Guided Selling — A Framework for AI in Sales
Raymond Juarez, Vice President & Practice Leader, Bluewolf, an IBM company
As a sales leader, how can you distinguish AI speculation from reality and make decisions about whether to invest in a particular technology?
I recommend you start small. Be outcomes-minded. Ask yourself what you’re trying to solve.
Ultimately, however, I think using a “guided selling” framework is the most effective way for sales leaders to decide what technology their sellers use — and where AI fits in.
What Is Guided Selling?
I see guided selling as a framework to approach sales effectiveness and productivity. It’s a system that leverages data to guide sellers through their sales process. Guided selling gives a rep a better way of selling to customers by recommending paths or steps based on data, not instinct.
AI can be a major help in this technique’s success.
For example, if you’re trying to improve your sales team’s performance, you could use the guided selling framework to benchmark your team. Does your team currently have all the tools, processes, and people in place to answer:
- What do I sell?
- At what price?
- To what customer?
How to Put Guided Selling into Practice
Do your sellers have the answers to those three questions at their fingertips? How long does it currently take them to find the answers? How often do they simply make an educated guess?
If you don’t have AI in place for your sales team, it’s likely members spend time manually searching for answers to those questions — in multiple tools and from various sources internally.
But you have to walk before you can run. Guided selling existed prior to AI and is well-suited to help you understand how to invest in AI for your sales teams.
Some organizations may be just starting out with guided selling, by automating repetitive sales tasks using a CRM. Others have implemented a question-and-answer system for sellers, and a few use AI to create a predictive guided selling solution for sellers.
To read the complete article, Guided Selling — A Framework for AI in Sales, visit Quotable.com.
