AI and Predictive Technologies can make it happen!

Star Sales Reps (SSR) are hard to find, hard to develop and hard to retain. Sales leaders have struggled with this issue since the day selling was invented.

Why do SSRs perform so much better Can the Average Sales Rep (ASR) emulate the SSR to deliver high performance This question has been studied a few times and the results of these studies have been quite consistent.

  1. SSRs eliminate dead-end leads early and fast. ASRs spend quite a lot of their selling time chasing leads and accounts that do not close.
  2. SSRs spend more time selling than ASRs. According to research by VoloMetrix, published in HBR, top sales performers spend up to 33% more time with customers per week. More time devoted to selling means SSRs are taking more sales actions per day than ASRs.
  3. SSRs not only take more sales actions than ASRs but they also choose to take more effective sales actions. In fact, they know which sales actions will push the buying process forward and which sales actions will not. While ASRs are spending (wasting) their precious selling time on ineffective sales actions, the SSR is deploying their carefully chosen sales actions to get to the close faster.
  4. SSRs not only know which sales actions are more effective but also know how to tailor each sales action for each customer, the buying stage they are in and the prospect s KPIs. Moreover, they also know how to time their sales actions for maximum impact.

By judiciously combining the 4 advantages targeting likely to close accounts, more sales actions, eliminating ineffective sales actions and tailoring each sales action the SSRs are able to build a significant performance advantage over the ASRs. It is this performance advantage that translates into the higher sales they are able to deliver and of course, the higher compensation and job satisfaction they are able to get.

This information is nothing new for experienced sales leaders, however, despite investing a large amount of dollars into sales technologies that promise increased performance, hiring, training and coaching their sales teams, most sales leaders have not been able to bridge the gap between their SSRs and ASRs.

Finally, given the recent developments in Predictive Technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is a way to solve this long-standing problem. Recent developments that combine analytics and AI, can now provide daily guidance to the ASRs by recommending the sales actions for each sales opportunity they are working on. Not only do these recommendations save time for ASRs by identifying the accounts more likely to close, eliminating non-productive sales actions, but also recommending sales actions that are specifically tailored for each prospect, their buying journey, their buying style and the KPIs they care about. By providing these recommendations at the right time they can enable the ASRs to quickly catch up with the SSRs – resulting in a huge jump in both morale and productivity across the sales team and more importantly, a happy and smiling sales leader.

Many sales teams are already seeing performance improvement of up to 100% for their ASRs. Moreover, even the SSRs have shown performance improvement of up to 20% through sales action recommendations provided by Predictive Technologies.

Sales leaders who are at the forefront of adopting these cutting-edge technologies are leaving their competitors behind. They are not only exceeding their sales goals but developing a star sales team that is motivated, happy, and smiling all the way to the bank.

The big question to ponder is – Why is not every sales leader adopting predictive technology to win big. In the next blog, I will discuss some of the roadblocks sales leaders face when they want to bring Predictive Technologies for sales actions into their organization and how you can overcome these roadblocks.

Happy Selling till then!