As we watch AI eat the world, it’s easy for a company to become overwhelmed and stuck on which opportunities to integrate first.
That pressure to move quickly and test things is even more important for sales-oriented organizations.
The sales process and toolset have been hit harder than almost any other business unit. AI has become a key ingredient of modern sales strategy.
Today, we’re not just exploring AI in sales; we dive headfirst into its transformative potential. We’re talking about a shift from intuition-based decisions to data-driven strategies.
This is not a call to hand everything over to the algorithms. We’re not there yet. Maybe never. No one wants more robots sending slightly better cold emails to them every day.
People will always be important in the sales process. However, we want less guesswork in your process and more precise targeting. And you better believe the SaaS world is building some pretty shiny machines to help you fine-tune your sales strategies.
Ultimately, you want to augment, not replace, your human intelligence resources.
Sales AI uses to consider
My goal with this list is to give you a checklist of sales AI use cases that you can test. To test what works for you and best fits your sales and marketing strategies.
One final note: Every major sales platform integrates content personalization, automated responses, lead intelligence, and predictive analytics. All the major solution providers (Salesforce, HubSpot, Demandbase, etc.), and a few new ones, are working to build the all-in-one Sales AI solutions. But no one is there yet.
Focusing on use cases first will be more helpful to your overall strategy. Look at the opportunities that best fit your organization, current pain points and capabilities.
Let’s dive in.
1. Lead data enrichment
“We need more leads.”
“We need better leads.”
Every part of the lead generation process is connected to AI solutions. Obtaining lead data, qualifying it, and confirming that data is critical for any sales prospecting team.
Take a look at your lead data process and look for the gaps. Are you collecting enough leads? Do you verify that data quickly and successfully? Can you easily expand and update lead information?
Solutions in this group try to distinguish themselves by having the largest data set, the most current data,
This process ensures your sales team has accurate and comprehensive data, which is crucial for personal outreach and effective lead nurturing.
Tools to consider:
- ZoomInfo: Historical leader, addition of multiple AI tools, human-powered verification
- Clearbit: First HubSpot native lead data; lead scoring, routing and buyer intent
- Apollo: New AI sales leader, large database and broader sales engagement tools
- Seamless AI: Real-time search for verified mobile phones, emails and direct numbers
2. Conversational marketing
Conversational toolsets are perfectly set up for AI augmentation. Many of the organizations that use these sales and support chatbots on their websites have existing databases of support questions and answers.
These tools can also be easily transferred to human engagement options in real-time or asynchronously.
These tools also provide tremendous user experience improvement opportunities incredibly quickly, reducing user frustration and unanswered questions and improving lead qualification.
This group of tools does the best job of humanizing digital interactions, transforming poor support and sales chatbots from one-way broadcasts without context to two-way dialogues with insights and understanding.
As you evaluate the user flow of your customers and potential customers, ask yourself the following questions: Are we truly engaged with our customers, or are we just responding to them?
I share two caveats. First, as with all AI tools, the devil is in the data. If you don’t have a clear source of common customer or potential customer questions, you need that first. And second, not all of these tools are created equal. Test them thoroughly before rolling them out to a public deployment.
Tools to consider:
- Drift: Automate conversations, insights and recommendations
- Intercom: Solve questions immediately and increase efficiency
3. Meeting intelligence
Who doesn’t love to hate meetings? Meeting shenanigans are real, but sales calls and prospect meetings are more relevant than ever.
The sales conversation has always been more of an art than a science, but AI tools aim to improve the data side of these conversations.
This group of tools focuses on gaining insights into your meetings, summarizing conversations, suggesting action items, and providing real-time feedback. Meeting Intelligence AI not only records; it interprets, suggests action items and converts casual mentions into solid leads.
Interpreting moods, language and missed opportunities.
Every sales call is more data. And AI tools excel at capturing and better understanding that data.
Credit: Meetgeek
Tools to consider:
- Meetgeek: Record, transcribe, summarize, and share detailed insights from every meeting with any tool
- Colibri.ai: Real-time conversation intelligence, live cue cards
- Understand: Records, transcribes, highlights and summarizes meetings with actionable insights
- Trellus: Personalized coaching during cold calls
- Zoom: Summarize meetings, chat summaries, chat conversations, generative replies
4. Personalized videos
Personalized videos aren’t used by every business development team, but even before AI, this was a growing category.
It’s a way to stand out from typical cold emails and unwanted DMs. This use case doesn’t go away mass production of content; it’s about trying to scale that personal touch.
The difference between sending a potential customer a video that mentions their name, company, or specific needs versus videos without personalization is night and day. AI tools also make these types of messages less clunky. The tools are getting better at personalization that actually feels personal.
These solutions can help you capture attention, deliver tailored messages and improve customer relationships.
Credit: Sendspark
Tools to consider:
- Send spark: Custom intros, personalized thumbnails, calendar booking
- Bhuman: Digital avatar cloning, detailed video customization, 6k app integrations
- Yours: Detailed video customization, facial cloning, lip sync, unique voice variables
5. Email Deliverability
Ultimately, I’m sure we’ll all radiate our thoughts to each other. However, email is still the workhorse of most sales teams. Ensuring these emails get through is incredibly important and increasingly challenging.
Happy, email deliverability AI tools are emerging with new solutions to these challenges.
Credit: Warmbox
Tools to consider:
- Warm box: Warm up email accounts to improve delivery rates
- Zeta email: Personalized emails per user
- Sentence: Human-sounding subject lines, on-brand, customized to each user
- Optimail: Monitors individual contact behavior for hyper-personalization
- 7th sense: Optimizes email timing and frequency per user
How will you use sales AI?
These sales AI use cases represent a shift in the way sales strategies are formed and executed. AI is not about replacing the human element; it’s about improving them, making your sales efforts more effective, more personalized and ultimately more successful.
