Many businesses are investing in GenAI, especially in customer-facing capacities like service, marketing, and sales. But this tech shows serious promise in productivity and revenue in other areas — specifically for B2B sales teams, who face longer sales cycles and a heavier focus on building longer relationships with leads and customers.
The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) recently described transformative benefits when B2B businesses use GenAI, like a five-times faster product-to-market time.
Here are some benefits B2B sales teams specifically reap with GenAI according to BCG’s analysis:
- Doubled lead generation
- Doubled sales rep productivity
- Doubled cross-selling and upselling rate
- 50% increase in lead-to-conversion (sale) time
- 30% boost in sales rep lead management capacity
These results come from an increase in automation to speed up operational processes and better personalization in lead engagement. No wonder 70% of sales leaders and tech leaders plan to invest in generative AI this coming year.
Now at the start of 2024, BCG continues to explore tangible ways B2B sales teams can use generative AI to experience these successful results. We’ll cover some of BCG’s and other experts’ recommendations for B2B sales teams to harness AI.
Increase productivity with automation
B2B sales reps deal with a lot of admin work on top of their sales work. After every call they need to update leads and customer data. A generative AI sales assistant persona can handle all that data entry and summarize relevant insights to inform a sales rep’s next call with a particular customer. The best part? They do it in a fraction of the time.
The BCG mentions Salesforce’s Einstein Co-Pilot as an example — an internal AI tool that summarizes calls and insights for staff. Dan Gottlieb, Gartner sales practice exec, echoes this sentiment with his stress on atomic insights over data, where AI can synthesize transcripts and summarize important details from call logs.
Gottlieb highlights these initial AI capabilities for B2B sales teams:
- Text summarization
- Sentiment analysis
- Question answering
- Simple analytics
- Sales engagement automation
- Conversational reporting
Find more qualified leads
The search for a qualified lead in the B2B sales world is notoriously harder than for B2C businesses. A lot of wasted labour hours and investment ensues when sales reps focus attention on the wrong prospects. Generative AI can automate lead scoring, which helps businesses determine how likely a lead will become a customer. It can also automate outreach to quicker engage those qualified leads.
Gen AI can take care of lead outreach qualification, and prospecting to dramatically speed up a sales reps’ process to start the funnel.
Scale but manage risk
Despite the tech’s benefits, Gen AI brings some risk to the B2B sales process that brands should tackle head-on and prepare for. For example, some teams could be slow to get on board, making feedback, consultation, and subsequent training vital.
Beyond that, you can monitor progress and performance with your initial Gen AI functions to replicate the most productive workflows and use them at scale.
Are you part of a B2B business that wants to get started with Gen AI? Start with a clear vision to guide your employees, prioritize training, audit existing processes, and start with one sales automation at a time.
Read the full article from the BCG here.
