How AI Is Bringing On the Sales Revolution

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has certainly become a bit of a buzzword lately. And while many companies claim to include AI into their sales systems, there’s few that have managed to refine the system to the point where they produce real results for their customers.

AI is not a panacea for all sales problems – it will not close your deals, and it certainly won’t make the prospecting calls for you. But AI, with sales tools, can help you sell more, sell faster and sell smarter.

The InsideSales Smart Sales System

Right now, the InsideSales platform is the most advanced system on the market using a self-learning, predictive and prescriptive AI system to improve sales performance. We’re producing real-world results using sales data and science.

At the highest level, Neuralytics uses lots of data to understand past behavior in order to first predict, then potentially alter future behavior to produce more optimal outcomes.

We have 110 billion sales interactions in our Neuralytics dataset. It is the only AI platform for sales built on 10 years of cross company’s sales interactions – all complexly anonymized to maintain privacy.

This treasure trove of data is what we use to make accurate predictions about sales interactions and results. The scores are communicated through our sales application stack –  Playbooks or PowerDialer.

Using Neuralytics changes the way sales reps sell. We accelerate the sales process by using all our data to let sales reps know who are the best leads to contact, when they should contact them and what actions they should take to increase their chances to close.

Traditional Sales versus AI-Powered Sales

There are many companies right now stating that they incorporate AI technology into their marketing or sales stack. However, there’s a difference between true AI and the standard industry scoring model.

Artificial Intelligence draws upon past actions to make predictions about what is going to happen in the future. This is why most of the time, the more data you have, the better your AI is – because it has a large dataset to be able to draw insights from, and thus its predictions are more accurate.

Right now, we can find two different approaches in the industry. There are marketing models that are focused upstream at defining how warm is a lead. There are also sales activity models or sales acceleration models. These will be focused on lead prioritization, account prioritization, and so forth. Many companies we interact with will have both.

In terms of best in class sales acceleration scores, one of the secrets is enriching plain vanilla CRM data with external data.

We have 25 plus major processes that are either scouring the web or connecting with vendors, so that we can produce a richer set of information.

Additionally, the specific kinds of feature engineering that we’re doing draws from many years of sales expertise. Those insights and best practices acquired over years of selling allow us to specifically craft those scores to be most effective.

Ten years of cross company data is a significant advantage.

This is where the software can draw unique insights that help you sell smarter and faster.

Effective Results of Using AI in the Sales Industry

AI certainly seems like an appealing, out-of-this-world concept. But before making an investment, sales leadership will firsts care about business results.

We’ve seen some astonishing results with the InsideSales platform. If you break down the sales process, there are different aspects of it that AI helps with. With Neuralytics, we have seen:

• 2 to 3X lift off base contact rate for AI recommended leads (compared to non-AI-recommended leads)
• Nearly 2 to 3X lift off base conversion rates on AI recommended leads
• A 2 to 3X lift in close rates

If you’re closing at 3%, for example, we’re going to raise that to 9 to 12% for those leads in the upper echelons of the score. The top half of the AI recommended group of scores will have a much better conversion or close rate.

I am a firm believer that more intelligent systems can bring us to maximum efficiency and productivity in the sales world.

AI can make life easier for both sales reps and sales leadership and unleash incredible business potential.

If you’d like to see how AI can help you increase revenue up to 30%, check out our study: “The State of AI“