Months after the release of ChatGPT-3, generative AI has become nearly ubiquitous despite initial worries over its effect on job opportunities. Industries have capitalized on it, innovating ways to incorporate generative AI into their workflows, automate busy work, and assist with meaningful, strategic tasks.
In industries relying heavily on human connection—like enterprise B2B sales—generative AI might not be able to make a sale by itself, but it can still help sales teams work smarter and faster. According to a recent study by McKinsey, 90 percent of commercial leaders expect to utilize generative AI solutions “often” over the next two years, and the research suggests that a fifth of current sales team functions can be automated.
If these findings are true, it frees up valuable time for sales teams to focus on the sales part of their jobs rather than tedious tasks like drafting emails and updating Salesforce. Specifically, those in sales can benefit from the power of generative AI in enablement and sales training. Let’s dive deeper into how.
Extracting insights with generative AI
The most promising part of generative AI is its time-saving capability, allowing users to invest that saved time in more strategic tasks.
By combining sales enablement tools with generative AI, companies can create training programs quickly and assist with pre-and post-meeting prep for reps. For example, AI can help reps and managers understand what was discussed after a call through efficient call review notes that uncover key moments, objections, and customer excitement points. These insights can be used to not only help the rep follow-up quickly and succinctly with the prospect but also help enablement and marketing leaders gain insights into market shifts, competitive mentions, and messaging delivery.
Generative AI can also help sales enablement leaders create a data-driven approach to enabling the field. By using their training and coaching data, enablement leaders can leverage AI to identify gaps in teams and individuals to inform their near and long-term plans. For example, managers can ask questions about their enablement analytics without having to navigate to multiple dashboards and reports. They can ask questions like “Who is struggling to coach their reps?” or “What are the lowest competencies of my reps?” AI can then analyze tons of reports and data in seconds and come back with a quick and succinct answer based on the data.
How generative AI helps with training and personalization
Personalization is key when working with buyers and this is no different when training internal sales teams. In leveraging generative AI, sales enablement can simplify the creation of training programs. Say you are launching a new product in the market and need to train your teams. The marketing team and subject matter experts have created a set of materials and collateral for the new product. Enablement can then take that collateral, feed it to AI, and give guidance on a training program that can inform, assess, and reinforce the knowledge of field teams on this new product.
As part of a training program, an effective way to reinforce skills is using role-plays or running through hypothetical sales situations. However, it can be time-consuming for managers to find time to conduct role-plays with reps or manually review recorded role-plays to point out areas of improvement. This is where generative AI can step in. It can review and grade role-play submissions without the need for managers to intervene and review themselves. This allows managers to only focus on the reps who need more coaching but also gives reps a safe place to practice and perfect their pitches before every customer and prospect interaction.
This automated module creation and review of role plays is especially helpful for managers who have time constraints due to the number of reps they manage, which is the top coaching challenge standing in the way of effective coaching, according to a recent report from Mindtickle.
Mitigating risks in generative AI: Preventing misinformation
Although generative AI has a promising future for sales insights and seller training, there are still some concerns about using the technology. The glaring problems with generative AI are its propensity to share incorrect information and the risk of distributing sensitive company data with other users of the generative AI solution. As a result, sales teams looking to implement generative AI tools must ensure their security teams are part of the evaluation process, ensuring AI tools are secure and meet company policies.
As any good sales leader knows, these generative AI tools will never replace the empathy and finesse of sellers in B2B environments. However, salespeople will come to learn firsthand the benefits generative AI can offer to make the sales process smoother and more efficient.
