Mastering the Next Big Thing in Sales

You've probably guessed it: the prize for biggest game changer in sales goes to "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE." Yes, while it may sound "obvious," I can only say that many (I repeat MANY) organizations are still not clear on what that means. Why not, ok, a few bullet points to summarize:

1. The sales leader believes CRM will solve it (because Salesforce released something called "Einstein" or something)
2. The organization does not have a data strategy (how do you want sales to follow if the executive committee has no clue)
3. The sales reps offer resistance as they fear for their jobs
4. The sales leader believes in doing what has always worked.

Fast forward, what will happen in each of these scenarios:

1. You'll serve the same BS as everyone else at the pace that the CRM vendors determines
2. Game over (5 year survival rate <10% unless your name is John Appleseed)
3. Lovely, Luddites take power and break the sales machine
4. Game over (the dinosaurs also did what had always worked, only crocodiles survived - mostly because of their thick skin)

So, I watched the recording by Drift on the better use (and future) of AI in (marketing and) sales with Justin Keller and Latanè Conant as hosts. Not to sound like a Karen (sorry Karen) but I wasn't too impressed. What they said was basically (1) enhanced personalization will be the norm, (2) predictive analytics will be a core element of the sales play, (3) AI powered chatbots will support the sales and marketing engine. Yes, I would say, I didn't take a psychic (or even sales expert) to come up with this wisdom.

What struck me though: it still takes 16 touches on average to convert a customer. 😅

But they were right about 1 thing: the outreach needs to be done in time, and humans indeed often fail in this. Whether you can call this AI? I'm not inclined to say yes. This is just called automated sequencing - my CRM (HubSpot if you care to know) does that.

What AI will be able to do (here I agree with the hosts) is find you the holy trinity of sales:

1. The right account (at the right time)
2. The right contacts
3. The right content

Some caution is advised when going full "autopilot." You could get unwanted outcomes. Think about your chatbot advising your competitor's product as you carelessly linked ChatGPT to your virtual sales assistant. How would "sales leadership" react when the latter only faithfully mentions the most popular product (i.e.: not yours) with total disregard of your (commercial) agenda.