Since ChatGPT launched in November 2022, the world has been abuzz with talk of Generative AI. Nearly every sector has been touched by this breakthrough development, and the technology is only in its infancy. While the full impact of GenAI is yet to be seen, one thing is certain: business will never be the same — and revenue teams in particular stand to benefit.
Our research revealed that 59% of revenue teams are already using or experimenting with GenAI to accomplish a range of different tasks. And unsurprisingly, high performing organizations were 44% more likely than low performers to be experimenting with Gen AI right now.
It’s not a matter of if your organization will adopt GenAI, it’s a matter of when — so start preparing yourself and your revenue teams to embrace GenAI and usher in the next era of B2B sales.
Getting Back to Your Day Job: Augmenting Human Sellers with AI
The promise behind GenAI is not to wipe out human sellers or eliminate their jobs — rather GenAI stands to help make selling simpler, more collaborative and even more fun. According to Forrester, sellers spend 27% of their time on non-sales activities. How much more productive sellers could be with that time back in their day?
With GenAI, sellers can increase productivity and improve their performance. If anything, GenAI should remove the admin burden and free sellers up to spend more time at — collaborating and building relationships with their buyers.
How are Revenue Teams Using GenAI Today?
While we’ve just scratched the surface of what GenAI can do, we’re already seeing leading revenue teams experimenting with this technology. Among those experimenting with GenAI, here are the top five uses cases that emerged:
- Getting quick answers about pipeline health and/or forecast changes
Instead of rifling through countless data sources, sales reps can use GenAI to quickly synthesize information based on leading questions. For example, “Give me a quick overview of the top three deals in the pipeline that are likely to close in the next 30 days,” or “What adjustments have been made to the forecast for Client Co. in the past week?”
- Summarizing buyer/seller calls
Imagine a seller has just wrapped up a meeting with a prospect. Instead of spending the next 15 minutes writing a follow-up email from scratch, they can leverage GenAI to create a draft, then spend those 15 minutes personalizing and refining the draft instead. These summaries can also be shared with team members and key stakeholders, giving them the necessary information to prepare for follow-up meetings well in advance.
- Providing next best action recommendations
GenAI can scrape through past deal flows and client files to discern which steps have historically created positive outcomes. It hunts for similar buyer profiles, product mixes, and more to address what worked within those scenarios and which takeaways are most likely to help win your current deal. Similarly, conversation intelligence tools can analyze sales call transcriptions to provide summaries and suggestions for which content pieces would be best suited for a follow-up.
- Creating marketing content
Whether it’s thought leadership content, email sequences, one-off emails, customized sales pitches, or marketing materials, GenAI can create sales content that’s nearly ready for diffusion. With a quick prompt, marketers can generate presentations, product sell sheets, and more, all while staying perfectly on-brand. They can then share these templates with the rest of the team, saving time and providing a unified baseline for all future content creation.
- Improving customer experiences at scale
Using advanced natural language processing, GenAI can analyze vast amounts of customer data to understand their preferences and habits. Salespeople can leverage those findings to create dynamic and personalized communications, from tailored product recommendations to individualized marketing messages. By automating this process at scale, businesses can efficiently engage with customers, fostering a deeper connection and delivering a more satisfying and personalized shopping experience.
Preparing Your AI Strategy
Gartner estimates that by 2025, 30% of outbound marketing messages from large organizations will be generated by artificial intelligence. Let us say it again: it’s not a matter of if your organization will adopt GenAI, it’s a matter of when. If you want to meet and exceed your revenue targets, success starts with having a firm plan in place. Take these steps to start preparing your organization and your team to harness the power of GenAI today.
Organize Your Data Into a Single Source of Truth
While it’s tempting to immediately start experimenting with all that Gen AI has to offer, sales organizations should only go boldly forth once they’ve secured a good handle on their data. How much data do you really possess? Is it spliced out across disparate sources, or contained within a single data lake? And what are you missing to make it complete?
Without an organized well of data to draw from, the accuracy and quality of your GenAI outputs will suffer immensely. At best, they will be confusing – and at worst, totally unreliable. Ensure your data is well-structured and centrally stored in a unified repository, which will allow the algorithm to quickly and easily access essential information.
Partner with AI-Ready Vendors
Very few companies have the resources to build out a GenAI engine in-house. Fortunately, vendors are popping up all over the place that have already integrated this technology into their tools, complete with robust security and privacy certifications. It’s a turnkey option that saves organizations countless financial and time resources.
Embrace Experimentation
When faced with a new technology that’s brimming with possibilities, one of the best ways to identify and overcome user hurdles is experimentation. Develop clear usage policies and boundaries with an emphasis on responsible use, and learn from each mistake. Encouraging employees to explore GenAI on their own is also a key part of fostering an AI-friendly culture and setting your organization up for success as its capabilities become more robust.
Current GenAI applications are already exciting, but we’re just getting warmed up. We’re at an inflection point, and in the world of revenue enablement, this technology is propelling us into an era of hyper-personalization, enhanced customer interactions, insights-driven coaching, and precise forecasting with more ease than ever before.
It’s up to you to prepare for this wave of change. Now is the time to get your data in order; GenAI thrives on complete, well-organized information to create trustworthy and high-quality outputs.
This is the six installment in our series breaking down the research and insights from our State of Revenue Enablement report. Stay tuned for our final post bringing together all the strategies we’ve discussed to help future-proof your revenue enablement strategies:
Comments are closed.