Quick Take: A Day in the Life of a Salesperson - Before & After AI

In this Quick Take episode, we’re taking a few minutes to think about the day in the life of a salesperson before and after having AI tools at our fingertips.  

By the end of this short episode, you’ll have a solid bird’s-eye-view of how significantly AI has altered the daily routines and approaches of salespeople, making their strategies more efficient and effective.

LINKS:

Matt Sunshine

Sales Accelerator AI

Practice Coach AI

The Center for Sales Strategy

Transcript

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Matt Sunshine 0:05

Welcome to Improving Sales Performance , a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize , and maybe even exceed , their goals . Here we chat with thought leaders , experts and gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries . I'm your host , matt Sunshine , ceo at the Center for Sales Strategy , a sales performance consulting company . In this Quick Take episode , we're taking a few minutes to think about the day in the life of a salesperson , before and after having AI tools at our fingertips . By the end of this short episode , you'll have a solid bird's eye view of how significantly AI has altered the daily routines and approaches of salespeople , making their strategies more efficient and effective . With that , let's dive in . So let's get started , and for today , let's just call out five areas . We'll start with prospecting . So before AI , you had manual research on potential leads , you had time-consuming cold calling and outbound emailing and you had very low response rates . People it was difficult to get people on the phone . It was difficult to get them to respond to your emails . Today , after AI , or with some of the AI solutions that are available , you have AI powered lead generation tools , you have automated personalized outreach , you have an increased response rates and you have more sales-qualified leads coming in . You had manual data entry . You know to update anything update an email , a conversation , anything . You had manual data entry . It was difficult to track deals in the pipelines . It was cumbersome and difficult , took a lot of time and the follow-up was inefficient at best . Well , you have AI powered CRM tools that are designed to help salespeople actually be smarter in their in their outreach and move move quite a bit faster . You have automated data entry and automated updates . You have intelligent insights and predictive analysis , and what that results in is improved customer engagement and retention . The before and after on CRM with AI is phenomenal .

Matt Sunshine 2:51

Let's go to the third thing sales presentations or sales demos . So before AI , those were time consuming to create and to customize . They were difficult to tailor to specific needs . It took a lot of work , took a lot of time . It wasn't uncommon for this to take a day or even a couple of days to work on a deck and because of that they were less interactive and the proposals were less engaging . But after AI , ai powered presentation tools are just absolutely fantastic . You can automate the creation and you can personalize every presentation . They're interactive , they're more engaging and you can have real time data analysis and insights of what people are responding to . And so I think , when it comes to sales presentations and sales demos , ai has allowed salespeople to up their game to really up their game .

Matt Sunshine 3:53

Let's talk about sales follow-ups . Before AI , it was manual email , manual phone call , manual reminders . After AI , like mentioned earlier , you have amazing CRM resources that automate follow-up tasks . You can have personalized email templates that you create and that you can personalize and update as needed , but it speeds up that process and you can have AI-driven insights to optimize your follow-up strategy . You can start to collect data on what sort of follow-up is working and what sort of follow-up is not working , and you can just get better at your analysis , better , faster at your analysis .

Matt Sunshine 4:33

And then the last one to really call out is closing deals . Salespeople need to close deals , so before AI , you had the manual contract negotiation and paperwork that happened . It was difficult to track deal progress and because of that , sometimes you have longer sales cycles and what we're seeing with AI areas that AI is helping to improve . And I should just say AI does not solve all the problems of sales , but it does make sales people a lot more effective and a lot more efficient if they use the AI tools and resources correctly . But after AI with closing deals , you have AI-powered contract negotiation tools available to you , you have automated contract generation and signing tools available to you , and because of that , you have faster deal closure and it also leads to increased revenue .

Matt Sunshine 5:33

So there's a lot of things that AI is doing and a lot of ways that AI can help salespeople to both be smarter in the way they approach their clients and their prospects , but also help them to be a little bit more effective and a little bit more efficient in how they move their clients and their prospects , but also help them to be a little bit more effective and a little bit more efficient in how they move their prospects and clients through a sales funnel , ultimately getting results for their clients and driving revenue performance for the businesses that they serve . This has been Improving Sales Performance . Thanks for listening . If you like what you heard , join us every week by clicking the subscribe button For more on the topics covered in the show , visit our website , thecenterforsalesstrategycom . There you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance .