AI Sales

AI for Sales: How to use AI to boost your sales efficiency

lemlist team
LAST UPDATED
September 5, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.

In 2023, the global artificial intelligence (AI) market was close to $208 billion.

By 2030, the market size is expected to reach nearly $2 trillion, according to Statista.

No wonder 73% of U.S. companies use AI in their business (PwC, 2023).

AI is particularly relevant to the sales sector. We all know that manual tasks slow your revenue growth and sales performance.

AI helps you personalize your email campaigns, improve customer segmentation, and save time on tasks with less effort.

The question is, which AI tool is the best for sales and productivity?

In this article, we take a deep dive into the importance of AI in sales.

We will analyze the key use cases and AI tools that will help you to boost sales and be 3x more efficient.

Fom automating routine tasks to providing actionable insights for sales decisions, AI sales tools is a must-have in 2024.

What is artificial intelligence (AI) for sales

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in sales is the strategic incorporation of advanced algorithms and machine learning technologies to boost sales productivity.

It's the usage of data analytics to push actionable insights, optimize sales strategies, and increase customer engagement processes.

AI streamlines sales operations at its core, making them more efficient and effective by automating repetitive tasks and providing sophisticated analysis that humans alone cannot achieve at scale.

The primary purpose of AI in sales is to advance the capabilities of sales teams, enabling them to make data-driven decisions that lead to more sales.

By analyzing datasets, AI identifies patterns and trends that inform better targeting, forecasting, and personalization strategies. This enhances sales professionals' productivity by allowing them to focus on talking to their customers instead of doing manual tasks.

Ultimately, AI in sales is about leveraging technology to maximize performance and results.

Benefits of AI in sales

  1. Increased Efficiency and Productivity: Automates routine tasks, allowing sales teams to focus on strategic activities.
  2. Enhanced Customer Insights: Provides deep customer data analysis for tailored sales approaches.
  3. Improved Sales Forecasting: Utilizes historical data and trends for accurate predictions.
  4. Personalization at Scale: Delivers individualized communication to numerous prospects simultaneously.
  5. Optimized Pricing Strategies: Dynamically adjusts prices based on market conditions and customer data.
  6. Effective Lead Generation and Qualification: Identifies and prioritizes leads more likely to convert.
  7. Informed Decision-Making: Empowers sales teams with data-driven insights for strategic planning.
  8. 24/7 Customer Service: Offers continuous support through AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants.
  9. Reduced Operational Costs: Cuts expenses by automating tasks and optimizing sales processes.
  10. Continuous Learning and Improvement: AI algorithms continuously learn from new data, customer interactions, and outcomes, enabling ongoing optimization of sales strategies.

How to use AI for sales: 5 use cases

95% of salespeople would meet their sales goals faster if they could reduce time spent on non-revenue-generating activities like admin, note taking, and updating CRMs.

This is where the power of AI comes into play.

Here are some of the most frequent and powerful use cases of AI in sales:

1. AI-generated campaign personalization

Crafting personalized emails for each prospect is time-consuming. Generative AI can automatically analyze customer data, preferences, and past interactions to generate customized content.

This saves you hours of research to help you scale your outreach efforts without sacrificing quality.

2. AI content generation

You have to offer high-quality content to resonate with your target audience. It's what drives them to open and reply to your messages.

Generative AI scans existing content, identifies patterns, and generates new content pieces like blogs, playbooks, and articles that align with your brand's voice and engage customers.

3. AI customer segmentation

Even the best-written sales campaigns will fail if you're not targeting the right audience.

With AI, you can automatically dig into customer data, demographics, and behavior to segment customers into relevant groups. That segmentation helps you tailor your messaging and offers to the people who will respond to them.

4. AI note-taking

It's not always easy to give full attention to your prospects while taking notes during sales calls.

AI note-taking tools listen to real-time calls and automatically transcribe key points, action items, and customer preferences.

This makes it easier for you to connect to your prospects without missing any key details.

5. AI sales forecasting

Accurate sales forecasting is essential for effective resource allocation and strategic decision-making.

Generative AI can analyze historical sales data, market trends, and external factors to generate accurate sales forecasts. This empowers you to make data-driven decisions and enhance your strategies.

Top 5 AI tools for sales

Here are some of our favorite tools to start leveraging AI to optimize your sales processes and stay ahead of the competition.

1. Automate your outreach at scale with lemlist

lemlist's AI sequence generator will help you create ultra-targeted multichannel sequences in seconds.

Rating

Capterra 4.6 (372 reviews)

G2 4.2 (143 reviews)

What's in it for you

  • Avoid writer's block with custom copies
  • Save > 1h/per campaign with predefined steps
  • Get 3x more replies with unique sequences
https://assets-global.website-files.com/5de921a1902d8d39a699f77e/648c82e96401c013822214cc_gif AI lemlist (1).gif

How does it work?

lemlist is a powerful AI cold outreach tool that boosts your sales performance with:

  • AI-Powered Outreach:

Email Finder & Verifier: Discover your leads' valid and verified emails within lemlist, and ensure your emails are delivered and get a reply.

Personalized Drafts: Lemlist's AI generates individualized email drafts using a vast dataset, saving time and ensuring each message is tailored and relevant.

Customized Content: Automatically customize greetings and other content based on the recipient's details, such as their company and job title, for a personalized touch.

AI Variables: Connect GPT to lemlist for increased productivity and personalization at scale. Automatically clean and format data like job titles or company names. Easily segment leads based on available data and generate hyper-personalized campaigns based on your leads' information (e.g., generate Icebreakers based on your lead's LinkedIn profile). Works with a prompt just like you use ChatGPT and is applicable to all or selected leads.

  • Automated Workflows:

Multi-Channel Sequences: Schedule automated email and social media follow-ups, including LinkedIn messages and LinkedIn voice messages, to consistently engage prospects without manual work.

Automated Follow-Ups: Set up automatic responses for unanswered emails to maintain engagement, with customizable timing and message content.
Efficiency Boosters:

  • A/B Testing:

Easily test variations in email elements like subject lines and content to optimize campaign performance with automated A/B testing.

  • Email Deliverability Boost:

Warm-up your emails: Gradually increase your email volume with lemlist’s deliverability tool (lemwarm) to improve deliverability and ensure your emails reach inboxes.

  • CRM Integration: Connect with various CRM and marketing tools for a more streamlined outreach process, enhancing overall workflow efficiency.
  • Free Trial: Evaluate lemlist's fit for your needs with its free trial without commitment.
  • Streamlined Scheduling: lemlist offers free automated scheduling tool (lemcal) to get your more meetings and increase conversions. Unlike other scheduling tools, lemcal allows you to create personalized booking page and customize your invitations.

Pricing & Functionalities

2. Get qualified LinkedIn leads thanks to Taplio

An AI-driven LinkedIn automation tool designed to help businesses and individuals grow their presence on the platform.

Taplio offers features to help you build and maintain relationships, create content, schedule posts, monitor analytics, and engage with potential customers.

Rating

Product Hunt 4.1 (19 reviews)

What's in it for you

  • Access detailed analytics to see the content where your target audience engaged the most and use it as personalized icebreakers
  • Add people who engaged with your content to your lemlist campaigns within seconds
  • Create a LinkedIn CRM system to engage with specific replies and boost your reply chances

Pricing & Functionalities

3. Get centralized sales insights with setsail.co

SetSail is a Sales Data Layer that centralizes and interprets sales data across go-to-market teams and tools.

Rating

G2 4.6 (123 reviews)

What's in it for you

  • use machine learning to detect buying signals and productivity patterns
  • access insights in your CRM, data lake, or via SetSail's dashboard
  • improve sales rep performance via performance metrics and improvement suggestions
  • get an instant view of all your sales activity
https://assets-global.website-files.com/5de921a1902d8d39a699f77e/648c8298dcd7ea80caf6af32_Screenshot 2023-06-15 at 17.35 1 (1).png

Pricing - on request

4. Get targeted personality insights with Humantic.ai

Humantic.ai is a buyer intelligence platform that helps salespeople build relationships with their prospects.

Rating

G2 4.8 (108 reviews)

What's in it for you

  • get instant personality profiles from leads’ LinkedIn pages
  • AI-generated ICP and buyer personas based on engagement data
  • identify the early adopters who'll bring in 75% of your revenue

Pricing & Functionalities

5. Enrich your leads list with Clay

Clay is an automated sales prospecting platform that creates personalized messages via data from multiple sources.

Rating

G2 4.9 (27 reviews)

What's in it for you

  • enrich your customer data from 50+ data sources (tech stack, OpenAI GPT-3, Google, etc.)
  • identify qualified leads through data about the latest events, such as fundraising
  • add contacts to personalized campaigns in Customer.io, your outreach tool, or CRM
  • add your hyper-targeted leads directly to a sales automation tool like lemlist, and send outbound campaigns in less than 5 mins
https://assets-global.website-files.com/5de921a1902d8d39a699f77e/648c82d46401c0138221f7d2_gif clay (1).gif

Pricing & Functionalities

Hungry for more? Discover the complete list of top AI sales tools that will help you automate everyday manual tasks and have more time for closing deals!

Will AI and machine learning replace sales jobs?

AI and machine learning in sales is not about replacing jobs but transforming them. These technologies automate routine tasks, shifting the focus of sales professionals to strategic and high-value activities.

Crucially, AI cannot replicate the human element crucial in sales—relationship building, emotional intelligence, and creative problem-solving remain distinctly human advantages.

To sum up, AI in sales pushes adaptation, not replacement. Sales professionals equipped to work alongside AI, embracing new skills and roles, are the perfect fit to meet their sales quotas and boost company revenue!

The key takeaways

Leveraging artificial intelligence is crucial for enhancing sales efficiency and driving revenue growth. The use cases and tools we've explored demonstrate AI's role in automating tasks, refining customer segmentation, personalizing campaigns, and making sales teams more productive.

Adopting AI in sales processes is beneficial for businesses aiming to stay competitive. The technology saves time and offers actionable insights to improve sales outcomes significantly.

As we move forward into 2024, the importance of integrating AI into sales strategies cannot be overstated. For businesses looking to enhance their sales performance, the message is clear: the time to harness the power of AI is now. By doing so, sales teams can achieve greater efficiency and unlock new growth opportunities.

lemlist team
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G2 Rating
Price
Best for
Standout feature
Con
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/mo
$75/mo
$2,999/mo
Large, distributed sales teams
AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs
Lack of tracking system
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Sales operations and finance teams
Powerful configurability
Limited training resources and complex to navigate
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Mid-market and enterprise businesses
Comprehensive incentive management
Potentially high cost and steep learning curve
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$15/user/mo
$40/user/mo
Enterprise: custom price
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Collaborative teams
Connected planning
Complexity and steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with complex sales structures
Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy
Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts
Simplicity and ease of use
Lack of features like redirection
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$30/user/mo
$35/user/mo
Custom: upon request
Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software
Ease of use and adoption
Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs
4.8
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights
A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility
Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/user/mo
$50/user/mo
Smaller sales teams
Powerful automation
Lesser user base and average user interface
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with scalable needs
Automated Commission Calculations
Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app
ERP vs. CRM
ERP
CRM
Summary
Backbone of a business's internal operations.
Backbone of customer-centric interactions and operations.
Goal
To centralize and streamline core business processes in a company.
To increase customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, and boost sales.
Focus
Internal operations and processes across departments (finance, accounting, inventory, supply chain, HR, and sales).
All interactions with leads and customers.
Manages
Internal business data like financial data, inventory levels, production details, supply chain, HR info.
All customer data like contact info, purchase history, communication history, customer preferences and more.
Users
Finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, and HR departments.
Customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Benefits
Streamlines operations, improves data accuracy, enhances decision-making, boosts collaboration, increases productivity.
Improves customer relationships, increases sales, strengthens customer service, personalizes marketing campaigns, provides insights.
Price
$150 per user per year on average.
$10 to $30 per user per month on average.
PRM Tool
Rating
Feature
Pro
Con
Mobile App
Integrations
Free Plan
Pricing
4.65
star
star
star
star
star-half
Org-wide alignment
User-friendly layout and database
Suboptimal as a personal CRM
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-check
Team: $20/month
Business: $45/month
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Social Media Integration
Easy contact data collection
No marketing/sales features
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-xmark
7-day trial
$12/month
4.75
star
star
star
star
star-half
Block Functions
High customization capability
Not a dedicated CRM
square-check
Limited
square-check
Plus: €7.50/month
Business: €14/month
N/A
Open-source
Open-source flexibility
Requires extensive manual input
square-xmark
Limited
square-check
Self-hosted
$9/month or
$90/year
3.1
star
star
star
Simple iOS app
Ideal for non-tech-savvy users
iPhone only
square-check
iOS only
Limited
square-xmark
1-month trial
$1.49/month or
$14.99/month
3.6
star
star
star
star-half
Smart Contact Management
Feature-rich and flexible
Reported bugs
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
7-day trial
Premium: $13.99/month
Teams: $17.99/month
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Customizable Interface
Customizable for teamwork
Pricey for personal use
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
Standard: $24/member
Premium: $39/member
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Integrated Calling
Integrated Calling
Too sales-oriented & pricey
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
Startup: $59/user/month
Professional: $329/user/month
4.8
star
star
star
star
star
Business Card Scanning
Business Card Scanning
Mobile only
square-check
Limited
square-check
$9.99/month
4.45
star
star
star
star
star-half
160+ app integrations
Comprehensive integrations
No free app version
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
$29.90/month or
$24.90/month (billed annually)
Capterra Rating
Free Trial
Free Plan
Starting Price (excluding the free plan)
Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan)
Best for
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-check
€15/month/seat billed annually
€792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat
Versatility and free plan
4.2
star
star
star
star
square-check
30-day
square-xmark
But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations
€25/user/month
€500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI)
Best overall operational CRM
4.3
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-xmark
square-check
Limited to 3 users
Comprehensive incentive management
€52/user/month billed annually
Small-medium businesses and automation
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-xmark
€14/seat/month billed annually
€99/seat/month billed annually
Sales teams and ease of use
4.1
star
star
star
star
square-xmark
square-check
Limited 10 users
$9.99/user/month billed annually
$64.99/user/month billed annually
Free plan for very small teams up to 10
CRM goal
Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months.
SMART Breakdown
1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation).
2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking.
3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements.
4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives.
5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date.
Actions
Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation.
Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior.
Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads.
Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up.
Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization.
Outcomes
Increased sales and revenue
Improved marketing automation ROI
Marketing and sales alignment
Data-driven marketing optimization
Table
CDP Software
CRM Software
Approach
Data-centric
Customer-centric
Focus
Interactions across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline.
Sales, marketing, and customer service interactions.
Functionality
Automatically collects, organizes, tags, and makes data available in real-time.
Helps businesses track customer interactions, sales pipelines, prospects, and service requests.
Goals
Personalized customer experiences across all channels.
Better customer relationships, streamlined processes, and improved profitability.
Benefits
Data integration, management, and accessibility, allowing for detailed analysis and segmentation.
Better communication within teams and with customers by organizing information about customer interactions and history.
Data Handling
Handles both identified and anonymous data, stitches together various data points.
Deals primarily with identified customer data.
Use Cases
Personalized marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, content customization across multiple channels.
Managing campaigns and leads, enhancing customer service, providing better customer support, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Examples
Insider, Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CDP
HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM
CRM
Free plan
Best feature
Best for
Con
1. HubSpot CRM
square-check
Sales automation
Sales teams
Up to 1,000 contacts
2. Insightly
square-check
Custom fields
Basic needs
Not enough info about the free plan
3. Agile CRM
square-check
Deal and sales pipeline tracking
Small teams
Up to 10 users
4. Zoho CRM
square-check
Lead and contact management
Businesses of all sizes
Limited to 3 users
5. ClickUp
square-check
Unlimited tasks and unlimited members
Personal use
Up to 100MB storage
6. EngageBay
square-check
Live chat
Small and midsize enterprises
Up to 1,000 branded emails per month
7. Bitrix24
square-check
Unlimited users and 5 scrum teams
Big teams
Up to 5GB of cloud storage
8. FreshSales
square-check
Easy to use and simple setup
Beginners
Up to 3 users
9. Mailchimp
square-check
Very beginner friendly
Marketing teams
Send up to 500 branded emails per month
Type of Affiliate Marketing
Unattached
Related
Involved
Format
Paid advertising
Social media or YouTube channels
Dedicated website or blog
Focus
Quick income
Your niche
Your audience
Engagement with your audience
square-xmark
square-check
square-check
square-check
square-check
Very close connection with your audience
Pro
Little effort
Higher credibility thanks to your niche
Long-lasting and scalable
Con
Paid ads cost a lot
Potential for bias since you don’t use the thing you promote
Require time, effort, and dedication

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