How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Changes the Game for Sales Professionals

Discover how AI revolutionizes sales professionals’ strategies, enhancing accuracy, efficiency, and results. Stay ahead in the game with AI.

Will AI replace the jobs of salespeople anytime soon? Will sales representatives and sales agents lose their careers because of advanced tools and technology that intelligently adapt human learning and behavior?

These are some of the questions that sales professionals in Chicago and throughout the world are recently pondering due to the emergence of advanced tools and innovative programs. The rise of artificial intelligence and its usage in various sectors, including healthcare, education, IT, real estate, and commerce, are starting to scare human employees because of its threat to dominate local and global employment.

If you are working in sales, do you really need to fear advanced technological tools, such as AI? Will sales jobs in Chicago and other major cities in the US really be acquired by AI-built programs? This article will discuss how sales professionals like you can utilize AI to boost your career and leverage technology to become better salespeople.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

More popularly known as AI, artificial intelligence is a machine’s simulation of the human’s cognitive functions and abilities. In recent years, AI is being utilized in technological devices, computer programs, and mobile applications to perform functions similar to basic human cognitive tasks and activities, including listening, perceiving, interacting, reasoning, problem-solving, and generating content. AI technology is programmed with machine learning ability such that it educates itself from data and information being fed to it, enabling it to produce sensible, accurate, and intellectual information.

Through years of continuous improvement, AI tools and programs behave and interact similarly to a human, thereby inspiring businesses and companies in different industries to turn to the use of AI-driven software. Because AI works fast and delivers results precisely, many business owners turn to AI as a more cost-effective alternative to human employees.

AI in Sales: What Sales Professionals in Chicago Need to Know

While AI appears to be a threat, it is not at all bad. In fact, AI is so powerful that sales professionals in Chicago should realize that they can take advantage of its features and benefits. Below are the main advantages of AI in the sales industry:

1. AI helps streamline sales processes

Manual sales processes require time, effort, and the help of additional manpower if you are running a big sales operation. With AI, you can optimize and automate several processes in your operations, such as inventory management, pricing optimization, sales reporting, and demand forecasting. By letting a machine handle some aspects of your business operations, you can streamline your sales processes and improve your productivity. By freeing up some of your time, you can focus more on running your business and closing deals successfully.

2. AI gives you great ideas for an effective sales pitch

As humans, we sometimes run out of creative juices and inspiration on how to present ourselves or market the products or services we are offering. Through the help of AI, you can easily and quickly get ideas to help you craft your sales pitch and create a winning presentation deck. For a comprehensive list of AI tools and programs that sales recruiters and sales professionals in Chicago can use for their sales pitch, continue reading our article.

3. AI provides intelligent sales assistance

A successful sales process involves multiple stages, from promoting your products and services to providing after-sales customer care. In each of these stages, assisting your customer is necessary to maintain a successful business.

AI-powered virtual assistants and chatbots can handle sales assistance tasks smoothly and seamlessly, aiding sales professionals in Chicago to deal with potential clients and repeat customers. These AI-driven tools are programmed to provide relevant information, answer customer inquiries, and support the overall sales process. By enabling sales professionals to respond to customers on time and with accurate information, you can enhance the overall customer experience.

4. AI enables sales automation

Automation has become an integral part of many business functions because it streamlines processes, cuts down operation time, and improves overall productivity.

In many sales jobs in Chicago, automation also helps simplify time-consuming tasks and make sales processes more efficient. By using AI-powered tools, you can automate tasks such as data entry and organization, email communication, lead scoring, sales reporting, and sales inquiry response among others. When you let a machine handle these nitty-gritty aspects of your sales process, sales professionals can focus their time and energy on high-value activities like building relationships and closing deals.

5. AI offers improved sales forecasting

Forecasting or the process of estimating future revenues from past sales performance is important to help businesses make better decisions in business planning, budgeting, marketing, and risk management. When done manually, looking into marketing trends and analyzing historical sales data are not only tedious and time-consuming, but can be prone to human errors, too. With AI-powered tools, sales forecasting can be done quickly and accurately, enabling sales professionals to make informed decisions about resource allocation, goal setting, and strategy development.

6. AI generates real-time sales analytics and insights

Another way AI helps sales professionals in Chicago is through real-time analytics and performance insights. By analyzing available data that you feed your AI program, it can study these data intelligently, provide you with valuable insights, as well as offer useful recommendations for your business. Some examples of data that AI can read and analyze include customer preferences, buying patterns, and sales performance metrics.

Moreover, AI can also look into data and information from third-party sources, including social media and market trends, to provide you with up-to-date insights that can be useful for your business. Many sales recruiters in Chicago use AI insights to help them create customized strategies and approaches in hiring sales professionals for various companies and businesses.

7. AI helps with lead generation and successful sales

Gone are the days when you have to call hundreds of cold leads just to make one successful sale. With AI’s advanced algorithms, it can analyze vast amounts of data to identify high-quality leads and prospects, saving you time and effort in identifying potential customers or clients who are most likely to convert. If your sales business greatly depends on leads, consider taking advantage of the power of artificial intelligence in enhancing your lead generation and sales strategies.

With this exhaustive list of AI’s advantages, we can confidently deduce that AI, among other technological advancements, is not an enemy to sales professionals in Chicago. Instead, it can be your best weapon when streamlining and automating your sales processes, creating sales pitches, and enhancing your lead generation and sales strategies. So rather than being threatened by what AI can do on its own, take advantage of its features and abilities that can greatly support your sales skills.

AI-Powered Sales Tools and Software

Now that we’ve established how AI can significantly help the sales industry, let us discuss the various AI tools and software that can change the game for sales agents and representatives, empowering you to easily find sales jobs in Chicago.

1. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools

In sales, managing and maintaining customer relationships is important to improve customer experience, convert leads to paying customers, and drive sales. Using AI-powered CRM tools can help businesses and sales professionals organize their customer information better and access that information more easily. If you are looking for excellent CRM tools that use AI technology, below is the top in our list:

1.1 Salesforce Einstein is a comprehensive AI platform for CRM that provides intelligent insights, predictive analytics, and automation to enhance sales and customer relationship management.

1.2 Zoho CRM incorporates AI capabilities to analyze customer data, automate repetitive tasks, and provide sales insights, all of which help with lead conversion and revenue growth.

1.3 HubSpot CRM uses AI to track and analyze sales activities, streamline processes, improve team members’ collaboration, and provide personalized recommendations for sales professionals.

2. Lead Generation Tools

Leads are very important to sales agents in Chicago. Sales can only be successful if you have enough leads to work with. If you want to enhance your lead-generation strategies and close more sales, here are our top picks for Ai-powered lead-generation tools:

2.1 LinkedIn Sales Navigator utilizes AI technology to help both individual sales representatives and sales teams to target the right buyers, enable personalized communication, and understand key insights.

2.2 Clearbit leverages real-time intelligence that helps sales professionals determine and act on signals from prospects with the highest potential to be converted into paying customers.

2.3 Meet Alfred utilizes Ai to create personalized LinkedIn messages and send follow-up emails to prospective customers to help sales professionals achieve their sales goals faster.

3. Sales Chatbots

90% of sales involve communication with the prospective customer. Having someone to listen to their needs, address their primary concerns, and tell them more about the product or service you are selling, will easily help them make an informed decision. This is why the use of sales chatbots has become widely popular among businesses in Chicago and throughout the US. Below are the most popular AI sales chatbots:

3.1 Mobile Monkey is a multi-channel chatbot platform that can be accessed on a web browser or mobile application, supporting live chat, web chat, SMS, and Facebook Messenger chat communications.

3.2 Engati is an enterprise-grade AI chatbot platform that helps with sales and marketing, customer support, and HR management.

3.3 The SmartLoop AI tool enables sales professionals to build intelligent chatbots for generating and nurturing leads, analyzing user interaction, and improving conversational flows.

4. Deck and Presentation Creation Tools

Some sales jobs in Chicago require their candidates to be creative and adept in creating sales decks and presentations. While sales pitching may feel easy and natural to many sales professionals and representatives, creating decks is another story. If you are struggling with doing sales decks and presentations, try this Ai-powered presentation software:

4.1 Canva is a popular graphic design tool that utilizes AI technology to simplify the process of creating visually appealing presentations.

4.2 Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software that incorporates AI-powered features to help sales and marketing staff create engaging photo and video presentations.

4.3 SlideAI leverages AI technology to write your sales pitch outline and presentation content in seconds, generating professional-looking decks quickly and effortlessly.

5. Video Scripts and Editing Tools

Are you using video content as part of your sales strategy? Through the help of AI-powered video script writing and editing tools, never run out of content ideas you can use for lead generation, conversion, and sales conversion. Here are the top AI tools for video script writing and editing:

5.1 Scriptbook is an AI-powered tool that generates intelligent scripts, analyzes content, and provides insights on potential success factors, audience engagement, and marketability.

5.2 ChatGPT is a popular AI chatbot that can perform a number of tasks, including writing sales scripts for video content.

5.3 Magisto is an easy-to-use video editing platform that uses AI algorithms to analyze video content, apply automatic edits, add effects, and create polished videos with minimal effort.

6. AI Sales Assistants

Having a personal assistant makes handling work easier and faster, especially in sales. If you need AI sales assistants that can automate some of your sales processes, take a few things off your plate, and improve your overall productivity, here are the top AI-powered sales assistants you can consider using to nail any sales jobs in Chicago.

6.1 Clara.ai is an AI-powered virtual assistant that helps sales professionals in Chicago and throughout the country with scheduling meetings, managing calendars, and coordinating follow-ups.

6.2 Google Assistant is a widely used general virtual assistant that can assist sales professionals with tasks such as setting reminders, finding information, and managing schedules.

Tips on Leveraging AI for Sales Productivity, Growth, and Success

As has already been said above, technology is not a threat. It is a tool that sales professionals can take advantage of to up their game and produce better results. Whether you are just starting a career in sales or already working multiple sales jobs in Chicago, here are several ways you can leverage AI to improve your sales productivity and achieve success.

1. Use AI to access, collect, and analyze customer data

There is power in data. All you have to do is harness it and acquire as many insights as you can to help improve your business and enable you to make better decisions.

AI tools such as HubSpot and Zoho CRM enable pulling data into an organization’s CRM to provide a holistic and accurate understanding of each user, whether they are a prospect, lead, or customer. By having better visibility of each user, you can segment them accordingly and create tailored sales strategies and product recommendations for each segment.

Hubspot also features an AI-driven predictive scoring system that identifies high-quality leads according to several pre-defined criteria. As the system is designed to continuously learn over time, its accuracy only gets better when it is used.

Zoho CRM, on the other hand, introduces the DataPrep solution, a feature that analyzes and categorizes data into new “types” or “data points” through various criteria, including lead sentiments and topics of interest. These “types” provide sales professionals with useful information, such as lead scoring, prioritization, and personalization, that can help them further improve their sales targeting and strategies.

2. Understand your workflow and identify repetitive tasks that can be passed on to AI tools

Generally, sales processes are complicated—no matter what industry you are in. Without streamlined procedures and structured systems, it can burn out even the most dedicated sales representative.

To improve your productivity, the first thing you need to do is to lay out a detailed workflow of your sales system and understand every step, procedure, and task involved in it. You have to recognize the small nitty-gritty tasks and repetitive activities that can be handed off to an AI-powered tool or program, such as:

• Data entry on CRM systems
• Lead scoring and qualification
• Email outreach and follow-ups
• Meeting scheduling
• Sales reporting and analytics
• Proposal and quote generation for prospective customers
• Customer support using an AI chatbot

By offloading these time-consuming tasks and functions to AI, sales professionals can free up their time and focus more on other concerns that require human expertise, such as negotiations, building relationships, and after-sales customer care.

3. Boost your sales revenues by using predictive forecasting and analytics

Forecasting significantly helps sales professionals in Chicago anticipate possible changes in the future and make better business decisions. The downside of it, though, is that forecasting is not simple. While human sales managers can easily set future goals and predict sales numbers, getting to an accurate calculation requires looking into vast historical data sets, assessing market trends and consumer behavior, and studying potential opportunities. All of this requires time, effort, and resources if you choose to do it manually.

AI can accomplish these tasks with greater accuracy and in a shorter time. Predictive analytics tools are designed to identify patterns, trends, and opportunities while analyzing historical data and user behavior. Thus, in a matter of minutes, AI can show you the big picture with optimal efficiency, enabling you to make more informed business decisions and improve your future sales performance.

4. Improve customer experience through personalization

Personalization is more than just a “buzz” word in sales. Tests and studies have proved that personalized communications and customized sales strategies work, making generic sales and marketing messages less preferred and ineffective. According to a study done by Accenture in 2018, more than 90% of consumers admitted that they are more likely to choose brands that send them personalized messages and relevant offers. Moreover, 80% of consumers said that they are willing to share their personal information to be able to receive a personalized customer experience.

While human sales professionals can do this manually, it can be impractical to spend dozens of hours customizing messages and offers one by one and cross-referencing them to a user’s profile and interests. This is where AI comes in.

AI can help you deliver personalized customer experiences at scale. By analyzing customer data and behavior, AI-powered tools can provide recommendations and insights to tailor your sales approach and messaging. This personalization builds trust, strengthens relationships, and improves sales effectiveness.

A few examples of sales companies that use AI for personalization are Amazon and Netflix through their personal recommendation engines. They use machine learning algorithms that intelligently analyze user’s data including browsing behavior, previous purchases, and customer interactions to provide them with recommendations that ideally match their preferences and interests, making them more likely to purchase again.

5. Use chatbots to improve customer service

Regardless of what industry you are in, offering unparalleled customer service is essential for your business to thrive. Unfortunately, many sales representatives and sales agents don’t have the time to inject customer service into their sales workflow. They can only do so much with limited time and resources.

The good news is that AI chatbots are now easily accessible and available to perform customer service and support to new prospects and existing clients. Because chatbots are AI-driven tools, they can provide round-the-clock customer service and assistance to customers. Chatbots can help interact with the buyer, clarify any doubts and concerns, answer inquiries, provide suggestions, and even complete the transaction for them.

If you want to level up your sales strategy, consider using chatbots to provide better customer service and human-like support to your customers and clients.

Adapting to the AI-Driven Sales Landscape

AI has the transformative potential to revolutionize the sales landscape, and it is essential for sales representatives and professionals to embrace these advancements and continuously adapt their skills to leverage the power of AI. The integration of AI into sales processes can streamline operations, improve your business’s productivity, and enable sales professionals to focus on high-value tasks that require more personalized human expertise.

By automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks, AI frees up sales professionals in Chicago and throughout the world to invest their time and energy in building relationships, understanding customer needs, and providing personalized assistance. This shift allows them to focus on what they do best: connecting with prospects and closing deals.

Adapting to AI technology also requires a mindset of continuous learning and improvement. Sales agents should stay updated on the latest advancements in AI, explore emerging trends, and be open to experimenting with new tools and traditional sales techniques. Once they are willing to adapt their sales strategies based on AI-generated insights and embrace the collaboration between human and AI capabilities, they can do so much more with their sales skill set and achieve professional growth and success in their sales career.

Wrapping It Up

AI is here to stay, bringing a vast array of benefits that sales professionals can leverage to improve their skills, boost their productivity, and grow their careers. Don’t let the advancement of technology discourage you from pursuing your dreams. Instead, take advantage of innovation and intelligent tools to improve yourself and help you work faster, smarter, and more efficiently.

If you are a sales agent exploring sales jobs in Chicago or a sales manager looking to grow your career, Sales Recruiter Chicago can help you land the perfect position. Check out the available sales jobs in Chicago here or submit your resume and we’ll match you with a job you’re qualified for.