Ignoring AI today is like ignoring the internet in the early 90s – and, similarly, it is not a trend, it’s a transformational force and we ignore it at our peril. AI can support sales managers in all the areas listed below – and allowing innovation in this space has a direct commercial response. It is a key value driver, and while adoption is quickly becoming a competitive advantage, ignoring AI will very much become a competitive disadvantage.

Sales forecasting – one of the areas that I see companies often struggle with, finding it difficult to access and fully utilise their data. AI can generate sales forecasts by analysing all relevant historical data, market trends and candidate behaviours, enabling managers to set realistic targets and allocate resources efficiently.

Predictive analytics – another area where AI will truly transform our ability to predict future trends. Allowing AI to use all the historical sales data in the CRM will mean managers have, at their fingertips, analytics to determine hiring, marketing spend, investment areas, pricing. Going one step further, if a business has enough data, you will support your clients with visibility on areas such as the future career moves a candidate will make – often before the candidate has even considered it themselves.

Lead scoring and prioritisation – AI algorithms will analyse client data to prioritise leads based on their likelihood to convert, allowing the sales teams to focus efforts on the highest quality prospects. Continued manual processes here will limit a business’s ability to scale, particularly as prioritisation leads to sales volumes and customer interactions increasing.

Customer insights – analysing all client and candidate interactions along with feedback from all channels (social media, calls, emails) will provide highly valuable insights into your client preferences and your candidate behaviour patterns. This intel will afford managers the ability to tailor sales strategies accordingly. AI can analyse vast amounts of data to identify trends and opportunities that may go unnoticed by human analysis alone – leading to missed sales leads, insights and revenue opportunities.

Automated communications – you may, by now, have experienced some of the mind-numbingly irritating chatbots several of our service providers are currently deploying. But rest assured, the levels of sophistication here are gaining significant momentum and AI communication solutions can enhance candidate experience hugely. AI chatbots can handle – at the very minimum – routine candidate sourcing, screening, inquiries and scheduling appointments, moving to the use of NLP [neurolinguistic programming] and machine learning to analyse interactions and provide real-time recommendations. Voice analysis software can use AI to listen to and analyse sales calls and identify the patterns in tone, pitch and language that correlate with successful outcomes –supporting as an invaluable coaching tool. Sales managers and their teams will regain time to focus on high value and more complex tasks and interactions. 

Performance management and coaching – AI tools can track sales team performance in real-time, identifying areas for improvement and creating personalised coaching and training recommendations to help sales managers optimise their team’s performance.

Dynamic pricing – algorithms analyse your data set to determine market conditions, competitor pricing and client buying behaviours, all to dynamically adjust pricing strategies and maximise your revenue and profitability.

Leveraging AI technologies is a no-brainer. The really smart businesses will be trialling, researching and adopting now. Deeper business insights, streamlined processes, the reallocation of lower value tasks, and predicting market trends and behaviours are all the ‘why’, along with the inevitable commercial gains of freeing up your talented consultants – to consult!

Tara Ricks is NED, Co-owner, Elite Leaders

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