AI has gone big across industries in no time. It’s breathing new life into existing processes, predominantly sales. 

Sales platforms now come with an added layer of AI to help users operate and succeed in the fierce market competition. 

At Happysales, we believe that AI isn't merely a shiny feature; it is changing the fundamentals of how sales teams function. This includes automating routine activities, helping them spend more time on big-picture tasks, adding a personal touch to their outreach, and making better sales decisions with AI insights.

The numbers tell a similar story. AI can increase leads by 50% and reduce call times and costs by a whopping 60%. 

So, if you’re still missing opportunities, breaking your back doing manual sales tasks, and dealing with ineffective sales outreach, you still haven’t experienced the power of AI. In this article, we will go from the ground up and touch upon every aspect of AI in sales.

But, first.

How AI in Sales Works

On average a sales rep only spends 33% of their time actually selling and the rest of the time goes into non-productive tasks. This is where AI algorithms play a major role. These algorithms learn from existing data and apply them in various situations.

It is important to note that AI in sales may not automate the actual selling activities instead, it assists with many functions that save your reps’ time to focus on selling. These functions include 

• Personalizing your sales interactions 
• Gathering data from multiple sources
• Accessing real-time insights for better decision-making 
• Analyzing historical sales data for accurate sales goals 
• Staying on top of your buyer’s journey 

However, the aim is to create a perfect blend of human judgment and AI assistance so customers don’t get a robotic experience. 

Examples of How Sales Teams Use AI in Various Stages of the Sales Process

Let us explore how AI seamlessly integrates into the fabric of sales operations today.

1. CRM integration and Customer Segmentation

AI has the ability to derive valuable insights for your sales team from scattered sources. It gives a unified and up-to-date view of your customer interactions across email, social media, voice calls, and support tickets. This helps your reps handle large volumes of customer data and get the context of every interaction. 

Now, these algorithms can also analyze the large customer data set to better categorize leads into segments based on shared preferences and behavior. This way, businesses can customize their sales strategy and create effective targeted campaigns. 

2. Sales Prospecting

Using sales prospecting for AI, is like finally finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. AI can help identify potential leads and define ideal customer profiles using dozens of filters. It can also automatically search multiple data sources to find prospects that fit your ICP.

This fastens the lead generation process and allows a more accurate selection of prospects with higher purchase intent.

3. Personalized Outreach

AI is a game-changer when it comes to crafting targeted outreach campaigns. Through AI-driven analysis of customer preferences, behaviors, and historical interactions, algorithms generate insights that go beyond one-size-fits-all approaches. 

Happysales can help your reps gather accurate and updated information about prospects, figure out relevant talking points, and hyper-personalize emails in a few clicks. Start delivering messages that relate to each prospect and achieve higher rates of engagement.

4. Sales Intelligence

More than 60% of sales reps believe generative AI will help them sell efficiently. Sales intelligence is a cohesive AI-driven approach that enables reps to have everything they need to make faster and smarter decisions. This includes access to real-time analytics, predictive insights, customer segmentation, visual reports, AI suggestions, and much more. 

Through this, teams can keep track of their prospect journey and convert them when they are most interested. 

5. Lead Qualification

Manually vetting leads is a tedious process. AI can simplify the lead qualification process with automatic lead scoring which involves assigning scores to leads based on predefined criteria like engagement level and past interactions. 

This makes your sales teams productive and improves conversion rates by directing attention toward leads with a higher likelihood of closing and maximizes the impact of each interaction.

6. Sales Enablement

63% of high-performing sales teams trust automation for instructions on the next steps to be taken on a lead. Trust us when we say AI is not here to replace your sales reps but to make their lives easier. 

Your sales team can reach the set goals with real-time AI prompts during live interactions, automatic note-taking, identification of key topics and moments of a conversation, and much more. This makes your reps perform at their peak and brings them closer to the prospects and ultimately their sales quotas. 

AI in Sales in Action: Examples of AI helping sales teams 

50% of respondents in a survey reported adopting AI in at least one business area highlighting its widespread adoption. Let’s have a look at some real-life applications of AI in sales and how it innovates different stages of a sales process. 

1. LifeThreads generated $10M using AI

LifeThreads is a healthcare wearable brand that struggled to sustain sales with the onset of the pandemic. They used an AI-powered sales software to build a new business plan that skyrocketed their business. The platform helped them build a list of 500 new target prospects from different sources and send mass email offers to his highly targeted lists. 

As a result, the business generated $5M worth of mask orders in a week, about 5X of what they did in 2019. ​​4 weeks later, they brought in another $5M, bringing their total revenue to $10M.

2. Five9 eliminated guesswork from sales processes using AI 

Five9 is an industry leader in cloud contact center solutions. For the Five9 team to evolve their go-to-market strategy, they used an AI sales platform for gathering data and insights beyond what their then-current tech stack was capable of providing. 

Using AI, they could automatically capture activities and contacts engaged in the deal cycle, and inspect engagement with each account and opportunity. This data also helped improve Five9’s forecasting capabilities and empowered sales leaders to make informed decisions with confidence. 

3. JK Moving Services increased sales by 20% using AI 

JK Moving Services is an independent moving company in North America. They were losing prospects to their competition and wanted to build better buyer-seller rapport. 

They deployed an AI platform that provided actionable insights about the buyers’ likes, dislikes, and motivations to the sales team. Using this, they could easily modify their sales approach and close big-ticket deals simply by adapting to their buyers’ pace. In fact, individual reps improved their close rates between 15% and 25% in just one month. 

Wish to integrate AI into your sales processes as well? We’ve got you.

How to Fit AI into Your Sales Strategy

This section will help you with the steps to infuse AI into our existing sales strategy and transform how your sales teams operate. 

1. Evaluate AI adoption readiness

First, analyze your existing workflows, customer interactions, and data assets to determine the areas where AI can add the most value. 

Examine different use cases, applications, and their outcomes to see how AI will improve the entire process. Next, check if your tech stack is adaptable and has data capabilities. Find out if your workforce has the skills you need, if not, identify gaps and train them. 

2. Asses different AI tools 

This step involves thoroughly evaluating different AI tech available in the market for the sales teams specifically. This assessment's key aspects include examining each tool's features, functionalities, integration, and scalability. 

Don’t forget to ensure the tool is user-friendly and not technical for your teams to use.  Finally, asses if you have the resources and you’re getting the necessary support from the vendor’s team to execute the integration.  

3. Test the effectiveness of AI in your tech stack

Gauge the effectiveness and feasibility of implementing the chosen AI tool in a beta phase. Test performance, scalability, and integration with existing tools to identify any issues early on and fix them for a smooth execution. Prioritize security and compliance checks to safeguard sensitive data and stick to industry regulations.

Deploy pilot projects to demonstrate the positive impact of AI. Document the testing process and results for knowledge transfer within the organization. This ensures teams are well-informed about the strengths and limitations of the implemented AI.

4. Get stakeholder buy-in and refine

Now, validate your implementation by demonstrating to various stakeholders how AI effectively addresses specific challenges and delivers desired results compared to the pre-AI process.

Encourage different perspectives and collaboration by involving employees, customers, and partners in shaping your strategy. Share progress openly to build trust and a sense of shared responsibility. 

Stay open to learning, adapting your plan as you go, and prioritize the knowledge of your sales team as you full-fledgedly add AI into your sales strategy.

That’s it! Your sales strategy is AI-powered now.

Have You Met Happysales AI? 

The MVP of AI in sales is personalized outreach. Meet Happysales which is built to help your sales teams research and write personalized emails in seconds. 

You can easily drive data-backed personalization using 100+ real-time triggers including prospect & company news, tech stack used, funding news, competitor intelligence, persona-specific messaging, and more. 

Happysales does this by splitting up the entire process into four steps;

• Aggregate: First, the platform automates the collection of data from 650M people and 20M companies, your own CRM data for engagement metrics, and public data sources with unlimited information. This will give you tons of prospects to reach out to. 
• Transform: Using proprietary AI & ML Models, the platform converts this data into predictions, and recommendations and 100+ AI triggers for real-time monitoring. This ensures a personalized foundation is laid for your next steps. 
• Personalize: Then AI generates valuable insights, prospect challenges, talking points, recommendations, emails & messages to send at scale.
• Feedback: Finally, it gathers user feedback to further improve future AI suggestions and predictions so that you can always hit the mark.

With Happysales, you only need 2 minutes to craft the perfect email which makes converting prospects a piece of cake. Are you ready to try it out? Join their waitlist and be the first one to experience the difference of AI in your sales outreach.