The world of sales is evolving rapidly, with technology playing a significant role in driving innovation and efficiency, impacting how sales people connect with and engage with customers. One such transformative technology is Generative AI, which has the potential to revolutionize the way sales teams operate, engage with customers and drive more revenue. By harnessing the power of large language models (LLMs), organizations can tap into a wealth of benefits, ranging from AI-generated content to personalized coaching plans, revenue recovery plans, and comprehensive onboarding and training programs, to name a few. In this post, we’ll look specifically at sales conversations and explore how leveraging Generative AI can make sales teams smarter and transform them into true product evangelists.
1. AI-generated sales content to support entire sales cycle
The sales cycle often involves a number of conversations and substantial amounts of content generation, from email templates and sales scripts to marketing collateral and case studies to personalized offers and services. Creating this content can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially when attempting to tailor it to specific clients or industries.
Generative AI can streamline this process by creating personalized, targeted content quickly and efficiently, and identifying the right moments to use it for better sales engagement and outcomes. By inputting a few key parameters or prompts, sales teams can use LLMs to generate a wide array of content across the sales cycle, including:
- Customized email templates that address clients’ unique pain points and interests.
- Sales scripts that weave in relevant industry trends and challenges – or personalized content.
- Marketing collateral that showcases the specific benefits of your product or service for a given client.
- Case studies that demonstrate how your solution has helped similar organizations overcome obstacles.
By using AI-generated conversation intelligence and content, sales teams can save time, reduce the burden on content creators, and focus on building closer relationships with clients and prospects.
2. Building personalized sales coaching plans based on ongoing conversations
Sales coaching is an essential aspect of sales team development and success, as it helps to identify areas for improvement and fine-tune sales strategies. Generative AI can play a significant role in developing personalized coaching plans by analyzing ongoing conversations between sales reps and clients or prospects.
By using LLMs to process the text or audio data from these conversations, organizations can gain valuable insights into:
- Communication styles and techniques that resonate with clients.
- Common objections and concerns that arise during the sales process.
- The most effective ways to address these objections and concerns.
Armed with this information, sales managers can create coaching plans tailored to each rep’s strengths and weaknesses, thereby improving overall sales performance.
3. Onboarding, real-time support, and continued training to make your sales team your product experts
A well-rounded sales team needs more than just technical product knowledge; they must also be skilled in presenting the product, handling objections, and building relationships. Generative AI can help organizations create comprehensive onboarding and training programs that empower sales reps to become true product evangelists. This includes:
- Onboarding training: Generative AI can be used to create customized training materials that cover the product, industry, and target markets. By using LLMs to generate training content based on the rep’s role, experience, and learning preferences, organizations can ensure that their sales teams hit the ground running.
- Real-time support: Sales reps often face unexpected questions or objections during client interactions. Generative AI can provide real-time support by quickly generating accurate, persuasive responses based on the context of the conversation. This ensures that sales reps are equipped to handle any situation that arises and can maintain momentum in the sales process.
- Continued product training: As your product evolves, it’s essential to keep your sales team up-to-date on new features and use cases. Generative AI can help facilitate this ongoing training by generating relevant, easy-to-understand content that keeps your team informed and engaged.
Choosing Between Using Existing LLMs and Building Your Own
Deciding whether to use an existing large language model or create an internal LLM strategy depends on factors such as resources, time to market, and the level of customization and control required. Some criteria to consider include:
- Cost: Building your own LLM can be expensive, both in terms of the computational resources required and the expertise needed to develop, train, and maintain the model. Using an existing LLM can be more cost-effective, especially for smaller organizations or those with limited AI expertise.
- Time to market: Developing and fine-tuning a custom LLM can be a lengthy process. If speed is a priority, utilizing an existing LLM may be the best option, as it allows you to quickly integrate the technology into your sales processes and start reaping the benefits.
- Customization: While existing LLMs are highly versatile and can be fine-tuned to some extent, building your own LLM allows for greater customization to meet your organization’s specific needs. If your sales processes or product offerings are highly specialized, a custom LLM may provide better results.
- Control: Building your own LLM affords you more control over the data used for training, which can be important for organizations operating in highly regulated industries or those with strict data privacy requirements. Using an existing LLM may require sharing your data with third-party providers, which could pose risks.
- Scalability: As your organization grows and your sales processes evolve, you may require an LLM that can scale accordingly. While existing LLMs can handle a wide range of tasks, building your own LLM may offer greater scalability and the ability to adapt to your organization’s changing needs.
- Integration: Utilizing an existing LLM may require less integration effort, as many providers offer APIs and other tools that allow for seamless integration with your existing sales and CRM systems. Building your own LLM may necessitate more extensive integration work, which could impact the overall cost and time to market.
- Support and maintenance: Maintaining and updating an LLM is an ongoing task. If you build your own LLM, your organization will need to allocate resources for this purpose. Using an existing LLM typically comes with support and maintenance from the provider, which can help ensure the model remains effective and up-to-date.
Ultimately, the decision to use an existing LLM or build your own will depend on your organization’s specific needs, resources, and goals. By carefully considering the factors outlined above, you can make an informed choice that sets your sales team up for success.
Conclusion
Generative AI has the potential to revolutionize the world of sales by providing valuable support throughout the sales cycle, generating sales intelligence and content, fostering personalized coaching plans, and enabling comprehensive onboarding and training programs. Whether you choose to use an existing LLM or build your own custom model, the benefits of leveraging AI to make your sales team smarter and more effective are clear. By embracing this technology, organizations can transform their sales teams into highly knowledgeable product evangelists that know how to effectively engage with customers, driving growth and success in the increasingly competitive sales landscape.
If you’d like to learn more, check out how Symbl.ai is helping Salesroom empower sales teams with real-time coaching and buyer engagement analysis in this recent blog post.
