More enterprises are now leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to improve sales. According to a Forrester analyst report, innovations in AI sales are thus occurring at an "unprecedented rate."
Rather than supplanting traditional sellers, however, AI will augment how they work and engage with their respective buyers. This entails automating tasks and providing recommendations that are sensitive to both time and context.
The artificial intelligence sales revolution
Today, the sheer speed of innovation makes it challenging to deliver new capabilities in a manner that allows sellers to digest change. In order to address this issue, the report outlines how AI is disrupting sales to allow application development and delivery (AD&D) leaders to "improve the value that sellers deliver to their customers."
As the report notes, the "explosion of content-rich B2B marketing and commerce sites" has made buyer research more accessible. Nevertheless, this digital maturation is reportedly "in stark contrast with the experience buyers receive working with human sellers."
More than 90% of B2B buyers prefer to make purchases online rather than interact with a salesperson. Nevertheless, highly considered purchases do still require a certain level of expertise and seller involvement.
Implementing artificial intelligence to improve sales
"AI is the driving force that will allow sales organisations to transform," according to Forrester. If sellers want to stay ahead in long sales cycles, however, it is important that AI in human-assisted sales matched the buyer experience of self-service.
While AI has already began to transform various segments of organisations, it will soon become a "technology pillar" for every sales digital transformation. AD&D leaders must therefore enable their companies to employ AI and subsequently improve sales.
First of all, AI can help sellers to automate important but routine tasks. In addition, AI can also identify new and leading revenue-generating opportunities, augment insights, and drive more personalised engagement.
Pre-sales, the technology also allows sales professionals to focus their time on the most valuable leads. Moreover, AI has the ability to improve preparedness by evaluating a seller's knowledge and recommending strategic coaching.
Post-sales, AI addresses pain points before they affect customer lifetime value and provides transparency into future buyer needs. In fact, the Smart CPQ solution from PROS uses machine learning to fill its customers' pipelines by identifying similar customers and their purchase trends, which automatically creates opportunities within its customers' CRM.
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