggesting conversations to have, and providing the content to see and support those sales actions.
Those who do adapt are poised to be high performers able to drive greater revenue for their companies. And buyers will win too. Sellers will become valuable partners who provide critical education and information on the path to purchase.
If AI is the future of sales enablement, how do you position your organization today to take advantage of it? To prepare to use the benefits of AI for sales enablement, there are four things you need to know.
1. Foster a data-driven mindset.
To pave the way for AI use, your organization must have a culture that relies on data, instead of gut feel. Successful data-driven companies embed data into core business functions and have a “data culture” that permeates the company from the top down.
2. Integrate your data.
AI tools need access to multiple data sources to both train the AI models and feed them real-time input for analysis. Initially, this can be data owned and managed by your organization: CRM records, conversations, content analytics, digital interactions, customer success and support systems, etc. Over time, AI tools may be fed by anonymous and aggregated information from third-party sources or business datasets.
3. Invest in technology.
In addition, this data needs to talk to each other and your platform via integrations for input and output to enable recommendations. But providing recommendations isn’t enough. AI-assisted selling requires that those recommendations be easily accessible in the flow of work for managers and sellers. To meet the goal of just-in-time, personalized guidance, your solution must be device agnostic.
4. Set your team up for success.
The inner workings of the best AI-powered solutions are invisible to their users, simply surfacing recommendations without the need for a degree in Computer Science. But your team must be set up for success with training about your platform’s capabilities, how to access the recommendations, and how to interpret and act on them.
Maintaining the Human-to-Human Connection at Scale
AI in sales enablement is a critical component of ensuring sellers have the skills, knowledge, and content they need to successfully navigate the remote environment. One of the most important applications of AI is for virtual coaching.
AI-powered sales enablement platforms such as Allego’s use AI extensively to automatically transcribe seller conversations and provide analytics for messaging adherence, rate of speech, talk time ratios, themes, and other metrics.
AI is also used to provide next-best-action recommendations based on call performance and topics by analyzing recorded calls and giving sellers suggestions for coaching, remediation training and appropriate buyer content to follow up with.
AI is even used by both managers and sellers to provide tailored learning and content recommendations using methodologies borrowed from social media in which users can “follow” specific topics and authors that align with learning objectives.
Sales leaders can use data to unlock the next level of actionable intelligence and smart recommendations for sellers—at scale—while freeing up time to coach in more personal ways.
Embracing the Potential of AI
To be successful with AI-assisted sales enablement, sales organizations must first accept, then adopt, and finally embrace AI. The more that your company establishes an analytics and data-centric mindset now, the easier it will be for sellers and other revenue-generating teams to transition.
Some of today’s AI-driven sales enablement platforms provide these capabilities, smoothing the way for the next era of selling. Those evaluating new solutions must look beyond the buzzwords to understand the opportunities of AI.
When organizations take on a data-driven mindset and foster employee understanding of data for decision-making, they normalize data analysis and build trust in intelligent recommendations and automated processes. Most importantly, they pave the way for the successful implementation of the sales enablement solutions needed for AI-assisted virtual selling.
Organizations that wait too long and try to quickly transition later will be at a disadvantage. Those that have already developed a data-driven mindset and processes for day-to-day sales and marketing decision-making will be well positioned to reap all the competitive advantages of AI.
Learn More
To learn more about Allego’s AI-powered solution, check out AI-Enhanced Enablement.
