Sales Enablement

How to Use AI for Sales Enablement

Let’s take a look at how you can use artificial intelligence (AI) to bring your sales enablement processes to the next level.

You may be surprised to learn that you’ve been practicing sales enablement for ages. But you know that in business, there are always new ways to grow and improve.

What is sales enablement?

Sales enablement is the process of providing your sales crew with the tools they need to make sales. (See, you’ve been doing this since you got into business!)

The sales enablement tools in your arsenal may include content, software, knowledge, statistics, and more. No matter what your resources are, they help you to engage your target audience and convert leads.

Your sales enablement strategy is likely an all-hands-on-deck affair because you need everyone on the same page to get the word out about your killer product or service. Everyone has their role to play in leading customers down the sales funnel, from your marketing team gathering cold leads to your sales associates closing the deal.

The more you can add to your sales enablement toolkit, the more customers (and repeat customers) you’ll have.

 

4 ways you can use AI for sales enablement

Using AI as a part of your sales enablement strategy doesn’t mean that you’re replacing your sales reps with robots. Instead, you can use AI to augment your sales enablement strategy to help your human sales reps close the deal more efficiently.

We live in a data-driven digital world, and you should take advantage of the technology at your fingertips. At the very least, it’ll make your life easier; at most, it’ll have a massive return on investment (ROI).

According to McKinsey, teams who used AI for sales enablement generated 50% more leads than their competitors who didn’t use AI. Those using AI also reduced their call times by up to 70%. Who wouldn’t want more leads for less time on the phone?

AI takes care of the grunt work, enabling your team members to focus on fostering stronger connections with your customers. AI can help your crew at every step of the sales funnel, streamlining your work and your customers’ journey.

 

1. Prospecting

Trying to find people that fit your customer profile can be difficult, and cold calling or emailing can be like firing shots in the dark. AI saves time, effort, and money when generating new leads.

With a portfolio of AI tools, from predictive lead scoring to proactive insights (MQ), you can develop detailed buyer personas or customer profiles and alleviate the burden of manual researching to stay up to date with those customers. Although you already have an idea of your audience, once your AI learns who fits the bill, it can help you find new people who match your target clientele.

Your AI can analyze traits such as:

  • Demographic
  • Location
  • Behavior
  • Habits
  • Peak activity times
  • Personal values
  • Sentiments
  • Ethics
  • In- and out-groups
Once it finds a prospective customer, your AI can determine where they’re at in their shopping process. Are they just starting their search by looking at information, or are they almost ready to make a purchase?

Your portfolio of AI tools will deliver information about the lead’s personality and where they’re at in their sales journey to your sales rep. Then your sales rep can reach out to this lead with a compelling pitch. Instead of having your sales reps waste their time searching for cold leads, use AI to deliver warm leads that are more likely to convert.

 

2. Personalizing the pitch

While your sales reps work on converting warm leads at the end of the sales funnel, your AI can create personalized pitches for the customers who still need a bit of a nudge.

Depending on where the customer is in their journey, your AI can develop, craft, and retrieve content to share with the lead. Your portfolio of AI tools can use the other sales enablement tools you have to create tailored content for potential customers and deliver it to them immediately.

When your sales rep engages with a lead, they’ll be armored with a plethora of information about the person’s pain points, motivations, and desired outcomes.

AI can help personalize your pitches by making recommendations for your promotional content regarding:

  • Subject
  • Scope
  • Coverage
  • Style
  • Length
  • Format
  • Timing
  • Frequency

 

3. Productivity, prioritization, and onboarding

As we’ve touched on throughout this article, AI significantly increases your employees’ productivity.

Without the help of AI, your crew may feel like they’re stuck in a “Groundhog Day” style loop of unproductive and repetitive tasks. AI isn’t intended to replace your sales team; it’s meant to take away their busy work so they can focus on what they do best.

At the same time, AI makes it easy for your seasoned representatives to focus on the most urgent tasks at hand, as well as give new employees focus, allowing them to get onboarded faster. AI takes away the guesswork of figuring out where a person is in the sales funnel, allowing your sales reps to prioritize the leads on the brink of converting.

According to Gartner 2/3 of sellers time is not spent engaging with prospects; AI creates an opportunity to expand customer engagement.

 

4. Customer retention and upselling

Of course, gaining new customers is important. But retaining the customers you have is also a crucial part of the business. AI helps you continue to foster brand loyalty and encourage your customers to keep engaging with you.

Since AI is constantly analyzing what’s working for customers, your platform can help you develop email sequences and other ways of engaging with your current clients. For instance, you won’t have to worry about how many emails in a month are too many because your AI will tell you the optimal number of times to send.

Additionally, as your AI monitors people’s engagement with your brand, it can quickly determine products to offer customers based on previous buying patterns.

Let’s say you sell notebooks. You might realize that most of the time when someone buys a notebook, they also buy a pen. If you had a shopper pick out a notebook, you’d probably try to upsell them by showing them your best-selling pens.

However, upselling can be difficult in e-commerce if you don’t know the buyer on the other side of the screen. That’s where AI comes in. Your AI can tell you what they think a prospective customer would be interested in adding to their purchase based on their background and previous customer behavior.

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