Salesforce’s State of Sales report has revealed that salespeople spend almost 10% of their week researching prospects. That’s a lot of time that could be spent elsewhere!
With AI tools like ChatGPT, salespeople can gain a quicker and deeper understanding of their target audience. Their natural language processing features can analyse customer reviews, social media posts, and other sources of unstructured data to identify sentiment, pain points, and preferences. The technology can also identify how a particular customer likes to communicate – and even what tone of voice or language to use with them. This can lead to more meaningful conversations and improved engagement.
In a similar vein, whilst you’d think ChatGPT’s non-human approach would lack personalisation, it in fact does the opposite. Drawing on an extensive amount of customer data (such as previous interactions, demographics, purchase history and website behaviour), it can summarise their preferences and produce more personalised communication.
Salespeople can use this AI-produced communication as a starting point for their own personalised approach, or the tool can be integrated with chatbots and other technologies to find out the nature of a customer’s query before they speak with a sales representative. In this way, ChatGPT can also help salespeople tackle any customer issues in a timely manner, which in turn further improves their experience.
Competitor research is incredibly time-consuming – and sometimes, a salesperson may end up having to do it during a sales call. A potential customer may mention a competitor that they haven’t come across before, and it’s challenging to prove that your business is better then and there.
ChatGPT can help here too. You can ask questions like, ‘what solutions do they offer?’ and quickly find your answer.
Responsibilities such as research aren’t the only ones that take up salespeople’s time – or the only ones that can be assisted by ChatGPT. Other processes that the tool can streamline include identifying potential customers who are more likely to convert, responding to basic queries, inputting customer information into CRM systems, and following up with prospects.
This frees up salespeople to instead focus on higher value-add tasks – the kind that made them want to pursue a career in sales in the first place. Your business benefits from better employee satisfaction, efficiency and, in turn, higher profitability.
ChatGPT can also keep you updated on trends related to your customers’ behaviour. For instance, it can tell you which products or services they favour most, specific concerns they often raise, and triggering points that lead them to purchase.
On top of this, you can even train ChatGPT to upsell – by recommending suitable products or services to the ones the customer has already bought.
Whilst AI tools such as ChatGPT can come in useful, they aren’t a magic bullet. Humans are still very much required, but perhaps just need some up-skilling or training in order to succeed in today’s tough climate. For this, we recommend the Level 4 Sales Executive Apprenticeship Standard.
It provides learners with training on the end-to-end consultative sales and account management process, equipping them with the skills, knowledge, and behaviours to excel in their careers. To learn more about how this programme could benefit your organisation, and why BMS Progress are the ideal training provider, get in touch with our friendly team today.
Looking to tackle a business challenge? Develop and evolve employees? Enhance performance across the board? Find out more about our sales training and manager coaching courses.
Want to take advantage of the Apprenticeship Levy, or simply foster the next generation of talent? You’ll need to ensure that the curriculum is tailored to your needs and aligned with your values.
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