When it comes to revenue generation, every sale is important. The right sales strategy (and a team ready to put it into action) is critical to meeting business goals and driving ROI – but the sales landscape is evolving quickly.
AI-powered tools are giving sales teams more insights at their fingertips than they’ve ever had before. Using those insights to understand customers better, identify sales opportunities during service interactions, and improve associate coaching can help organizations drive revenue growth without sacrificing customer experience (CX) along the way.
Holden Olsen, TTEC’s vice president of global sales delivery, recently discussed why sales teams should harness the power of AI and CX with guest Seth Marrs, principal analyst at Forrester, during a LinkedIn Live event, “AI+CX: Secret weapons for sales success.”
Drive faster, better results with AI
AI is enabling sales teams to work smarter by helping them know their customers better; identifying the right times and ways to sell; and taking on time-consuming, menial tasks.
In a study, Forrester asked sellers how much time they spend on various aspects of their job – sales enablement, engagement, administrative work, and relationship management – and how AI benefits those areas.
“The biggest area where AI is making an impact is in enablement,” Marrs said. Forrester predicts more than 80% of the time sellers spend on enablement will be impacted by AI, as AI tools take on some of the menial and repetitive parts of the process. “We’re changing the way those things work or have worked in the past.”
With so many tools to choose from, it’s important that organizations explore which ones will help sellers the most and determine the best way to operationalize them, Olsen said.
AI-powered solutions can uncover behaviors that lead to seller success, so teams can replicate those behaviors team-wide. Conversational AI, for instance, can comb through sales interaction transcripts and pull out actionable insights to inform training and best practices, Olsen said.
Even AI tools that have existed for years hold exciting potential as sales teams take a fresh at them.
“There are so many ways that you can use that simplest form of AI in these new ways to really accelerate the results that you’re getting,” Olsen said.
AI can mine content, summarize information, prepare emails, and perform other tasks. On average, AI tools saved sellers an hour of time each week in 2024, compared with 2023, according to Marrs.
Uncover sales opportunities in service channels
Sales teams have long sought to maximize the value of every contact center interaction, but many have made the mistake of trying ill-timed sales attempts that feel forced and off-putting. AI can help here, too.
AI tools can ingest 30 days of call volume, for instance, and analyze interactions so teams truly understand customer intents, Olsen said. With those insights in hand, they can go intent-by-intent to build out a sales strategy that makes sense. In many cases, the sale can be part of a resolution.
“Customers are going to be willing to listen to you as long as they know that the questions you’re asking through the discovery phase are leading to the issue resolution, and that buys you the credibility to transition into a value-based offer.”
An informed, data-backed service-to-sales strategy can help brands drive revenue growth in the contact center while still delivering exceptional CX.
Make coaching more effective, efficient
Another way AI can improve CX is by informing associate coaching. When sellers succeed, conversational AI can listen to interactions and tell you why, Marrs noted.
Sales leaders can then use those learnings to inform coaching and replicate successful behaviors. AI takes the guesswork out of coaching, showing precisely what works during interactions (and what doesn’t). Certain tools can even give sellers real-time feedback during interactions.
A growing number of brands are using AI to drive coaching methodology and seeing quick results, Olsen said.