When you think about it, sales make the world go round. All around the world, sales are being made each second of the day. Everything is driven by satisfaction and in this scenario, customer satisfaction. Of course, connecting with customers to achieve satisfaction cannot be achieved without the skill of salespeople.
Salespeople bridge the gap between business-to-business transactions as well as producers and consumers. Companies will still be able to sell their products and services but without the strategies that salespeople developed, the numbers they are reaching would be significantly less. But creating strategies involves addressing challenges they can encounter along the way.
This is where sales enablement comes in. Sales enablement provides salespeople with the knowledge they need to engage with the target audience and to improve sales. To increase the probability that the sales enablement program will be successful, artificial intelligence could be thrown into the mix for a more accurate curation of strategies and predictions.
What is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement was created to address the common issues in sales like the dissonance between the sales and marketing team. It was first coined in the year 1999 but didn’t start getting popular until a little over ten years later. By then, different sales enablement analysts and organizations are inculcating the practice and polishing the technology they need to get the job done.
The Sales Enablement Society (SES) – a collective of sales firms – defined sales enablement as the thing that “ensures buyers are engaged at the right time and place, and with the right assets by well-trained client-facing staff to provide a world-class experience along the customer’s journey.”
Another well-known firm, Forrester, said that sales enablement is “a strategic, ongoing process that equips client-facing employees to consistently and systematically have a valuable conversation with the right customer stakeholders at each stage of the customer’s problem-solving life cycle.”
Basically, it helps companies, or salespeople specifically, be more in touch with their customer base and learn from the best resources. Doing this continuously translates to having enough data to fuel sales enablement programs successfully.
Sales enablement focuses on uplifting the buyer experience. To understand buyers, some hand out surveys and assessments to study the buyers’ behavior. Once there is enough data, the next thing to do is map it out and integrate it in their sales enablement program to train their people to be more focused on the buyer experience and improve customer satisfaction.
Those who have been practicing sales enablement may find this a tedious yet fulfilling task but what if there is a more efficient and effective way to carry out their objectives? With the help of artificial intelligence technology, gathering data to make sales enablement programs more successful will be so much easier.
Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Be Used in Sales Enablement?
There is no reason why AI can’t be integrated into sales enablement especially when most office operations moved to the digital landscape because of the pandemic. Right from smooth employee leave management to communicating with clients, most companies now rely on technology for their daily operations.
So how can artificial intelligence be of help in sales enablement? For starters, AI technology can gather accurate data based on purchases of customers and analyze their behavior both online and offline. It can also differentiate customers according to their age group, gender, occupation, online activity, etc.
Artificial intelligence will organize that data according to when and where products are purchased, how often it is purchased when it is being searched on the internet, what kind of materials attract potential buyers, and many more.
Having this kind of data will allow sales enablement strategists to know which audience to target with curated high-quality content. Matching the targeted audience with the perfect content like blog posts and webinars makes the job easier for salespeople because at times, content is enough to generate sales.
Because AI will take care of most of the technical work involved, salespeople can see the customers as more than just numbers and data. This will translate to them engaging with the other factors that motivate customers that cannot be quantified by a computer.
Artificial intelligence technology can only do so much in studying customer data securely and transforming that data to competitive sales content strategy and execution. Being less vulnerable to error thanks to the computation of AI would not be complete if not paired with the human touch. After all, even if consumer behavior can easily be studied by computers, other motivating factors such as emotions are not easily quantifiable.
Lastly, because sales enablement requires a continuous learning process, artificial intelligence can provide not only streamlined resources but also give you study materials on areas you wish to improve. Some AI can even be programmed to track the kinds of clients you usually get their requests, and their audience and integrate that data into your personalized training program.
So, AI does not only help craft effective sales enablement programs, but it also helps salespeople deliver the exceptional output and impress their clients each time. Some arranged training programs occur only once a year but that means that strategies do not change with time.
The best thing about AI is that it can give relevant training materials per month. This can ensure that the knowledge and practice of salespeople are kept up to date which means that they have leverage against competitors. It is of critical importance that salespeople only provide the best practice to build trust and accountability.
To sum it up, incorporating artificial intelligence into sales enablement can provide endless benefits. Research and implementation will be made easier. Sales will achieve a higher quota in a shorter time, targets can be exceeded, and it may even lead to a higher conversion rate. It will create a win-win situation that will get everyone engaged and excited for what else they could achieve with the assistance of artificial intelligence technology.
Article Credits:
Sophia Young is a content writer covering lifestyle and fashion topics. She’s actively participating as a guest blogger for various lifestyle blogs and has been co-authoring some articles of her colleagues. She’s currently enrolled in a content marketing course hoping to expand her knowledge in digital marketing.
Masab Farooque is a Tech Geek, Writer, and Founder at The Panther Tech. He is also a lead game developer at 10StaticStudios.
When he is not writing, he is mostly playing video games