AI is one of the most prolific advances that we have created in human history. The ability of a program to find what we like and help us to do so much in our lives helps to make our lives overall easier, but how is it changing in specific spaces such as sales?
AI is transforming our daily lives through sales and making that process much more streamlined and after reading into some websites I have found some interesting prospects for the world of sales. This use of AI has given companies an easy way to access what their customers want to see through algorithms and suggestions for the viewing public, making the people see what the machine has found that that person would prefer.
Though many people do know that a machine is helping them find the websites and adverts that they would want to see, many do not understand just how much machines affect them and how powerful a simple AI could change what the people see and what makes people subconsciously do what a company wants them to do.
Personalized Product Recommendation
The first way is by showing the customers products based on their previous searches and learning what to recommend. This is used to help customers find items they might be looking for in the proverbial sea of items out there.
The main goal of the AI is to predict user choice through previously searched items. From there, the AI looks for similar items to that search and gives recommendations based on that single search. The AI uses searches over time to filter through different products to custom tailor items to put forward that will get customers to keep returning.
The AI also uses items that were searched by other people and uses those to recommend items based on similar searches. As an example: if you search for a cookbook and people who search for that cookbook, the AI might recommend items that relate to that item that was searched for by another person. The more interactions there are the more focused the AI will become.
Automated Lead Generation
Another way is using AI tools in order to create leads without needing to source them by yourself. This process is known as Automated Lead Generation, this process gets an AI to send out a hook for customers on a wide scale to bite by sending those people who might be interested in an email or website for example.
While someone might be apprehensive about using a machine to send make these types of mass messages where personality is supposed to be the main attention-grabber; however, it is actually far more impactful to do this. The reasons for this are as follows:
- Increase to efficiency
- Weeding out less qualified prospects
- Automated brand building
- Streamlining lead traffic
These processes can be done for both inbound and outbound processes and though the steps for the outbound process might be slightly different, the major point of using the AI to help bring in leads is the same.
Predictive Analytics for Sales Forecasting
Being able to predict an oncoming storm is important for many different fields, predicting the weather and predicting traffic patterns are important for those fields, and this is also important for sales. AI is able to make a forecast about what customers might be looking for or what a hot product would be very easy for an AI who has access to databases of people’s interests in a microsecond.
The important aspect is to make an AI think like a salesperson and look for what should be pushed. It captures human expertise and uses relevant data from both in and out of the company to help test the merits of how impactful the storm might be. The reason for this to be focused on is because it drives future business decisions. It changes a lot of different aspects such as sale incentives, marketing, product launch windows, and more.
Intelligent Chatbots for Customer Support
The ability to lead people to find products is not the only major use for customers in sales, another important aspect is making sure any questions they have or easily solved problems can be solved without wasting time. This is the point of one form of conversational AI, that being Chatbots, which are AI with preprogrammed answers that link to forums and website Q/A which might link to the customer’s answers, even if that recommended answer is not exactly what they are looking for.
Chatbots are also a way to create leads for other departments as people asking questions may give insight into how people are using their money and attention with certain products. For example, if many people are trying to figure out how an aspect of your website works and the bot sends them to unhelpful links, it might show that resources should be allocated to that specific thing so a proverbial void can be filled. Patching these holes will teach the AI how to answer more problems and will overall help your customers get their answers quickly.
Automated Contract Generation
Lastly, an important aspect to have in your back pocket is the legality portion of sales and to keep documents in order without the need for lawyers to be involved. This is where AI comes in, specifically automated contact generation, which combs through documents that come in routinely and helps to make the work of the legal team and even non-legal teams easier.
This can be done by the AI storing the routine documents and what is usually on them in its files, from there, when those files need to be done the AI will essentially autofill the parts that need to be filled. This helps to make the job of the sales team easier as they don’t have to waste much time on these documents, but it saves the time of lawyers since they don’t even need to fully be involved if at all. There are even contracts that fulfill themselves called smart contracts that use blockchain technology to load lines from the code into the contract making sending out documents seamless.
