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

Episode Transcript

Matt Sunshine (00:05):
Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a
podcast highlighting tips andinsights aimed at helping sales
organizations realize, and maybeeven exceed, their goals.
Here we chat with thoughtleaders, experts and gurus who
have years of sales experiencefrom a wide range of industries.
I'm your host, matt Sunshine,ceo at the Center for Sales
Strategy, a sales performanceconsulting company.

(00:27):
In this Quick Take episode,we're taking a few minutes to
think about the day in the lifeof a salesperson, before and
after having AI tools at ourfingertips.
By the end of this shortepisode, you'll have a solid

(00:51):
bird's eye view of howsignificantly AI has altered the
daily routines and approachesof salespeople, making their
strategies more efficient andeffective.
With that, let's dive in.
So let's get started, and fortoday, let's just call out five
areas.
We'll start with prospecting.

(01:12):
So before AI, you had manualresearch on potential leads, you
had time-consuming cold callingand outbound emailing and you
had very low response rates.
People it was difficult to getpeople on the phone.

(01:33):
It was difficult to get them torespond to your emails.
Today, after AI, or with someof the AI solutions that are
available, you have AI poweredlead generation tools, you have
automated personalized outreach,you have an increased response
rates and you have moresales-qualified leads coming in.

(01:58):
You had manual data entry.
You know to update anythingupdate an email, a conversation,
anything.
You had manual data entry.
It was difficult to track dealsin the pipelines.
It was cumbersome and difficult, took a lot of time and the

(02:18):
follow-up was inefficient atbest.
Well, you have AI powered CRMtools that are designed to help
salespeople actually be smarterin their in their outreach and
move move quite a bit faster.
You have automated data entryand automated updates.
You have intelligent insightsand predictive analysis, and

(02:41):
what that results in is improvedcustomer engagement and
retention.
The before and after on CRMwith AI is phenomenal.
Let's go to the third thingsales presentations or sales
demos.
So before AI, those were timeconsuming to create and to

(03:01):
customize.
They were difficult to tailorto specific needs.
It took a lot of work, took alot of time.
It wasn't uncommon for this totake a day or even a couple of
days to work on a deck andbecause of that they were less
interactive and the proposalswere less engaging.

(03:22):
But after AI, ai poweredpresentation tools are just
absolutely fantastic.
You can automate the creationand you can personalize every
presentation.
They're interactive, they'remore engaging and you can have
real time data analysis andinsights of what people are
responding to.

(03:42):
And so I think, when it comesto sales presentations and sales
demos, ai has allowedsalespeople to up their game to
really up their game.
Let's talk about salesfollow-ups.
Before AI, it was manual email,manual phone call, manual
reminders.
After AI, like mentionedearlier, you have amazing CRM

(04:05):
resources that automatefollow-up tasks.
You can have personalized emailtemplates that you create and
that you can personalize andupdate as needed, but it speeds
up that process and you can haveAI-driven insights to optimize
your follow-up strategy.
You can start to collect dataon what sort of follow-up is

(04:25):
working and what sort offollow-up is not working, and
you can just get better at youranalysis, better, faster at your
analysis.
And then the last one to reallycall out is closing deals.
Salespeople need to close deals, so before AI, you had the
manual contract negotiation andpaperwork that happened.

(04:46):
It was difficult to track dealprogress and because of that,
sometimes you have longer salescycles and what we're seeing
with AI areas that AI is helpingto improve.
And I should just say AI doesnot solve all the problems of
sales, but it does make salespeople a lot more effective and

(05:07):
a lot more efficient if they usethe AI tools and resources
correctly.
But after AI with closing deals, you have AI-powered contract
negotiation tools available toyou, you have automated contract
generation and signing toolsavailable to you, and because of

(05:28):
that, you have faster dealclosure and it also leads to
increased revenue.
So there's a lot of things thatAI is doing and a lot of ways
that AI can help salespeople toboth be smarter in the way they
approach their clients and theirprospects, but also help them
to be a little bit moreeffective and a little bit more
efficient in how they move theirclients and their prospects,

(05:49):
but also help them to be alittle bit more effective and a
little bit more efficient in howthey move their prospects and
clients through a sales funnel,ultimately getting results for
their clients and drivingrevenue performance for the
businesses that they serve.
This has been Improving SalesPerformance.
Thanks for listening.
If you like what you heard,join us every week by clicking

(06:11):
the subscribe button For more onthe topics covered in the show,
visit our website,thecenterforsalesstrategycom.
There you can find helpfulresources and content aimed at
improving your sales performance.