AI-Powered Sales
Insights from a Salesforce Incubator Event Series
This summer, the Salesforce Incubator startups came together to discuss the impact of AI in different fields. Last month, we had Daria Evdokimova, co-founder and CEO of VoiceOps, Francis Brero, co-founder and CRO of MadKudu, and Andy McLoughlin, partner at SoftTechVC, on stage to discuss why AI matters to their companies — beyond the hype.
VoiceOps is a conversation analysis platform for sales and support. They generate insights based on recorded sales conversations to improve sales teams’ performance. MadKudu sits at the crossing of marketing and sales, helping its customers qualify leads and grow faster.
Is it important to be an AI company, or is it marketing?
It’s a fact: Potential customers get excited about AI even if they don’t know if, and how, it can help their business. Even then, both founders agree that AI is not the point when selling their product to customers.
“When we talk to a customer, we don’t go out of their way to mention that our product is AI-driven. I personally think it’s irrelevant. […] It doesn’t matter to them what you’re doing under the hood.”
Daria Evdokimova, co-founder and CEO of VoiceOps
On the panel, Francis Brero explains that most AI we hear about in the news is AI that can help big companies like Facebook, Google or even Salesforce make sense of their data but might not be relevant to smaller B2B SaaS companies with smaller and sparser data sets. AI is very broad and looking at it from one perspective doesn’t do it justice.
Conclusion: AI is important but solving the problem matters more.
What’s the importance of AI when raising money?
“Every pitch we see has an AI play in it.”
Andy McLoughlin, partner at SoftTechVC
Same story. It’s important but only if it adds value to your business. It’s Andy’s hard task, as an investor, to cut through the noise and understand the fundamentals of your AI approach and why it makes sense.
“Solutions like Salesforce Einstein turn running algorithms into a commodity.”
Francis Brero, co-founder and CRO of MadKudu
AI should not be your sole value prop because it’s not what makes startups competitive in the long run.
Two tips for the road
“Take the simplest approach to any single problem to define your baseline.”
Francis Brero, co-founder and CRO of MadKudu
Too many projects turn into very complicated things when you play around with data. Nowadays, finding the tools to solve a problem is easy, the hardest part is understanding the problem, breaking it down.
“Be super crystal clear about the value it’s adding to the users.”
Daria Evdokimova, co-founder and CEO of VoiceOps
Her experience is that people working with data tend to get overexcited about problems but it’s important for a CEO to keep the focus on the customers and build a product roadmap based on their feedback and needs.
Now, if you’re still wondering if sales professionals should be afraid of AI, know that these two founders hope that their products will actually make sales people’s life easier by automating the tasks that they don’t want to do or are simply not the best at. Change is always a bit scary but it’s happening and we all want to stay ahead of the curve.
Watch the full panel:
