Automation and Artificial Intelligence can support the sales team to make bigger, better sales. AI in sales and marketing can be particularly valuable. In this #GoSmarter webinar Steph Locke, CEO of Nightingale HQ takes a look at automation tools in a B2B context and how easy they are to adopt.

First, Steph does a deep dive into the wider Sales and Marketing functions and identifies where AI can augment your efforts.

Segmentation

Who are different customer segments and how can you best communicate with them? Automation of emails allows you to better qualify and follow up tasks so you can focus on priority leads and closing. Remember, its estimated that 63% of sales is spent on non-selling activities like inputting data so automating around segmentation makes good business sense.

Automation helps to get this back to revenue-generating activities by helping salespeople to focus where they should spend their time and helps optimise this. Automated processes should include human steps, approval, quality checks and verification.

Attribution

This refers to where your sales come from and what are the commission splits. Automation helps improve predictions and decisions on the sales pipeline. Across your sales and marketing functions, you can use Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to automate manual and repetitive processes saving significant time and helping you to focus on more high value and complex deals.

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Win more, win faster with sales automation from Stephanie Locke

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Automation also speeds up quote production and proposal production. It can help with your monthly forecasts and identify patterns based on past data and make recommendations as to which deals to go after and which to drop. You can aggregate data from many different sources and combine that to provide a single view of a customers account.

Social selling

Across the marketing function, social listening and social selling tools are becoming increasingly popular and with a staggering 71% of consumers more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals (Hubspot) it's no surprise. Social media listening tools help to bring funnels of customers and businesses into your sales team in a warm way. Automation tools for marketing help to understand your customers more, gain greater insights and all this helps with greater interaction. Check out our AI for marketers webinar here for more detail.

There are many automation tools out there. Two that we are using include:

#Journorequest - automating your PR opportunities saves time by delivering only relevant ones to your inbox.

Chatbots - a well-designed chatbot can start to acquire leads and filter out interactions that need human attention. They can collect data on your customers' interest and are fast becoming a digital norm for most companies.

Get the basics right: A CRM solution

Having a CRM is a vital step in becoming a smarter sales team that is supported by technology. It helps you to consolidate your data and maintain GDPR compliance. It's also essential in bringing together different functions such as sales, marketing and customers service functions to work more effectively.

Watch Steph review of CRMs including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Freshsales.

Next steps

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