4 Ways Artificial Intelligence Helps Marketing and Sales Teams Grow

Automated AI tools are shaping the way marketing and sales leaders build their teams, evaluate their tech stack, and empower their teams to reach new levels of growth.

In 2020, 39% of large organizations claimed they planned to invest in AI technology. Now, only 7% of companies say they don't utilize the power of AI in their businesses in 2021. It’s clear that AI, once a fringe technology used by early adopters, has now become a necessity, needed to compete in the market.

But with so many tools out there, you need to be asking yourself: What types of benefits can I expect from integrating automation and AI solutions into my processes? Which solution will enable my marketing and sales teams to reach—and even exceed—their goals year over year?

In this article we break the answers down for you, laying out the top four ways you and your organization can benefit from automation and AI by integrating these tools within your marketing and sales initiatives.

1. Manage the Flow of New and Pre-Existing Leads

A common struggle that all sales and marketing teams can relate to is a sheer lack of time.

With marketing focused on driving demand and new pipelines, and sales reps responsible for prospecting, qualifying leads, closing both pre-existing and new leads, and guiding them along their buying journey, there is simply not enough time in the day for a live sales rep to give the proper attention to each and every lead.

Furthermore, let’s not forget those leads that have been cold for some time, and have been sitting in your CRM, just waiting for a follow up or nurture email from a live rep, which unfortunately will never come.

With an automated AI virtual assistant, this can be achieved.

Simply put, unlike with a live rep, an automated virtual assistant allows you to make sure all your leads are followed up with, nurtured, identified as sales-ready, and finally handed over by booking a meeting with a live rep.

Furthermore, an automated virtual assistant designed with artificial intelligence learns from interactions with leads, and over time, effectively nurtures, qualifies, and hands over pre-qualified leads to a live sales rep, all without any intervention from a human being.

2. No Lead Left Behind: Lead Qualification on Autopilot

The last thing you want to do is cause friction between your marketing and sales teams, which typically occurs during the lead scoring process.

With most organizations utilizing a lead scoring methodology to categorize the buyer intent and likelihood of conversion, it's common that a rift occurs between marketing and sales teams over the legitimacy and level of buyer intent for incoming leads.

With the power of automation and AI, tools like an AI-driven sales assistant exist to take over the entire lead qualification and nurturing process, removing the need for a lead scoring scheme. These assistants confirm the level of buyer intent and interest of the lead through two-way email, chat, and SMS conversation. This ensures that each and every lead flows along their buying journey, all the while saving valuable time for both marketing and sales. These assistants also help maintain a positive internal marketing-sales relationship and a seamless customer experience.

3. Personalization at Scale

With 76% of marketing leaders claiming that personalization is the determining factor behind conversion, and personalized emails seeing a 6x higher conversion rate than generic ones, it's evident that when it comes to email marketing and outreach, a personal touch goes a long way.

But take the situation at hand, you have a live sales rep with hundreds, if not thousands, of leads that needs to reply to, engage with, follow up with, and nurture in the span of an eight or nine hour work day. It's simply an impossible task for one to undertake.

Enter the automated AI assistant. By utilizing automation and AI, you allow an AI tool to do the heavy lifting and ensure that each and every lead is touched, nurtured, engaged, and guided along their buying journey in a human-like and personalized manner.

4. Time and Budget Savings

As your organization grows, so will the pipeline of new leads that come from your marketing team. But with minimal budget, and a growing number of MQLs, how can you maintain a consistent workflow without bringing on new headcount to meet the rising demand and workload?

With an automated AI assistant, you can achieve growth and scalability at a fraction of the cost of bringing on additional headcount. In fact 83% of early AI adopters have already achieved substantial (30%) or moderate (53%) economic benefits by making use of automated AI tools such as an automated AI assistant.

The Solution: An Automated AI Assistant

With organizations like Exceed providing automated AI assistants which encompass both automation and AI capabilities, you are enabling your sales and marketing teams to focus on what they do best, and leaving the more time-consuming, administrative, non-revenue generating tasks to the AI virtual sales assistant.