Why the Next Frontier of Enterprise Sales Growth Will be AI-Powered
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is bringing a wide variety of innovativeAI-driven business solutionsto the market, with AI helping to generate new efficiencies and solve problems in almost every field, with applications ranging fromvoice-driven customer servicetoimproving diagnoses in healthcare. Here is why the next frontier of enterprise sales growth will be AI-powered.
AI and machine learning will help us analyze data more quickly, generate better insights, and improve the performance of our organizations in ways that were never imaginable until today.
The power of AI, and its transformative potential to improve performance, is especially relevant, during this moment of COVID-19 and COVID-economic crisis. The transformative potential is essential to the world of enterprise sales.
Sales teams are now being confronted with a new mandate to improve sales productivity while managing costs. The current challenge is more urgent than at any time since the Great Recession of 2008-2009.
Overcoming this moment of challenge is going to require a new level of adaptability, agility, and cultural shift among sales leaders. AI-powered tools for enterprise sales are likely to be a big part of the solution for leading organizations.
Let’s explore a few reasons why the moment is right for more sales organizations to embrace the opportunity of AI-powered customer intelligence for enterprise sales growth.
Sales productivity is a common bottom-line challenge for enterprise companies, even during the best of economic times. The old saying of the Pareto Principle is as true as it ever was; most enterprise chief revenue officers (CROs) will tell you that 80% of their sales come from their top sales reps. But too many other salespeople are lagging behind.
During the past ten years pre-COVID crisis, when the economy was growing strong, it was easy for sales teams to conceal the shortcomings of their lower-performing sales reps. As long as revenue kept growing and everyone was making money, no problem, right?
Well, during years of a rising tide, sometimes it’s easy to lose focus on the quality of any individual boat. This new economic downturn is going to separate the high performers from the rest ruthlessly.
Since so many sales reps have already been missing quota, even during the best economy of our lifetimes, what does that tell us?
Sales productivity is a multifaceted challenge, and it’s too simplistic and unfair to single out sales for criticism. When sales miss quota, sometimes it’s a personal performance issue or a lack of fit, but more often it’s a problem caused by lack of training, tools, and guidance on where to focus.
Research from the Brevit Group states that 55% of the people making their living in sales don’t have the skills to be successful, and it takes ten months for a new sales rep to become fully productive.
Too many sales reps are being thrown into the deep end without being taught how to swim; they’re not getting the right training, coaching, and ongoing guidance to keep focusing on the right activities and the right priorities. They’re not getting the right customer intelligence and insights to help them understand what customers need, and how to most effectively build relationships with buyers.
The answer to this current moment of crisis isnot “fire all the sales reps.” Instead, this moment is an opportunity to look at what we can do differently to put the sales team in the position to be successful.
One of the most significant areas of opportunity for enterprise sales is to improve its customer intelligence. By knowing more about the customer, by generating insights in precise and data-driven ways, sales teams can be better equipped for every customer conversation and be ready to generate bigger sales success.
The customer intelligence market is projected by MarketWatch to reach $5 billion by 2022.
