With the fast-paced development of technology, the face of sales, trading, and marketing is changing rapidly as well. It is assumed that one of the major factors that currently affect and will be affecting sales in the future is the artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has already transformed several industries, and sales and marketing specialists begin to use it in their practice as well.
The Potential of AI
One of the companies in the market is using bots actively to help companies determine and find potential ideal customers. Growbots uses machine learning to analyze large volumes of data, which are based on customer qualities formulated by companies (Cole, 2017). The potential of bots that analyze such enormous amounts of data is that automation can help both large and small companies reach out to customers without spending billions of dollars of the sales team. Some argue, however, that such automation can repel customers who find targeted ads intrusive (Cole, 2017). While it is true that the automation is not accepted by everyone (yet), it still has great potential in making sales and marketing processes easier for small businesses and large enterprises.
Another consideration that salespersons and marketing professionals need to consider is the changing behavior of customers. Medal (2017) discusses the role of AI platforms that transform the role of sales specialists: using data and research, AI platforms learn to forecast buyers’ behavior and indicate what practices could potentially improve the sales performance of a company. Furthermore, AI platforms also analyze the work of salespersons and receive insights that were difficult to gain previously. Using this data, both the AI and salespersons learn how sales rates could be improved.
Another advantage of AI platforms (compared to humans) is that humans have more difficulties when analyzing and evaluating enormous data volumes due to a limited capacity of our cognitive processes that cannot embrace such data in its entirety. However, artificial intelligence can and does that, which makes it a perfect tool for collecting and analyzing sales data. AI does not merely help companies collect data; it alters the industry by introducing new approaches to sales and trade. As Medal (2017) puts it, young professionals do not have to learn and use the same techniques as their predecessors did. Instead, they can combine the AI technology with new, science-based approaches to sales. The striking difference between AI and CRM technologies is that the former, unlike the latter, does not just tell what you have sold and how much you will sell, but also shows you what exact strategies you use that have a positive influence on your sales performance.
Conclusion
The potential of AI in different industries is remarkable. In sales, it changes the way data is processed. It also transforms the role of salespersons and shows them what strategies are more or less effective and how they can be modified to improve sales performance. In sum, the primary aim of it is to enhance our jobs, not steal them.
References
Cole, N. (2017). The future of sales is in artificial intelligence, according to this CEO. Web.
Medal, A. (2017). AI is taking the art out of sales. Web.