Artificial intelligence combines human intelligence and knowledge with machine learning. Which leaves you with the technology to predict your sales and marketing results. The introduction of AI into our everyday lives is becoming more and more apparent, from movie recommendations on Netflix to mind-reading recommendations on e-commerce sites such as Amazon. It seems like AI is already very familiar with our habits and patterns. So how can the use of it benefit your sales team and increase revenue?

1. Shorter sales cycle

It’s all about working smarter, not harder. Our Sales Director is a huge fan of this outlook. And so is AI. Allowing sales teams to do more in less time seems like a no-brainer. According to the IDC, the average salesperson spends 68% of their time researching. That’s over half the working week! Instead of spending their time researching and qualifying, AI allows sales teams to focus their efforts on the leads that matter – the ones AI has determined most profitable.

2. Improves account growth

Not only does AI identify your ‘invisible’ lead base, it also gets to work on your current client base to identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities, giving you the intelligence to make the right offers to the right customers at the right time.

3. Intelligent prospecting and selling

I’m sure we can all agree that sales are shifting from a reactive to a proactive approach when it comes to both prospecting and selling. AI fits right into the middle of this approach. Proactively guiding sales to the right leads using machine learning and continually improving actions, opportunities and processes.

We all have access to our customer data so, therefore, could identify purchasing and behavioural patterns throughout this data, but realistically how many of us have actually done it? It’s time-consuming, most of us don’t have the resource, and it’s not always going to be 100% accurate. And when it’s done it’s done. With machine learning, we can identify these patterns to provide insight into our customer behaviour over a long period of time.

This can then recognise patterns from potential customers, identifying prospects and where they are in the sales cycle. In other words, with machine learning, we can analyse data from converted leads and customers to apply and recognise what our potential leads and prospects may look like.

4. Target the right leads

Using the predictive lead scoring algorithm that AI offers, sales team have the ability to identify leads that are most likely to convert. This frees up sales team times to concentrate on targeting the right leads at the right time, rather than wasting time and effort on leads that are probably never going to convert. You also have the option to remove the ‘non-converters’ or ‘non-engagers’ out of your data-set so you are literally left with a pool of quality data that in time will engage with marketing and convert with sales.

5. Predict leads behaviour

Ever noticed that your timeline on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram is not actually a ‘timeline’? This is down to AI learning your previous browsing behaviour and showing you the posts you will be more interested in and more likely to engage with.

Making your news feeds smarter and more personalised. Using this exact methodology, your sales team can put themselves in front of their target audience and tailor their sales messages, posts and emails based on what they know their leads are interested in. Increasing engagement and providing more sales opportunities.

6. Close more deals

With all this intelligence at your sales team’s fingertips, it leaves more time selling and less time spent researching, doing admin and sourcing leads. Meaning, they can concentrate their efforts on targeting and closing the leads they know are going to convert.

From personalising their sales pitch to every lead, to closing deals quicker and easier, using AI to manage your data leaves little to no room for errors and leaves you with more efficient data. Again, something we all want and need. With all this under sales team’s belts, they will have the ability to develop more effective and proved strategies that drive conversions.

With AI doing the hard work for you when it comes to selling, this frees up more of your time to get down to the nitty-gritty of what techniques work and really drive more revenue for your business. Take a look at our whitepaper on how you can turn your website into a profit engine to furthermore increase your pipeline.