The Role of AI in Modern Sales to Enhance Performance and Productivity

AI solutions are becoming core to sales work – from prospect identification to customer retention. According to a recent survey conducted by Salesforce recently, 76% of sales professionals currently use AI or plan to use it soon. 

This unprecedented level of adoption means a very new way for businesses to approach their sales strategies, using AI to grow, optimize and monetize operations in a fierce and ever-evolving marketplace.

But how do you use AI for sales?

Role Of AI In Modern Sales And How You Can Leverage It

Let’s take a look at 6 tried-and-tested areas AI can help in boosting sales performance and productivity.

1. Virtual Sales Engineer

Virtual sales engineers powered by AI are transforming the way technical sales teams operate, offering a powerful solution to common bottlenecks and time-consuming tasks. 

Tools like Docket AI learn from tribal knowledge by integrating with your disparate knowledge sources. It uses multiple AI models to retrieve, verify, and deliver answers to help sales reps close deals faster.

Docket integrates with an approved Slack channel, a meeting assistant like Zoom, or a web browser. Your sales, GTM, or support agent can ping a customer/prospect query to Docket within the channel and get a verified response in 5 to 10 seconds 24/7, like so:

The Docket AI assistant can handle a wide range of complex tasks that traditionally impact sales productivity:

• Need a customized product demo? Docket AI can set it up rapidly, tailoring the environment to specific customer needs. 
• When faced with detailed RFPs, the system can generate accurate, compelling responses by drawing from an extensive database of product information and use cases. 
• It even automates the creation of discovery documents, instantly producing tailored materials based on customer requirements. 

Read more about How Docket AI Can Transform Your Sales Process: The Virtual Sales Engineer.

2. Better Data Enrichment Using AI

AI is changing how we use data in sales. It's not just helpful anymore - it's essential. With AI-driven data enrichment, sales teams can work smarter and faster.

Here’s how it helps:

• Faster Lead Qualification: AI goes through tons of data and identifies the most promising leads for sales. This means that sales reps can fully concentrate on prospects most likely to buy.
• Less Time for Information Gathering: No more information hunting for hours. All that is done with one click. AI supplies the sales team with complete profiles filled with information.
• Lead Scoring: AI constantly updates lead scores. This keeps sales efforts focused on the right targets.

By using AI for these tasks, sales teams can spend less time on busy work. Instead, they can focus on what really matters - talking to prospects and closing deals. It's about working smarter, not harder.

3. Personalize Your Entire Sales Process with AI

AI technology has arguably transformed the customer engagement landscape. It comes in handy from the very first interaction through the sale completion, as shown below.

AI goes to great lengths for customer information collection. It also recognizes trends that are in most cases missed by humans. This allows the sales team to understand what this particular segment of the market prefers. This valuable information can help:

• Tailor your pitch perfectly
• Create more relevant content
• Approach customers in ways they prefer

Therefore, with AI, personalizing interactions becomes a click away.

4. Meeting Summaries and Analysis

AI-powered meeting summaries are game-changers for productivity. 

Here's how they're revolutionizing the way sales teams work:

• Time-Saving Recaps: A sales rep does spend a lot of time talking with customers in meetings. But the work doesn't stop after the phone call. AI tools now help shorten these conversations by summarizing them quickly and correctly. This means reduced active listening and more selling.

Here’s an example from Fireflies.ai meeting summaries

• Improved Follow-Up: With AI-generated summaries, sales reps can craft better follow-up emails. They don't miss important details, leading to stronger relationships with prospects. This personal touch can speed up the sales cycle.
• Internal Communication Boost: Such summaries are not only provided to clients. They are also distributed within the organization so everybody knows what the meetings entail. This is particularly useful for linking managers of various deals. They receive summaries without having to attend every call.
• Data-Driven Insights: AI doesn't just transcribe. It evaluates. It can identify patterns within customer feedback or frequently heard reasons for rejection. This would help salespeople to adjust their sales approach with time.
• Action Item Tracking: Many AI tools can pull out action items from meetings. This feature ensures nothing falls through the cracks. Sales reps can focus on next steps right away, increasing their efficiency.

5. Faster Sales Collateral Creation

AI is doing wonders for the creation of support materials for the sales teams. It is streamlining the production of critical bottom-of-funnel content and makes working on this more productive than ever before.

Think of all the rich materials that marketing resources have to produce for sales departments eBooks, case studies, landing pages, brochures, emails, sales decks and many more.

Generally, these are not fast and easy collaterals to produce.

They need a lot of research, planning, and creativity. This is when AI comes in to enhance the workflow of the processes.

AI doesn't replace human expertise – it enhances it. By handling initial drafts and basic research, AI frees up valuable time for sales teams. They can focus more on understanding customer needs, refining their messaging, and perfecting their sales approach. The result? More strategic, targeted content that really speaks to prospects.

Some of the greatest features of AI include content customization at a larger scale. No two prospects are the same, and in many instances, AI can fulfill the content requirements of each prospect almost immediately. 

It can customize case studies according to the industry, develop colorful and engaging few-page pitch decks in seconds, and write different sales emails without breaking a sweat. This kind of scale in personalization would take several hours. Now it can be done in a matter of a few moments.

In fast-moving worlds like sales, timing can be the difference between success and failure in a deal. Considering how cumbersome the conventional content creation and collaboration processes usually are, AI literally cuts down the time required significantly. This difference can be the reason why a contract is won and why it is lost to the other competitors.

6. AI for Predictive Forecasting

AI is transforming sales forecasting, making it more accurate and insightful than ever before. AI can collect and process huge amounts of data to accurately forecast revenue in the future. It does not just present one figure – rather it presents a whole lot of useful insights.

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This enables sales teams to determine projected revenue for future periods, identify possible deficits or overages to quotas, and evaluate the estimates made by AI against their own. In this way, these teams will be improving their forecasting capability in due course.

At the deal level, AI provides indicators to help decide which opportunities to include in specific forecast categories. This granular approach ensures forecasts are built on solid, data-driven foundations. 

Conclusion 

Your sales process needs to evolve with the times and embracing AI and automation can help. 

Take your sales acceleration to the next level with Docket, an AI-powered sales enablement tool. Docket acts as your virtual Sales Engineer, providing instant, accurate responses to customer queries, automating RFP processes, and uncovering valuable sales insights.

Book a demo today!

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