AI in Sales: From Lead Generation to Closing Deals

The manufacturing sector is continuously seeking innovative strategies to enhance efficiency, drive growth, and maintain a competitive edge. Enter the world of AI in sales, which just might transform the traditional sales process into an intelligent, data-driven powerhouse. 

By harnessing the capabilities of generative AI, manufacturers can now predict customer needs, optimize pricing strategies, and streamline their sales pipeline with unprecedented precision. 

Whether it's identifying untapped market opportunities or delivering personalized customer experiences, AI is redefining what it means to be successful in sales. If you use it wisely, it might offer a clear path to not just meeting, but exceeding your business objectives – with less effort Let's explore how AI can unlock new levels of performance and profitability for your manufacturing business.

Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Sales

AI technology is most famous for quickly churning out written content and images of people with mangled hands, but it can also be a useful tool for sales. 

You might already be using some of these tools in the form of marketing and sales automation. For example, you can set up triggers that tell the platform to automatically release a follow-up to a potential lead in a certain timeframe or after they take a certain action. AI also can be assigned the task of reporting and data mining and will accomplish said tasks with accuracy and within a timely manner. 

Why AI?

Generative AI is receiving as much resistance as welcome from individuals throughout the sales industry. When it comes to incorporating AI into your day-to-day sales efforts, it may seem like an unnecessary step. However, the truth is, AI can be a valuable resource based on what it avoids. 

AI does not have to deal with:

• The human fear of rejection while reaching out
• Lack of general efficiency due to the kids/appointments/traffic
• Lack of motivation to work 24/7/365

These are all qualities humans have yet to perfect. 

How is Generative AI Helpful as an Assistant?

AI is also great as an assistant to capture notes for you efficiently and without additional cost. Fathom, for example, is an AI assistant that logs into meetings on Microsoft Teams or Google Meet with you, attributes comments and action items to the relevant speakers, and provides a detailed transcript after you log out. 

AI for Writing Assistance

In terms of writing, AI can create messages more quickly and can expand on or shorten content for emails upon command. It can also effortlessly improve the spelling and grammar for any piece of content. Grammarly is available as a Chrome extension that notifies you of misspelled words, poor grammar, and potential fixes for awkward wording as you write in Google Docs. 

With the right guidance, AI can reignite your creative spark for tasks that typically get repetitive over time, including: 

• Subject lines
• Opening statements
• Closing statements
• Proposal writing
• Data enrichment
• Data mining and reporting

However, AI should be considered another valuable tool in the toolbelt, rather than a viable replacement for humans who currently handle sales tasks. AI still has a long way to go regarding empathy, creativity, and situational understanding – just to name a few ongoing shortcomings.

The Best Tools for AI in Sales

AI can’t build a rapport with a potential customer, and you can’t rely on it to create viable, nuanced strategies for sales or marketing. However, some tools can help with specific tasks aimed at improving the sales and marketing process. These tools include the list in the graphic below, although more are introduced on a daily basis. 

While the above list seems comprehensive and even overwhelming, it represents a small portion of the AI tools already available to assist humans with sales- or marketing-related tasks. 

Below are a few tools that have stood out thus far in their specific areas of focus: 

Hubspot Roadmap for AI Use

Hubspot has been working to provide its own built-in AI tools to improve the sales process. You can access each tool in the area of the platform where it will be most helpful. For example, AI can be useful in the Conversations Inbox, as it provides an opportunity to expand on the content you write, as well as rewrite it in a more conversational or professional tone (whichever better suits the current conversation thread). 

Hubspot also generates a buyer’s journey report, with numerous options to personalize the report to meet your needs without needing to set filters each time. 

Hubspot offers a variety of AI support, as you can see below: 

The Sales Enablement dashboard is another area where AI can boost the efforts of the company’s sales reps. This dashboard offers the sales team a central location of organized data. It not only tracks daily tasks and suggests next steps for leads at various points in the buyer’s journey, but also allows for personalized organization to best suit each user. 

Recognizing the importance of different data and information modules to your sales staff helps set them up for success on a daily basis. Hubspot does that – efficiently. 

Create email sequences, set call tasks, and incorporate general task reminders into your process using this dashboard – so none of the day’s important tasks are forgotten. 

For more on how AI is helpful to Hubspot users, consider the following resources: 

How the HubSpot Blog Team Uses AI

17 AI SEO Tools and How to Use AI in 2023 [New Data]

AI Technology & the Future of Sales

The human element is necessary for empathy, accuracy, and general oversight to make sure the intended message is coming through in what AI creates or gathers (in terms of data). Remember that filtering data in certain ways can skew the message the data provides – which is not ideal in many situations. 

Remember that AI will take proprietary information and do what it wants with it. Your staff understands if that information needs to be kept confidential, while AI sees all information equally. This means that proprietary information is fair game to share with others as it sees fit. 

While AI can be a helpful tool, it’s far from ready to replace your staff. AI-written content has some telltale signs and is easy to spot. It’s also worth noting that AI needs to be fact-checked, as it isn’t always accurate in what it says. 

If you want to discuss AI further, we have the time.