Par Romain Franczia, VP Europe du Sud, Seismic
Currently, for a B2B seller, contacting a buyer has become a real roadblock. The decrease in the number of physical events and the increasingly competitive market have made it difficult for businesses to compete for the attention of their prospects.
B2B buyers increasingly base their decisions on their own research such as reports and studies, press articles or webinars. Interactions with vendors have become more unique to the point where Gartner estimates 33% of B2B buyers want a salesperson-free shopping experience.
If a salesperson manages to get an appointment, he needs to make this meeting memorable and decisive in the buying process in the future.
Listening and understanding the buyer’s situation while meeting their specific needs are important qualities that every salesperson should demonstrate.
They will try to optimize each interaction to keep the prospect’s attention in the process.
However, it is difficult to achieve all this alone.
To help them throughout the sales process, sales teams can rely on a digital infrastructure that can provide tools and all the information needed to nurture and improve relationships with customers or prospects.
Changing experiences
To maximize the effectiveness of meetings with customers, the first step is to personalize the relationship as much as possible.
In the current context, it is no longer possible to choose a generic approach. Adapting its messages and its communication according to its partner is important.
This is absolutely fundamental if you want to build a climate of trust and intimacy with your customers. This is also a way to stand out from the competition.
It is in this perspective that AI has an important role to play.
In use data intelligence and content management automation will definitely improve the buyer’s experience.
In the context of remote meetings, the deployment of AI allows the automation of content personalization.
It can promote the proposal of recommendations in the context of a business opportunity from past interactions and data about the prospect’s involvement in the relationship.
Thanks to AI, salespeople will see a marked improvement in their knowledge of the customer during the exchange, they will be able to identify new ideas, new behaviors resulting from a large number of data generated that is impossible for them to process. without this technology.
Another benefit of artificial intelligence is its ability to provide sales reps with real-time transcription, sentiment analysis, and various insights into their conversations.
They don’t need to take notes, AI can even help them identify the next best action to take during a conversation with a prospect.
Similarly, built-in AI can make the post-meeting experience just as useful and engaging for sales reps.
It can, in fact, automatically capture the important elements of the interaction, suggesting the most effective information to send within the context of a relationship follow-up.
AI will also be able to provide training recommendations as well as identify parts of a call or virtual meeting that generated a positive reaction.
Analytical aids that facilitate the role of salespeople in their goal of maintaining the interest and satisfaction of their prospects or customers.
Give the power back to the sellers
The use of technologies such as AI gives salespeople the possibility to dedicate themselves to selling through streamlining work processes.
It avoids, in the same way, the trap of constantly changing the tool that hinders their productivity.
Sales reps should have a general idea of their work environment. They must be able to simultaneously follow their meetings, their e-mails but also manage their CRM.
Since information is often scattered in many information silos/systems, it can be dangerous and time-consuming to gather all the data, analyze the information and determine what actions to implement in a commercial relationship.
Let’s take the example of ESN type companies. As part of a tender response committee, salespeople often face multidisciplinary teams with their own communication codes, at heterogeneous levels of knowledge, which require multiple and individual responses.
These responses must be calibrated and as personal as possible for each interlocutor and in addition, must be sent within the imposed and often short deadlines.
Because of this, it is difficult to understand without the help of tools these skills that mean a strong proactivity and accuracy of the messages given.
AI learning of responses, made in the context of previous deals, can promote significant productivity gains but also greater relevance to buyers’ responses.
Faced with unprecedented competition and increasingly demanding buyers, salespeople can rely on AI-based tools, which can increase their efficiency and performance tenfold.
This technology has become an important cog in the sales process because the commercial relationship has become more complex and spread over many channels and with a continuous increase in the number of common interlocutors.
Through his ability to provide the right information, at the right time and in the right context of business opportunities, AI can help bring consistency and relevance to marketing processes.
This will certainly promote the establishment of strong and trusting relationships between sellers and buyers and will give an undeniable competitive advantage to sellers who take advantage of it…
