AI is Your Superpower

In this age of web-slinging, super-healing, superheroes, could it be said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the superpower for sales reps? AI can automate processes and analyze data to quickly generate insights and analysis that earlier needed many people and a lot of time. “So, is it really that far of a stretch to say that AI can be a superpower?” questions, Dayle Hall, Chief Marketing Officer at People.ai.

The recently departed, great Stan Lee, creator of superheroes like Spiderman, Iron-Man, Thor, The X-Men and Black Panther, was a visionary storyteller and a futurist whose many creative inventions have come true or are on their way to becoming true. His heros have amazing super qualities and many of them used very advanced technologies to combat evil and to drive efficiencies. In the movie “Iron-Man”, for instance, Jarvis is Tony Stark’s (aka Iron Man) virtual, technology assistant who uses his/its(?) artificial intelligence to help guide Stark on his technical innovations.

While I and those like me in the AI space are not a superhero, we are building platforms and systems that can give your customers superhero-like abilities. As Theoretical Neuroscientist Dr. Vivienne Ming recently wrote: “The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in sales — truthfully in any industry — requires a new level of strategic thinking for how we work. The obvious benefit is that AI, in some areas, can make judgments cheaper, faster, and possibly better than any human can.” - Quotable

Artificial Intelligence can automate processes and analyze data to quickly give us insights and analysis that used to take many, many people. Said another way, AI is our new superpower.

Also Read: 5 Ways Conversational AI Will Impact Marketing In 2019

Why is AI a superpower?

Let me answer that question with a question: What resource is more valuable than time? We never have enough of it, we always want more of it. This is the one asset that we constantly try to increase with our workforces and it is one of the critical levers that we have when trying to increase the sales of a company. The formula is tried and true and has been replicated for centuries. Want more sales? Add more sales people. More time spent with more customers = more revenue. Not only more revenue, but more personal insight into the customer -- insight so that you can tell what the customer wants before they tell you. People are vitally important to the sales process and relationships are critical to get a sale, increase a sales footprint and troubleshoot if and when any problem occurs with what you have sold the customer. People working with people is what makes the sales process run. But, what if you can’t add salespeople? AI can make your current salesforce more efficient.

AI can give your salesperson more time with their customers and prospects. How? By automating the input of data that all salesforce’s must do to keep track of their many, complex relationships as well as give visibility to their managers of their sales activity. In the case of People.ai, my company, we give you back time by doing just this (among other enterprise sales things). It is estimated that up to 20% of a salesperson’s time is utilized to input customer data into their CRM. With People.ai, that non-customer facing work vanishes. Immediately, your sales force gets 20% of it’s time back...that’s a day a week...four days a month...12 days a quarter. What would you do if your sales force productivity went up by 20%? The correct answer, of course, is to spend more time with customers and prospects.

Other superpowers that AI can bring are vast:

1. Gainsight increased sales time spent on selling by 12%. With over 100 sales reps, this increase translated to more than 12.5 FTEs
2. Mulesoft increased TAM, grew marketable database by 20% and enabled precise marketing attribution
3. Lyft increased revenue from top 100 accounts by 14% through visibility into activity data with a 60% increase in account coverage
    

Also Read: 5 Ways AI is Impacting Retail Marketing

While AI won’t allow you to fly in an iron suit and combat the evil Hydra, it will allow you to save time, increase sales effectiveness, gain insight and automate many processes. So, when your parents ask you what they should tell their friends what you do...or your kids ask how they should describe your job...just tell them that your give people superpowers through the magic of AI. And, what is cooler than that?