How AI Is Changing Sales

Companies are using AI in all kinds of innovative ways to advance their businesses. Sales is a key area where AI can be particularly valuable. Sales managers face the daunting challenge of trying to predict where their team’s total sales numbers will fall each quarter. Using an AI algorithm, managers are now able to predict with a high degree of accuracy next quarter’s revenue, which in turn would help a company, from an operations standpoint, to better manage inventory and resources. Today, an AI algorithm could tell you what the ideal discount rate should be for a proposal to ensure that you’re most likely to win the deal. AI algorithms can also help generate sales leads, and identify which of your existing clients are more likely to buy a better version of what they currently own (up-sell) and/or which are most likely to want a new product offering altogether (cross-sell). Using AI, sales managers can now use dashboards to visually see which salespeople are likely to hit their quotas along with which outstanding deals stand a good chance of being closed.