5 powerful ways A.I. Is transforming the sales and marketing experience right now [And how you can adapt]
You are sitting back in your armchair and shuffling shows on Netflix faster than a deck of cards. You can’t decide what to watch because there are just so many options to process, and so you give in and let the software do it for you. Netflix lists top shows you are most likely to watch, based on your watch history. Whether we particularly like artificial intelligence or not, we most definitely cannot ignore its presence and the impact it can have in our lives. We are past the stage where we can debate whether AI in sales and marketing will be the next big thing in technology.
It already is. Whether you realize it or not. That friendly face that pops up and greets you as you visit a website, or automated conversations you have with a delivery app, sums up your daily AI encounters.
AI can significantly improve the quality of our lives while also enabling us to be more fast and efficient. Implementing AI in sales and marketing functions can help your teams by:
Making you more productive by doing dull and monotonous tasks
Offering algorithm-based suggestions that can help you take action
Helping you progress towards your goals faster than before
How is AI in sales and marketing can change the customer experience
1. Generate more opportunities for your business
Every website visitor is a potential lead who can become a customer for life. With the help of AI in sales and marketing, you can uncover visitors and turn your website into a lead generation machine. For instance, when a visitor lands on your website while you are away, an AI-powered chatbot can step in to
Interact with the visitors
Collect their contact information
Help them schedule a meeting on your calendar
Help marketing teams qualify leads in real-time
Once qualified leads are captured in the CRM system, your sales team will view this information. AI helps convert data into insights smoothly by providing:
Best customer fit
Predictive scoring where leads are ranked according to their probability to buy from you
Next best action to take to convert leads
Get insights across marketing campaigns and lead sources – all the way up to deal closure, with multi-touch attribution
Create an accurate AI-powered forecast and provide insights to help the sales team take action
Surface the best leads using lead scores
Convert data into insights
AI in sales and marketing can help you throughout the customer journey, from start to finish. According to Avinash Paul, Vice President-AI, Active.Ai,
AI can be trained to predict the risk of churn for each customer based on his historical data and these customers can be addressed first. Even customer reviews on e-commerce is a gold mine for a company, as AI can mine millions of negative opinions and provide a summarized view for the companies so that they can make data-driven decisions in their product road map or supply chain.
2. Improve productivity
Selling products or services to leads isn’t the only task on your salesperson’s to-do list. For instance, salespeople are supposed to concentrate on selling activities, but in reality, the majority of their time is devoted to other tasks.
Most daily tasks involve repetitive manual work that can be easily automated like sending emails, updating prospect information in a database, preparing reports, coordinating with other teams, etc.
An AI-powered CRM helps salespeople stay one step ahead by giving back more time to sell.
Freddy AI, the AI assistant in Freshsales CRM, automatically identifies out-of-office emails, analyzes the contact’s next available slot, and even prompts salespeople to reschedule meetings. So your salespeople need not hang on to email threads or get tired from waiting.
3. Increase customer engagement with personalization
Building trust is something that keeps CMOs and VP of Sales up at night. It is hard to establish trust with prospects if you hardly know them. AI bridges that gap by pointing you towards prospects that engage the most with your brand.
AI in sales and marketing helps you
Spot leads that are more likely to be interested in your product
Get suggestions on the next best actions to move the lead down the funnel
Reduce first-time response on your website using custom workflows
Run outbound campaigns on auto-pilot with sales sequences
Engage with leads faster and personalize the channel experience with 360-degree information
Equipped with machine learning capabilities, AI makes it easier than ever before to target the right consumer with personalised marketing campaigns.
4. Speed up the sales cycle
When different departments in your company work in tandem to keep deals moving across the sales pipeline, important information gets missed out, or communication is delayed. This communication gap can cost you revenue.
AI keeps your sales team on their toes by alerting sales managers when a deal is stagnant for too long and keeps deals moving smoothly through the pipeline. With AI, you can determine your deal status, health and get notified about the next best action.
AI in sales and marketing supports your employees by providing context on the customer by using predictive analysis. AI deciphers and makes sense of the data, customer, and previous sales cycles to determine the best-personalized journey to take a prospect on.
5. Nurture customers with artificial intelligence
Who knew AI in sales and marketing could help automate customer delight? Having an AI-powered CRM helps you understand the entire customer journey, learn from AI suggestions, and personalize campaigns as if the customer is your friend.
Your sales and marketing folks probably have many data in their hands. But without insights, this data is just a dumping ground. AI in sales and marketing lifts the veil on crucial insights behind every website visit, email response, and chat conversation with the lead. It identifies those who are most likely to engage with your brand, ranks them according to their probability to buy, and helps you target your outreach with precision.
This potentially leads you to develop long-lasting relationships by proactively meeting your customers’ needs and helping them grow. AI also helps in surfacing upsell and cross-sell opportunities with account-level activities and conversations.
AI in sales and marketing
According to Avinash, “AI can help salespeople move from template-based targeting to more personalized experience through NLG for messages and emails.”
Aligning your marketing and sales team has always been a hard nut to crack due to communication gaps, challenges with revenue attribution, and competitiveness on the whole. A CRM with AI can be the bridge that can connect these diverse poles in your organization by deciphering and learning from data, keeping teams agile, and offering quick suggestions to convert leads.
There has always been a mental block towards AI that might not allow you to customize and tailor your communication to prospects and customers. But an intuitive CRM with in-built AI can amp up your sales and marketing efforts. Freshsales with Freddy, the AI assistant, effortlessly learns from your CRM data to deliver insights, predictions, and recommendations tailored to your business and processes. Freddy pairs these insights with powerful automation capabilities to help you make insight-backed decisions.
Start using Freshsales today!
Sell smarter and faster. Leave time-consuming tasks to automation.