If done right, AI in sales can enable you to make more deals faster.
It can streamline your workflow, decrease time spent on manual work, and help you personalize your proposals and pitches, increasing the chances of closing the deal.
But without a centralized control room, the use of generative AI can go south if employees start using AI tools outside of the organization. In this blog post, we will look into what AI can do for sales teams, how it can be easily implemented, and how measures can be established to ensure correct usage.
In this article
What is AI in sales?
AI in sales are tools and features that are artificially intelligent. They can ‘think’ for themselves, and thus help you do repetitive tasks. The tools are found on external sites such as ChatGPT and as tools that are baked into existing applications like Copilot in Microsoft’s Office 365.
AI in sales can be helpful before, during, and after a sale; the tools can help you prepare for a negotiation, give real-time feedback on your pitch, and finalize documents once the deal is done. Simply put, AI tools can help sales reps achieve a frictionless sales process.
Why AI is needed in sales
Since AI became commonly known with the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, it has revolutionized industries across the board. As the first widely known tools were ChatGPT and Midjourney – text-based and image-based tools – GenAI is often seen as a tool used for generating written and visual content.
However, AI has turned out to be a valuable tool for many tasks, and there are good reasons why artificial intelligence is a technology that is impactful in the sales industry; salespeople have traditionally spent time on manual tasks such as researching prospects or writing personalized pitches. For sales reps who want to sell, these are time-consuming tasks. This is where AI comes into the picture.
With AI in sales, reps can focus on deals, not documents. This is backed up by research – a McKinsey study found that 30% of sales tasks can be easily automated. With AI, sales reps can spend less time on manual work and more time on perfecting pitches, strengthening client relationships, and ultimately closing deals.
How can teams use AI for sales enablement?
AI tools enable salespeople to focus their energy on what they’re best at: selling. This entails eliminating repetitive tasks, but also assisting the rep in the sales process to increase the likelihood of closing the deal. AI can be used in every step of a sales process – from lead generation to follow up.
Pre-negotiation use of AI
AI in sales can be helpful for qualifying leads. Since artificially intelligent tools can analyze vast amounts of data in the blink of an eye, leads can be vetted according to predefined criteria and help salespeople prioritize the most promising prospects. AI can also be helpful in finding out what the prospect’s needs and challenges are and prepare you for the negotiation by predicting objections and making sure you have the right rebuttals ready before the negotiation.
Using AI to help close the deal
AI tools can help sales reps produce proposals that are tailored to the specific prospect. It can automate repetitive work by doing the background research on the prospect and then draft a personalized pitch. AI tools can also help you build, send and track documents, analyze real-time insights into how the prospect interacts with the proposal, and use this data to help you act on signals that increase the chances of closing the deal.
AI for post-sale processes
Once the deal is done, there’s more work. Documents have to be filled out, finalized, and signed. AI tools can be helpful when following up with a client or trying to upsell. Some AI features can guide you in this process through predictive analytics, and once the sale is finalized, give insights into the process and help you refine your strategy for the next sale.
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What are the benefits of using AI in sales?
There are several key benefits of AI for sales enablement.
- Less manual work: 33% of an inside sales rep’s time is spent actively selling. By implementing AI in sales workflows, you can free up time for more sales work. This can lead to a boost in both quality and quantity of sales.
- Decrease costs: Content takes time to produce, and time is money. 1 in 2 professionals expect a 20% revenue boost by removing content bottlenecks, so AI tools can help sales departments decrease costs associated with content production.
- Reduce errors: Some AI tools like Templafy’s AI Assistant use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models to ensure that AI generated content is backed up by verified sources. This reduces the risk of hallucination, a commonly known downside of AI tools.
How can I get started implementing AI in sales processes?
Some AI tools operate separately from your preferred work application – you’ll have to switch tabs to interact with the AI. If you want to keep your workflow streamlined and switch less tabs, look for AI tools that are built into your preferred place to work.
Companies like OpenAI have made their large language model (LLM) available for other companies to build their own AIs upon. Microsoft’s Copilot is an example of an AI assistant that is available within Office applications.
What you need to be aware of before implementing AI
By 2025, 35% of chief revenue officers will resource a centralized “GenAI Operations“ team as part of their go-to-market organization, according to research and consulting firm Gartner. This is an important stat. It shows that organizations are willing to allocate resources to AI due to its capabilities to vastly improve productivity of sales teams.
It also shows that managers are aware that AI should be centrally managed by a dedicated team. This is imperative to make sure employees are not just using third party AI tools outside of the organization, putting sensitive information and valuable data in the hands of other companies.
Generative AI operations teams will be tasked with establishing measures to make sure AI content is generated within a set of guidelines set by the company, authentication measures that decrease the risk of generating false information, and validation features to cross-check content before it’s sent out.
Many employees are currently using generative AI tools from outside the organization. This means potentially sensitive information is being shared with third parties without approval. Furthermore, tools like ChatGPT are known to ‘hallucinate’, meaning the content can be misleading or even outright false.
The Dynamic Duo: Benefits of combining AI and automation for sales
To use AI in sales safely, it needs to be combined with rule-based automation to ensure correctness, consistency and compliance with company and governmental standards. This is where Templafy’s document automation platform comes into the picture.
With generative AI tools baked into the document automation tool, sales reps can quickly generate personalized pitches and other custom content. Unlike tools used outside of the organization, management is in control of when employees can use AI and which prompts they can access, and use their own AI models and RAG to ensure accurate output and keep data safe.
Templafy mixes rule-based automation with managed AI to ensure that all content is consistent and compliant. This is achieved by making sure you work within a personalized, company-approved template with instant access to pre-approved prompts.
This seamless combination of tools dramatically decreases the time spent on the document and the risk of including false information, effectively increasing the time available for more important sales work.
Key features of Templafy’s document generation platform
- Centralize control for streamlined AI usage
Templafy puts organizations in the driver’s seat, by providing a management layer – so organizations can regulate when and how their employees use AI in sales. - Craft a consistent brand voice
With Templafy’s Tone of Voice features, organizations define and maintain a consistent brand voice across all GenAI-generated content. - Customize prompts to add value where it matters
With unmanaged AI, users are responsible for prompting GenAI applications, like ChatGPT. With Templafy, organizations create and distribute their own prompt libraries, so GenAI always works in alignment with company goals. - Ensure accuracy and increase ROI
Templafy’s document generation platform allows you to connect your own AI models and RAG. By using your own AI model, you can increase the ROI of AI investments, and by connecting your own RAG, you can ensure the accuracy of your output.
How Templafy is bringing AI to sales teams
One of the companies that have implemented Templafy’s AI Assistant is Tietoevry. For Portfolio Owner Kaisa Nummela, the new AI sales enablement tool has had a major impact on the way they work.
“Templafy’s AI Assistant brings AI where users need it, with predefined prompts to make the use of it extremely easy. Users are able to benefit from the power of AI with minimum effort. Through embedding the AI into Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, we can elevate the way our employees are working with business documents”.
Templafy is used by more than 800 enterprises worldwide, including companies like Carlsberg, BDO, and ABB.
Get better at selling – start using Templafy’s AI for sales
Are you sold on the idea of making better sales? Then let’s get started! If you’re already a Templafy user, reach out to your Account Manager to learn how your new favorite AI tool works. If you’re new here, book a demo now and discover how enterprises are creating better company documents with Templafy.
FAQ
What does AI in sales entail?
AI in sales brings generative AI to sales reps so they can spend less time on writing and more time on selling. In combination with document automation software, artificial intelligence can streamline workflows and automate repetitive tasks to produce great documents fast.
Will AI replace sales representatives or other sales employees?
While artificial intelligence is an extremely powerful technology, it’s most likely that it will enhance sales reps’ current capabilities – not replace them. Many parts of a sales process entails human relationships that software cannot replicate.
What are the most popular AI tools for sales?
For external AI tools, ChatGPT is a popular choice for drafting personalized pitches, assessing a prospect’s needs and sentiment, and providing guidance for how to approach a specific sales task. When looking at AI features built into existing sales platforms, tools like Microsoft’s Copilot is a popular choice for sales reps across the globe. Templafy’s AI Assistant has also gained widespread use among enterprises using the platform.
How can AI in sales be used to support your department?
AI in sales can free up time for sales reps that would otherwise spend time on writing pitches, proposals, and other content. Salespeople may not be writers, so writing great content can be time-consuming and may require assistance from other sales reps, further decreasing time available for more important sales work. By implementing AI tools, sales departments can produce better sales material and free up time that can be allocated to more important tasks.