“Time is what we want most but what we use worst” – William Penn
Did you know that 66% of a sales rep’s time is spent not selling? Given how much you invest into your sales employees and processes, this is pretty bad news.
Of course, you’re now probably wondering.
- Where is all this time going?
- Why isn’t my sales team optimizing the use of their time to close the highest number of deals possible?
- How can I make a high performing team sell smarter and faster?
Actually, the answer is surprisingly simple – your sales team’s time is getting eaten up by having to engage in trivial everyday tasks. And the way to resolve this is by automating, streamlining and simplifying these tasks.
Allow me to explain.
If you work in a field force/ customer facing team, data can get compounded rather quickly. Top-performing sales organisations tend to spend far more of their time on customer-facing front-line sales activities rather than recording sales activities and processes.
However, recording and storing information about past interactions and activities not only gives you powerful insights about your buyer persona but also helps you in making better and educated decisions in the future.
But then, even if the team does record all the data, a sales person will find it extremely difficult and time-consuming to access it.
To help elucidate this scenario better, let’s take the example of a fictional salesperson Gina. Gina works in field sales and has been asked to give an elaborate presentation to a high-priority client in the next few hours. As a part of the presentation, Gina needs to make a note of the company’s best and worst performing products last month.
Since it’s crunch time and she has to manually check the performance of all products individually, she might overlook or miss crucial details. As a result, her presentation may suffer due to lack of pertinent data and she might even lose the deal.
Now consider another scenario in which she is provided with an intelligent bot which can help her in getting all the information she requires within seconds, just like the example below:
As you can see, the problem was solved hassle free in a matter of few seconds. AI bots help not only in generating a basic performance report but also in providing valuable insights and recommendations based on the query.
In fact, Gina might not have known about the performance of the store in Edgewater, had she checked everything by herself manually. Think of all the time saved!
As Artificial Intelligence gets more progressive, the bot can even recommend tactics, send reminders, prioritize notifications based on the deal stage etc.
So what are the different ways through which an intelligent assistant could empower the sales team? Let’s take a deep dive into the various applications of a smart sales bot…
Integration With CRM
This is one of the most important use cases of an AI-powered sales bot. Traditionally speaking, CRM is a place where your sales team builds a record of all customer interactions. But by integrating an AI bot, these interactions become smarter and more refined with every interaction.
By integrating an AI bot into your existing sales systems such as Salesforce, Marketo, etc., any member of your sales team can ask any question related to their key KPIs or past interactions or access CRM data on the move and that too 24/7.
To put it simply, this integration an AI bot can act as a single point of contact for the whole team!
Accurate Sales Data
Let’s rewind a little bit and explore Gina’s case study a little more.
Gina struggled but managed to get a report of the worst performing product by herself. But as someone in the sales field, who needs to maintain a ton of records and reports, she might be faced with doubt and apprehension regarding the accuracy of the data.
Now, the data might be right or wrong but the sense of doubt and the need for cross checking always lingers. All this unnecessary stress and strain takes a toll on her before she makes the actual presentation.
Moreover, if the data is wrong, she might end up receiving bad feedback or worse, lose the deal.
But by using an intelligent bot, she gets the most accurate sales data within the shortest time possible!
Whether it is the right percentages or desired product info or statistics, an AI bot always provides the most accurate and latest data for the query.
Sending Real Time Alerts
A sales person needs the right data at the right time to make a plan of action and predict and prioritize their line of actions. After taking data from various sources, he/she then makes an informed decision based on all data.
In all this hustle and bustle, a salesperson might even forget to hit their targets or any accepted values set by the organization. An AI bot can help sales people by sending real-time alerts to everyone who fails to attain an accepted value and therefore, needs to put in extra attention.
An advanced AI chatbot can even send push notifications and reminders about pending high priority tasks and updates all sales tasks instantly.
In addition to all these applications, by using a smart sales assistant, you can even create a smooth sales journey, using conversational interface.
In conclusion, an AI bot enables better CRM usage, improved time management and finally, helps your sales team in focusing only on tasks which require their attention. As a result, the work productivity of your sales team increases drastically. As your sales team gets more productive, you get to close more deals and obtain more customers!
The whole purpose of a smart sales assistant is to give your sales team more time to work with customers, close more sales and finally help them become a better salesperson. Are you considering an intelligent assistant for your sales team? You might just fall in love with the SIA Bot.
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