By: Mike Szczesny
Sales have come a long way since the days of going door-to-door. Technology has made it possible to reach more people faster than ever before. It’s also changed how sales operate, encouraging teams to sell smarter, not harder.
To keep selling smarter, however, it’s important to keep up with the latest technology offers and understand how best to leverage it. Whatever you’re selling, from cars to computers, trips to trophies, your approach can probably benefit from taking full advantage of new technology. With that in mind, here are four technologies you can leverage to push your sales numbers even higher.
Four Technologies to Help You Sell Smarter:
1. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI and automation can play a big role in making your sales strategy smarter. At their most basic level, these can help take over the administrative work of sales teams, freeing up more time for selling. Considering inside sales reps only spend 33% of their time actively selling on average, this function alone makes AI extremely valuable. Chatbots can also handle increasingly complex queries, which helps push that percentage even further.
But the power of AI extends beyond its ability to save time. It can also help sales teams perform better, thanks to the insights it gleans from customer data. Through AI, sales reps can personalize their strategies to fit the needs of each lead better and quickly adapt their approach based on where customers are in their buyer journey. Essentially, AI can act as a helpful sales consultant, ready to give you all the useful information you need at the push of a button.
2. Streamlining Sales with Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
You’re likely already using a CRM, but are you using it to its full potential? Your CRM is not just a place to manage your customer interactions (although this is important). It also has the potential to act as the nucleus for your entire sales strategy.
Take the time to make sure everything is organized properly and that your sales pipeline is uncluttered. You should have a visual understanding of the entire lifecycle of your prospects from start to finish. With this all organized, you can use your CRM to understand customer behavior better and create buyer personas that will help standardize your sales playbook around specific customer types.
Your CRM is also the perfect tool for collaborating with the rest of your organization, sharing data with each department to streamline operations and prevent data silos from forming. In addition to helping you collaborate with other people, it can also be integrated with other technologies to create a cohesive platform for handling every type of sales lead.
3. Boosting Sales with Email Marketing
Email might seem old-fashioned compared to AI, but it’s still a deeply valuable technology for sales, delivering an ROI of $42 for every dollar spent, higher than any other channel. On average, email leads to conversions at three times the rate of social media.
Email is a great way to reach out to potential leads and is perfect for maintaining customer relationships and generating new sales for long-time customers. Through email, you can lower abandoned cart rates, upsell products, boost sales through discounts and specials, and even solicit feedback and referrals. Plus, unlike other platforms, email is an open protocol, which means it’s not subject to the whims of a single owner, which, as we know, can end up causing some trouble.
4. Revolutionize Sales with Digital Twins
The digital twin is, in many ways, the next evolution in buyer personas. Rather than create profiles that can be used to make educated guesses on the right sales tactics for specific users, a digital twin lets you test out these tactics on a computer-generated buyer.
A digital twin is created from your interactions with actual customers, both physically and digitally. It uses this information to react to your sales pitches in real time, allowing you to test out different messages and media to see what would work in practice. Moreover, these twins are constantly updated with new information, which means you’re given the most up-to-date picture of the customer. The market for digital twins in sales is still growing, so now is a great time to take advantage of this technology and be one step ahead of the competition.
Technology can go a long way in helping sales teams perform their jobs at their full potential. However, it’s worth noting that none of these tools can or should act as replacements for the human element. Your salespeople should still be front-and-center when interacting with your leads, with technology operating and supporting your teams’ skills. With this approach, you can make the most of your technological advantage without forgetting what makes your sales team so successful: the people.
