How AI can provide timely insights, spur sales success

By Venkat Malladi

A salesperson’s day hardly ever goes according to plan. Meetings get canceled, deadlines are missed and required documentation gets put on the back burner. When the day is done, it becomes obvious that there was a better way all along.

These setbacks aren’t due to a lack of talent or effort by the salesperson, but a lack of timely insights to act upon.

We’ve seen artificial intelligence’s impact in sectors such as entertainment and retail, where Netflix predicts what else you’ll be interested in viewing and Amazon suggests future purchases. AI also can create efficiencies and boost productivity for insurance sales teams, making day-to-day operations less chaotic and more informed, and potentially opening new revenue streams.

According to the most recent State of Sales report from Salesforce, high-performing teams are nearly five times more likely to use AI than are underperforming ones, and 52% of teams primarily forecast sales based on data-driven insights.

Let’s take a deeper look at how AI can improve insurance sales engagement and make life easier for salespeople and managers.

Turn data into strategy

As the world becomes more digitized, there is a growing scope of searchable data on public directories to inform AI models and. Ultimately, this data arms salespeople with the best knowledge available on the types of insurance they sell.

For example, if a key contact posts about a career move on LinkedIn, AI can flag that change, alert the sales rep and suggest an action. Perhaps a prospect cancels a meeting at the last minute and an existing client, who happens to be close by, has a need. AI could change a salesperson’s schedule and fill the canceled appointment time with an in-person client meeting. This efficiency opens time on the agent’s schedule that used to be used for inputting documentation - but AI takes care of that, too.

Having the most up-to-date knowledge can make the difference between mining an existing account for a broader opportunity and increased revenue, or potentially losing business.

According to the Salesforce report, 70% of high-performing salespeople believe intelligent forecasting is AI’s most impactful use case for the next five years. It’s easy to see why. AI can reveal insights about which prospects to meet, which goals should be prioritized, and what tasks must be completed to meet those goals.

With AI creating new data points, optimizing schedules and planning routes for meetings, managers get a 360-degree view of a representative’s activities and production so best practices can be translated into coaching tools.

Find what’s working

With AI, leads generated by marketing can be compared with historical sales records and allocated to the agent with the best chance of closing the lead. According to Dun & Bradstreet’s 8th annual B2B Sales and Marketing Data Report, 86% of teams that use account-based marketing saw increased performance.

Not only does using AI lead to better results with lead generation, AI also can help inform the approach an agent takes in meetings with prospects. For example, analyzing audio interactions in real-time using speech recognition algorithms can identify positive or negative outcomes from a conversation. The resulting data can be used to coach agents on which words or phrases to use, avoid or watch out for. This too can help increase performance. AI can also be used to populate presentation slides based on recent interactions and the latest data.

Many organizations find these technologies have a big impact on sales engagement, but it’s still an under-the-radar strategy. According to Sales Enablement Collective’s Sales Enablement Forecast 2022, 25% of organizations use sales content solutions and 21% use call tracking and intelligence.

Drive productivity

According to McKinsey, sales accounts for one of the most popular use cases for AI. It can help organizations save time with a strong focus on outcomes. By tracking a salesperson’s performance data, events, calls, and meetings, AI can nudge them toward higher-ROI activities. This data can also help managers and leaders focus on the right metrics and intervene at the right time.

AI-based tools play the role of an assistant as well as a coach of sales agents and reps to help them increase sales performance. AI is not out to replace a sales team. On the contrary, it can guide career paths on an upward trajectory, grow an organization’s revenue, and take a salesperson’s day from chaos to a data-driven success story.

Venkat Malladi is co-founder and chief technology officer of Vymo. Contact Venkat at venkat.malladi@innfeedback.com.