Why AI Will Be Your New Best Friend in Sales
Lynne Zaledonis, Vice President of Product Marketing, Sales Cloud, Salesforce
For anyone’s career, a mentor who is a coach and also a helpful friend is indispensable, both for learning and growing. When I first started out in sales, I wasted a lot of time on administrative work and chasing down the wrong deals. Through these experiences I discovered what worked, what didn’t, and why I needed to do things differently. And that really continues throughout all of our sales careers — we never stop learning.
What I didn’t have then (and what would have made a huge difference) was a real helper to guide me through the challenges, give me good advice, and handle that administrative stuff so I could go out and sell more. There’s a changing reality for all sales teams: artificial intelligence (AI).
Whether you’re new to sales or a seasoned veteran, let’s take a look at several ways AI can be that best friend, mentor, and helper to support you to learn more, sell more, and, most importantly, get paid more.
Make AI Your Admin
A sales rep can only be as productive as the time spent selling. Does anyone want to be putting emails and communication notes into the CRM system when they could be on the phone or working on a high-level meeting? Of course not. This is where the helper part of AI really shines. Let AI automate activity logging, identify high-priority emails, and create new contacts for you. Pass off that admin work and start spending your time in more productive ways.
Find Out If It’s a Good Deal — Or Not
There’s nothing worse than chasing down a deal only to have it end in, well, nothing. All of that time and investment are gone. AI can not only classify what a good deal or account looks like, but also predict which solutions and discounts to offer your customer based on previous successes. Sniffing out a good deal is definitely something reps can learn over time. But why wait when AI can get it done for you right now? Then you can just focus on the right things to go out and get the deals you can actually get done.
Toss the Sandbag
After learning forecasting as a rep, it was a whole new world when I became a regional vice president. I had to figure out how to roll up my team’s forecast, which was a big learning curve. Today you can get help from AI to predict a forecast and give an honest outlook on the quarter. It would have been a massive advantage for me to have been able to get a second set of eyes from my AI helper to predict what my team was going to bring in. Now the overzealous forecast can be tempered and the sandbagging eliminated.
To read the complete article, “Why AI Will Be Your New Best Friend in Sales,” visit Quotable.com.
