Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Sales

Artificial Intelligence (AI) hype is real, and it is driving digital transformation, growth, and opportunity in every sector. According to PwC, the “AI revolution” will result in a potential contribution of $15 trillion to the world economy by 2030.

“Why is that AI making such a huge impact? The simple answer is Data and Computing Power”

Fuelled by affordable computing power and ample supplies of data, AI now has reached the point where they can evaluate options, make decisions, and even take actions to execute those decisions.

According to Forrester Research, marketing and sales organizations are leading the charge when it comes to adopting AI systems. More and more companies are relying on AI to leverage data and insights, to train sales reps to create more engaging and personalized interactions.

This is the first part in a series of blog posts on the topic “Artificial Intelligence and Sales”. In this part, we would look at some of the areas where organizations can look to incorporate AI into their sales ecosystem

• Personalization
  It’s personal. Even the best sellers are more effective when they approach sales interactions based on facts, rather than opinions. AI provides behavioral, sales and profile data that can help deepen customer relationships, providing a better experience overall for buyers.
• Sales Training
  By collating and rapidly analyzing vast quantities of data related to deals, conversions, and sales rep performance, AI can deliver insights into the areas where reps are struggling to close deals, and then inform and influence the sales training.
• Customer Service
  Chatbots will play a key role in the future of customer service. Why? Chatbots can help achieve a faster customer service resolution, as well as provide quick histories of each customer for impeccable customer service
• Fool Proof Selling
  Customers are more informed than ever, raising the bar for sales reps to meet them exactly where they are in the buying process. Adopting AI and ML can help sellers do what they do best, connecting with customers individually to add real value
  and solve problems. When you lead with the right content at the right time in the right location, meaningful engagement follows
• Pitch Perfect
  Face-to-face role plays are nothing new when it comes to preparing sales reps for buyer interactions. While roleplay exercises provide some value, their effectiveness is limited, because it just isn’t possible to truthfully impersonate a real-
  world interaction. Ultimately, reps typically don’t encounter a realistic buyer interaction until there’s an actual buyer
  interaction. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) hold great potential at improving sales preparation and, when
  used in conjunction with AI, are one of the most exciting innovations for the business

It’s highly unlikely that AI would be able to completely eliminate salespersons in question but rather they can complement and make things easier for humans. The “human touch” would still be needed, focused on managing exceptions, tolerating ambiguity, using judgment, shaping the strategies and responding to difficult customers.

Next part would cover the major use cases used as part of Artificial Intelligence on Sales.

Written by
Arvindh Kumar
Associate Consultant