Predict sales, quiet AI fears, and rally your team around AI
Growth stalls when your data’s ignored, your team’s anxious, and few know where AI fits.
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Inside: Predictive sales analytics, executive objections to AI, and how to rally your team around AI.
SALES
The Power of AI for Predictive Sales Analytics
Tired of unpredictable sales? Well, you're in luck! Today, we're diving into how AI-powered predictive analytics can boost sales.
Predictive analytics uses historical data, machine learning, and statistical algorithms to provide insights into your customers' preferences, purchasing patterns, and likelihood to buy. It gives you a clear picture of your entire customer lifecycle, from initial contact to post-purchase behavior, empowering you and your teams to make data-informed decisions.
These super-useful insights also allow you and your team to more effectively and efficiently…
Identify high-value leads and opportunities
Personalize a sales approach based on customer profiles
Optimize sales outreach and promotions
Spot cross-selling and upselling opportunities
Predict and prevent customer churn
Typically, you access these insights through third-party solutions with cool-looking interactive dashboards that are both easy to use and understand. Most will integrate seamlessly with existing CRMs, ERPs, or sales management systems, minimizing disruption to current workflows.
Here are a handful of the more popular predictive analytics solutions (some of which also have other integrated features):
Salesforce Einstein: Offers predictive lead scoring, opportunity insights, and forecasting. Streamlines tasks and provides personalized recommendations.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales: Empowers teams with customer insights and AI-driven features to identify at-risk deals and optimize pricing and promotions.
Pyramid Analytics: Provides a unified decision intelligence platform for data preparation, visualization, and advanced analytics.
Infer: Combines internal and external data to generate accurate predictions for account scoring and buyer behavior insights.
6sense: Uncovers anonymous buying behavior and enables personalized engagement with in-market accounts.
Clari: Streamlines forecasting, improves pipeline visibility, and identifies risk and opportunity in real time.
Varicent: Offers tools for incentive compensation management, territory, and quota planning, and sales performance analytics.
Anaplan: Provides a cloud-based platform for sales planning, forecasting, and performance management with predictive insights and scenario modeling.
Aviso AI: Leverages machine learning for accurate sales forecasting, pipeline risk identification, and revenue intelligence.
InsideSales.com: Offers an AI-powered sales acceleration platform with predictive insights, lead prioritization, and guided selling recommendations.
Oracle Sales Cloud: Incorporates AI-powered capabilities for sales forecasting, opportunity scoring, and next-best-action recommendations.
People.ai: Analyzes customer interactions, identifies buying signals, and provides actionable recommendations to optimize sales processes and improve productivity.
To get started, your sales leadership team should be charged with researching and evaluating potential predictive analytics tools. They should collaborate with IT or business intelligence teams to ensure seamless integration with existing systems and data sources.
Once a tool has been selected, comprehensive training materials and programs should be developed to help sales reps and other leaders understand how to use the new tool effectively.
Once deployed, you'll see the benefits at every level of your organization…
Executives gain access to high-level dashboards with key metrics, growth trends, and sales forecasts, enabling strategic decision-making about resource allocation and business direction.
Sales team leads can track individual sales rep performance, identify top performers, and prioritize coaching efforts. Predictive analytics helps them focus on the most promising leads and opportunities.
Sales reps benefit from tools that surface relevant leads, provide insights into prospect engagement, and offer personalized recommendations for the next best action.
By embracing AI-powered sales analytics, you can gain a competitive edge, personalize sales strategies and tactics, optimize resource allocation, and ultimately drive revenue growth.
EXECUTIVE
To AI or Not to AI
🚨BIAS ALERT: We are primarily focused on helping business leaders integrate AI into existing workflows across the company to increase productivity, efficiency, and growth. So, while the benefits of AI are clear to us, we understand the hesitations many leaders have when it comes to fully embracing this transformative tech. AI is SUPER-powerful, and can and will be abused. That's also why we support open-source AI, but we digress.
Understanding our bias, here are the top fears or hesitations that we hear more often than not, and our arguments to counter them (albeit brief):
1️⃣ "AI will take away jobs." While it's true that AI automation may change the nature of some roles, it also creates new opportunities. By planning for upskilling and reskilling, you can empower your employees to focus on higher-value, strategic tasks, while AI handles repetitive and time-consuming ones. Allowing your employees to learn relevant AI systems that impact their roles will prepare them for future growth, no matter where they work. Remember this: AI will not replace most roles. Instead, people not skilled in AI will be replaced by those who are. This requires both employee initiative and employer support.
2️⃣ "We'll lose the human touch." AI isn't about replacing human interactions; it's about enhancing them. By leveraging AI-powered insights, your teams can deliver far more personalized and efficient prospect and customer experiences. While things like website chatbots may handle repetitive requests, other AI tools can allow your employees to manage complex issues much more effectively and efficiently.
3️⃣ "Can we trust AI to be accurate?" With proper training and monitoring, AI systems can achieve impressive levels of accuracy. The key is to plan for continuous improvement processes and human oversight to catch and correct any errors. This, of course, assumes that you're considering training your own "version" of something like a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT, for example, since the popular and publicly available LLMs cannot be trained at the individual chat level.
4️⃣ "Is our data safe with AI?" Data privacy and security should be top priorities when planning to implement AI within an organization. By designing robust governance frameworks and security measures, you can protect sensitive information. Adhering to privacy regulations and best practices helps mitigate risks, too. You should also plan to have a transparent policy as it relates to how data will be used.
5️⃣ "How do we ensure AI is used ethically?" Developing clear ethical guidelines for AI use within your organization is crucial. You should plan to engage in ongoing discussions with stakeholders and industry peers to navigate ethical challenges. By aligning AI with organizational values, you can ensure responsible use. Documenting these ethical policies and being transparent about them will be essential.
6️⃣ "What about bias in AI?" Bias in AI is a valid concern, especially in business applications where decisions can have significant impacts. If an AI system is trained on biased historical data, it may perpetuate or amplify those biases, leading to unfair treatment or exclusion of certain groups. To counter this, plan to regularly audit your AI algorithms, use diverse training data, and promote transparency. Actively identify and mitigate biases to develop fair and inclusive AI systems. Ensure human oversight and establish clear accountability measures to align AI-driven decisions with your organization's values and ethical standards.
7️⃣ "Integrating AI seems daunting." Embarking on an AI journey can be challenging, but with proper planning and the right partners, it's manageable. Consider starting with pilot projects and gradually scaling up. Continuous improvement and learning will ensure a smooth transition. Of course, AI tech is changing faster than almost anything we've seen to date. It is important to set parameters and strict guidelines within your company while also fostering safe experimentation.
8️⃣ "Do we have the right skills for AI?" Bridging skill gaps is an important part of AI adoption. Consider investing in AI literacy programs, workshops, and partnerships. Just remember: AI is accelerating extremely fast and, at some point, "everybody is new to (fill in the blank) tool, platform, etc." Foster a culture of continuous learning and provide resources for upskilling your workforce. It's best to put someone in charge of corporate AI strategy, testing, and implementation if you're considering going all-in.
Just like when social media lit the world on fire many years ago, AI is having the same impact, where "gurus" are EVERYWHERE. If you're considering bringing someone in to help your organization establish an AI strategy and implementation roadmap, make sure you vet that person or team carefully. AI is "new" in the context of how we're talking about it today. There are no true "been there, done that" gurus. Yet.
With all of the hype going around right now, embracing AI in your organization may seem overwhelming, but manageable experiments and implementations are the best way forward. Just don't take too long… this stuff is moving very fast, and your competition may not be as timid as you.
AI IN ACTION
Billion-Dollar Boost
Problem: Lenovo faced challenges with disparate CRM systems across its global sales teams, leading to inefficiencies, business disruption, prolonged sales cycles, and hindered sales planning efforts.
AI Solution: Lenovo implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Power Platform solutions to replace its legacy Salesforce and SAP CRM systems. The company consolidated 90 different business processes across four geographies, integrating Dynamics 365 with Adobe Marketo Engage for lead management and SAP ERP for global supply and fulfillment information. This centralized access to customer data enables sales teams to use their favorite apps within Dynamics 365.
Results: The adoption of Dynamics 365 has enabled Lenovo to increase potential annual global sales by $1.3 billion, save $4 million per year in licensing costs, improve gross profit margin, reduce IT support costs, streamline system management and data analytics, standardize business processes, and improve client engagement. Lenovo plans to further enhance its sales capabilities by exploring AI-based functionality, such as Copilot for Sales, for conversation preparation and automatic meeting summaries.
EXECUTIVE
Let’s Gooooo!
Need to rally the troops around AI? Here’s an email template we crafted to kick things off.
- - - - - - - - -
Team,
Exciting news - we’re on the brink of a major leap forward. We're exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance our work, streamline our processes, boost our productivity, and increase revenue. It's all about making our lives easier and our company stronger.
Why AI? In a nutshell, AI can help us do our jobs better by taking care of routine tasks, analyzing data faster, and helping us make smarter decisions. This move is about amplifying our talents, not replacing them.
It’s a Team Effort: This isn’t a solo quest. We'll all play a part in this transition, from sharing ideas on how AI can be best utilized in our roles to getting up to speed with new technologies. We're in this together.
What to Expect: Over the next few weeks, we’ll outline the specifics - where we're starting, what it means for your day-to-day, and how we’ll support you through this change. Think training, brainstorming sessions, and plenty of feedback opportunities.
Your Voice Matters: As we navigate this change, your input is crucial. How do you see AI fitting into your work? Any ideas or concerns? I’m all ears.
Let’s embrace this change with open minds and a spirit of innovation. Together, we can harness AI to not just keep pace but set the pace in our industry.
To our success!
The Boss