How to use AI to boost sales effectiveness and grow revenue

If you’re like most sales leaders, you constantly evaluate the best ways to improve team efficiency and bottom-line results. However, try as you might, the reality is that your future success will depend on the speed with which your organisation adopts AI.

According to a 2018 McKinsey study, companies that use AI in the next five to seven years will increase their cash flow by more than 120% by 2030. Companies who don’t use AI will instead see cash flow drop by -23% in the same time frame. Compare those figures with what Salesforce learned in their most recent “State of Sales” research report: only 21% of sales leaders report that their organisations use AI today.

How are the best sales teams using AI?

1. Prioritise the best leads and high potential customers

With AI, you can put your historical data to work to reveal patterns that show what the best customers look like for your business. Since AI continually analyses your customer data and understands the attributes that defines top customers, sales professionals can focus their efforts on the leads that are mathematically most likely to convert.

2. Identify opportunities that are on track or at risk

AI can prioritise opportunities. As most sales professionals manage many opportunities concurrently, it’s not always easy to give each one the attention needed or recognise hidden signals of when an opportunity is falling off track.

With AI, subtle changes are identified and flagged. Not only does AI act as a personal assistant to the sales professional, but the sales manager also has visibility into the potential issue. Now, both the sales professional and their sales manager can work proactively to avert a potential loss or no decision earlier. Plus, they can use their limited one-on-one time to focus on the opportunities that require the most attention.

3. Increase forecast accuracy

One of the most challenging aspects of every sales leaders’ job is calling the forecast. It’s a task that’s wrought with challenges. Are sales professionals over-committing? Are they sandbagging? Are managers applying the right judgment on their teams’ forecasts? This is a perfect job for AI to help decode the tendencies that exist in your sales cycle, right down to each and every sales territory.

AI can predict where the forecast will land and surface the factors that play into the prediction — including the personal forecasting tendencies across each sales professional and sales manager.

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