How Businesses Can Use AI in Sales to Close More Deals?

In today's competitive sales environment, businesses are increasingly turning to advanced technology to gain a competitive edge.

Artificial intelligence (AI) stands out as a game changer among these emerging technologies. According to HubSpot Sales Report 2023, 68% of sales professionals report that by 2024, most of the software they use will have built-in AI capabilities.

As we look forward to a future dominated by AI-powered sales tools, it’s clear the future of sales belongs to those who embrace this powerful technology.

But how can you, as a business leader, use AI in sales right now to stay ahead of the curve? We've compiled a list of 12 actionable ways to integrate AI into your sales process, boost your lead conversion rates, and close more deals than ever before.

Understanding AI in Sales

AI uses advanced algorithms and analytical tools to automate and improve sales operations. By automating several repetitive tasks and analyzing customer data, AI can help sales teams work more efficiently and close more deals.

Machine learning tools can also be used to forecast sales, predict customer behavior, and uncover actionable insights.

Empowered by data-driven insights, AI-powered tools can help sales professionals in real time, helping them make better decisions and simplify various sales processes.

For example, AI-powered CRM systems leverage predictive analytics to forecast sales trends, ensuring sales teams stay ahead.

Moreover, AI in sales can automate time-consuming data entry and other repetitive tasks, allowing salespeople to dedicate more time to closing deals.

Statistics About Artificial Intelligence in Sales

Gartner reports that by 2026, 65% of B2B sales businesses will transition from intuition-based to data-driven decision-making, using technology that unites workflow, data, and analytics.

Research has also shown that sales teams spend only about 30% of their time in front of customers.

The rest of the time is spent on data entry, meetings, prospecting, scheduling more meetings, and other day-to-day tasks that have little to do with the actual sales cycle.

With an AI sales automation solution, middling sales assistants can become high-performing teams simply by freeing up more time at work. More time means more selling opportunities.

Here are a few more facts and statistics about AI in sales:

• 23% of marketing professionals and 21% of sales professionals use AI in their work.
• Companies saw a 50% increase in sales leads when implementing AI tools into their sales process.
  
• Businesses could save an estimated $89.07 billion annually if salespeople used AI to complete data entry and non-sales-related tasks, which currently take up 70% of their time.
  
• Common risks of using AI that businesses identified included cybersecurity (55%), regulatory compliance (36%), and personal privacy (28%).
  
• One-third (33%) of marketers stated the top benefit of using AI and machine learning is how much time it saves.
  
• 89.6 million people in the US interact with AI several times a day.

Also Read: How AI in Marketing is Transforming the Game: Boost Engagement, Personalization, and More

12 Ways Businesses Can Use AI in Sales to Close More Deals

The above-given stats clearly show how professionals are trying to understand and leverage AI's potential in their business operations to generate better results.

But the question is, how can the power of AI really help you sell more?

Check out the below given 12 use cases of AI in sales to understand how you can too boost your sales and close more deals:

1. Sales Forecasting

Businesses can use AI software to predict or forecast outcomes using historical data to inform future results.

Standard predictions that artificial intelligence in sales can make include:

• Deals or prospects most likely to close.

• Deals or prospects to target next.

• New customers may be interested in what you're selling.

The accuracy of those predictions depends on the system being used and the data quality. But the fact is that, with the right inputs in the past and present, AI solutions can show you who is most likely to buy in the future.

Predictive forecasting can also create value for your sales team internally. AI can help sales managers forecast their team's quarterly performance well in advance so that they can take proactive steps based on the numbers.

2. Summarize Meetings and Calls

Every sales representative spends a vast amount of time and energy summarizing what was discussed on each sales call and then creating action steps for sales teams based on the call’s content.

AI can help businesses automatically summarise calls with high accuracy, often instant after the call has concluded. The technology can also use these summaries to automatically draft the next steps for each call participant based on the discussion.

Although these are essential tasks, outsourcing them to AI saves vast human resources that could otherwise be used on higher-value tasks, like closing more deals.

3. Analyze Sales Call

Each of the calls that salespeople engage in provides a rich amount of information about how a prospect views your offering, what pain points they have, and what needs and wants matter to them.

However, getting all this information isn’t easy on a manual, case-by-case basis. That’s where salespeople can look forward and use AI to analyze their sales calls. Many AI tools in sales have ability to provide you with precisely what happened in a call and what it means in the context of closing the deal.

AI in sales can even understand the mood, tone, and sentiment of the calls to surface opportunities and obstacles that impact whether or not the deal moves forward or closes.

4. Recommend Next Actions for Sales Reps

A big challenge to sales productivity is to figure out what to do and prioritize next. Often, the sales team has a lot on their plate and works on many different deals at the same time.

If they fail to prioritize and perform the right actions in the right order, they miss opportunities to close more revenue.

In such situations, AI applications can recommend the next deal actions for each sales rep in real-time based on all the information related to that deal and its stage.

In this way, AI acts like an always-available sales coach and manager, guiding reps toward the exact steps needed to achieve maximum sales productivity.

5. Generate Sales Emails Automatically

Whether it’s to inbound leads or outbound prospects, email outreach is one of the most critical parts of the work most sales organizations do Because salespeople do this outreach manually, which gets repetitive and tedious. It’s also not as effective as it could be.

Generative AI can help salespeople draft high-quality, compelling email copy and subject lines from scratch in just a few seconds.

That means businesses can use AI to scale up their outreach dramatically by creating first drafts and focusing on polishing and personalizing their emails—or automating email creation entirely.

Not to mention, AI’s ability to generate dozens or hundreds of gripping email subject lines instantly means your emails stand an even better chance of getting opened.

Explore More: What is Generative AI and How Does it Impact Businesses?

6. Identify New In-Market Leads

Using its powers of data analysis at scale, AI in sales can find patterns in lead data that allow it to identify new leads in the market based on the criteria that matter to your business.

AI-based solutions can analyze what your existing good-fit leads look like, then analyze third-party lead databases and platforms to determine which new people are an excellent match for the leads you’re trying to generate.

7. Predict Readiness to Buy

Based on historical data and behavioral signals, artificial intelligence aims to predict when leads are ready to buy. That means you can effectively prioritize and work the leads closest to purchase, significantly increasing your close rate.

It also means you don’t overlook leads ready and willing to give you their money if you engage them in a sales conversation.

8. Prioritize Leads Automatically

With AI, businesses can have a wealth of predictions about their likelihood to close and readiness to buy. AI can then use these signals to prioritize which leads the salesperson should work on and when to close more business and efficiently move leads through your pipeline.

9. Predict Likelihood to Close

Using its power of prediction, businesses can use AI in sales to make increasingly accurate estimates of the likelihood of leads in database close.

By analyzing vast amounts of historical and market data, artificial intelligence can highlight which leads stand a better chance of closing and when. In turn, this lends a whole new level of predictability and effectiveness to your sales pipeline.

10. Score Leads Automatically

Manual lead scoring is undoubtedly helpful, but automating the lead score you came up with is even more useful. However, this process is still relatively static and requires a fair amount of work, evaluation, and maintenance to ensure leads are being appropriately scored.

AI can take some of the work off salespeople's plates. It can now score the moment they come in, entirely automatically, based on behavioral factors, lead data, and your scoring criteria.

Moreover, AI can dynamically adjust scoring criteria on the fly to respond to new data, new close rates, and new information about what signals indicate a lead is a good fit.

11. Monitor Competitors Automatically

Every salesperson on the planet spends time in some fashion on research, Businesses are especially researching the competition.

What your competitors are doing on any given day dictates a good portion of your sales strategy, which moves to prioritize and deprioritize.

But, often, you spend so much time manually researching the competition that you take time away from actually wooing customers away from them.

12. Better Competitive Analysis

AI tools in sales today can track competitor activity online in real-time and automatically surface the critical insights businesses need.

That drastically reduces the time spent getting a clear picture of what the competition is doing—so you can reallocate the hours in your day to beating them.

Does using AI increase sales?

Aside from several ways businesses can leverage AI in their sales processes, many wonder whether AI will make a positive impact and boost sales.

To help you understand and address such doubts, let’s look at a Harvard Business Review study. The study found that using AI for sales and marketing has several effects on sales:

• Companies that used AI tools in their sales operations increased lead generation by 50%.
  
• Call times through AI-powered sales reps were reduced by up to 70%.
  
• Businesses saw a reduction in overall costs by up to 60% when they implemented AI technologies into their sales process.

The report also states that they expect AI-powered technologies to rapidly become every salesperson’s and every sales manager’s digital assistant.

Generative AI is already helping content writers draft content and computer programmers write code, digital marketers create Ad campaigns boosting their productivity by 50% or more. It can do the same for salespeople, enhance productivity, and efficiency, and help close more deals.

Read Next: How AI is Impacting The Future of Digital Marketing in 2024

The Potential Future of AI in Sales

Considering at what speed businesses are increasingly adopting AI, in the future we can expect the use of AI in sales to increase even further.

As artificial intelligence becomes more sophisticated, we’ll see even more accurate sales forecasts and even greater levels of personalization.v

Many businesses are already using AI-powered virtual sales assistants.

These AI-powered assistants are capable of handling a variety of tasks, from scheduling meetings to following up with leads, freeing up human salespeople to focus on building relationships and closing more deals.

As businesses accumulate data, there will be an increased demand for AI tools to analyze this data and provide valuable insights.

This could lead to the development of more advanced predictive analytics tools, which could further improve sales forecasting accuracy and help businesses close more deals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How can be artificial intelligence used by businesses to sell products?

Ans. Businesses can use AI to help identify customer needs and preferences more accurately, allowing them to tailor their products and services. This leads to higher sales and improves customer satisfaction.

Q. How is AI the future of sales?

Ans. AI will automate repetitive tasks in sales, freeing up salespeople to focus on building relationships and closing deals. Additionally, AI will provide real-time insights to personalize pitches and predict customer needs.

Q. How do businesses use AI to increase revenue?

Ans. Today, many businesses are using AI to optimize marketing campaigns, personalize product recommendations, and improve lead scoring. This helps predict customer churn and allows businesses to proactively address potential issues.

Q. How to use AI in B2B sales?

Ans. Businesses can use AI in B2B sales to analyze data and identify ideal customer profiles, personalize outreach, and automate repetitive tasks like scheduling meetings. It can also analyze competitor data and suggest effective sales strategies.

Q. Can sales be replaced by AI?

Ans. While AI can automate tasks and provide valuable insights, it cannot replace the human element of sales. Building relationships and understanding customer needs are still crucial aspects of closing deals.  AI will act as a powerful tool for salespeople, not a replacement.

Q. How AI is reshaping marketing and sales?

Ans. AI is transforming marketing and sales by making them more data-driven and personalized. AI helps target the right audience with the right message, leading to higher conversion rates and stronger customer relationships.