Sales is a primarily human-to-human activity.

The very nature of sales is entirely built upon

human communication. The core of sales as a process is focused on one human being’s ability to
connect with another and convince them that they need to buy what the offeror has for sale.
Successfully establishing relationships is key to landing a successful sale, which is why having
strong communication skills is easily the most important focus for just about any person that
works in sales. With the strong capabilities that artificial intelligence is bringing to the table,
sales is being revolutionized as an industry. Competitive sales teams in the near future will
leverage AI as a way to help them better scale, better communicate and operate with more
intelligence in an increasingly more global and competitive field. 

A Helpful AI-Enabled Sales Companion

One interesting way in which AI is being applied to sales is by helping to match the right
prospects with the correct salesperson. Based off of a person’s needs, AI systems can gather
necessary information on the client and make sure that they get sent to a person who is most
likely to effectively upsell them on their needs. We can see a future where these systems are able
to recognize needs from a personality perspective and find appropriate matches for future
communications. Since these AI systems are able to create and provide complex profiles on a
customer, they are not only able to identify what their needs might be, but may even be able to
make hyper personalized suggestions to a salesperson to align with that client’s specific
preferences. This can be utilized to make more effective pairings over time.

As these systems continue to learn about communication, speech patterns, and tones, they are
more likely to be able to offer personalized insight for sales representatives before, during, and
after customer interactions. The systems of the future might also suggest that a representative
speak more slowly on a customer sales call or offer additional services based off of keywords in
a customer’s email or phone conversation. When these systems gain a more concrete
understanding of the subtleties within dialogue, it seems likely that AI will be able to provide
insight or suggest helpful information to the representative to ensure that the customer is getting
all of their questions answered. AI can also build a complete profile for a customer so that their
individual needs do not get lost if their primary representative leaves the firm. 

Another interesting way that this same technology can be used is for training. As AI systems
learn more about what should and should not occur within a phone call, they will be able to
provide personalized feedback on customer interactions. This can be effective for employees in
a training class learning new skills because the AI will be able to coach them and offer insight on
how to handle customer calls or emails. An AI-enabled system provides an invaluable way to
consistently train and individually coach different representatives as they move forward in their
career. Beyond the training room, these systems will also be able to provide personalized
feedback and guidance to help existing representatives become more efficient at their processes.
This will be helpful in maintaining even performance levels and can increase the individual and
corporate revenue for these employees. Though humans are notoriously subject to making
mistakes, AI systems are able to keep a consistent watch on behavior without fatigue. This
makes it possible for these systems to recognize when a customer is incredibly upset and a
manager should be informed of the situation. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/08/02/how-ai-enhances-sales/#43989e5112f1