Sales prospecting is a tough, time-consuming, and often tedious task. Most salespeople say it’s the toughest part of the sales process.
At the same time, you prospecting is where you build your sales pipeline. It’s a necessary part of growing and maintaining revenue over time. Organizations that learn to excel at prospecting have staying power - and an edge over the competition.
That's where AI comes into play.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a sales prospecting game-changer. It streamlines processes, gets you more leads, and ultimately boost your revenue. And when applied right, AI helps get more done while asking your team to do less.
We should know; our product is a video recorder for sales teams. We have spent months experimenting with AI and working it into our own product.
On this page, we’ll walk you through how AI can improve your sales prospecting. Let’s start with…
AI-Powered Lead Scoring
AI lead scoring is a gamechanger. Pecan.ai - just one AI lead scoring company - has raised over $100 million from investors like Google and Dell in the past 2 years.
But why is the technology so valuable?
Legacy lead scoring tech - found on platforms like Hubspot and Salesforce - is part-manual and part-algorithmic. It’s based on a combination of simple rules and manual input. Lead scores can be time-intensive to produce and often inaccurate, misjudging the value of leads.
AI fixes this. Unlike algorithms, it can use Large Language Models (LLMs) and machine learning to analyze customer sentiment in a human-like way. It can quickly scan emails, meeting transcripts, and more for key signals and turn them into insights - much like a data scientist.
AI can also work with messy data. It excels at finding important data points and patterns with minimal manual input. This makes it a lot easier for human operators to use.
The result is that AI-powered lead scoring tech can…
- Automatically tidy and prepare messy data for you
- Pinpoint relevant and qualified leads with no human input
- Predict customer churn, lead value, LTV, and more
- Get better at lead scoring over time
The cool part? Tech like this is available for as little as $50/month through providers like Pecan.ai and Akkio!
Personalized Videos at Scale
Prospects love getting time and attention. But it's almost impossible to personalize each interaction with every prospect at a high level. Or at least it used to be impossible.
With Sendspark, you can record one video and then automatically personalize it for each recipient. This means you can send personalized videos to thousands of recipients by name in seconds.
Here's how it works:
- Create pre-recorded videos for different situations - e.g., one for cold outreach, a few for nurturing, one to showcase a product, etc.
- Our AI will automatically add names to each video by pulling names from your data automatically. Prospects will hear “hi, Brandon”, “hi, Joe”, etc” without you having to record those greetings.
- Create dynamically updated landing pages that feature your prospects’ first names, company names, etc.
- Use Dynamic Video backgrounds to add contacts’ websites or social media pages to your recordings for more personalization.
The result? Each of your prospects gets a highly customized video that engages them and creates a meaningful connection. You get a powerful way to prospect at scale without coming across as robotic!
AI-Powered Nurture Flows
Following up on leads is vital, even if they turn you down at first. 80% of sales prospects say “no” four times before they say yes. The problem is, follow-ups are time-consuming and often lead nowhere.
This is why messaging automation platforms exist. By automating repetitive tasks, they make it easy to follow up with pre-written and pre-recorded flows.
The problem is that these flows often feel robotic. For example, imagine getting a follow-up message like this after not replying to the initial outreach…
Pretty awkward, right? Clearly a pre-written, untargeted follow-up message that won’t get a lot of replies.
Enter AI!
AI can do more than just send automated messages. It can…
- Help you draft outreach messages for pre-written sequences
- Address what's been said before in a personalized way
- Answer basic questions using part-canned, part-generated responses
- Book meetings on autopilot using your chosen software
One of our integration partners, Reply.io, offer the above features across multiple channels. Their software is made to help sales teams to scale their efforts while maintaining a human-like touch.
Lifelike AI chatbots like this can reduce the amount of effort sales reps spend on initial outreach by engaging with potential customers in real-time. This helps qualify leads before a real salesperson allocates time to them.
Enhanced Customer Profiling
Create a detailed profile of your potential customers with the help of AI by analyzing data from various sources such as social media, public records, and company databases.
There are two ways to go about this. First, you can ask tools like ChatGPT and BingChat to look up public data on someone without your input. For example, here’s us researching Bill Gates for a hypothetical sales pitch:
The reply will feature some of your prospect’s preferences, values, history, and pain points - which you can use to tailor your messaging and pitch. Here’s what we got in our specific case:
Second, you can do is find information yourself and feed it to an AI tool. For example, you could take someone’s LinkedIn profile, your personal notes, and anything else you have and save it as a .doc file. You can then feed this file into Claude AI or ChatGPT.
Afterwards, ask the AI to make a customer profile for you. It'll sift through everything you found and turn it into a useful customer profile.
This is especially useful if you have a lot of data on a client. Let’s say your company’s been keeping tabs on a high-value prospect for years. AI can process vast amounts of research in seconds, helping you get up to speed quickly.
Compelling AI-Written Video Pitches
Personalized videos are an incredibly powerful way to prospect. They get 4.5 more clicks and 16 times more opens than other media types.
The problem is, prospecting videos require scripts. These scripts take a long time to write. The alternative - writing from scripts and templates - means they’re not quite as personalized as you want them to be.
Fortunately, AI is excellent at writing scripts. And with Sendspark’s AI script tool, you can generate as many scripts as you need for all your prospecting needs. Just choose an objective, a desired tone of voice, and extra details!
Even cooler? The tool automatically generates emails you can attach your videos to. This means sales reps can get a script, record, and send personalized videos in minutes without having to write anything!
Sentiment Analysis and Conversation Intelligence
Sentiment Analysis tools like 6sense analyze interactions - emails, call transcripts, and async messages - using AI and machine learning technology. They then use their data to identify and measure sentiment towards…
- The buying process in general
- Your specific offer
The software can then tell you whether a customer is ready to buy - and whether they’re ready to buy from you.
Another kind of AI tool is Conversation Intelligence software. One example is Gong.io: a billion-dollar company that bought a Superbowl spot last year.
Gong listens in on conversations. It then tells sales reps when they’re talking too much, saying the wrong things, or mistiming specific messages (e.g. close attempts). It combines this data with market intelligence to help maximize conversions and sales.
Information from both types of AI tools helps improve sales performance. By understanding customer sentiment and improving sales reps’ performance this way, you can get a massive boost to your bottom line.
Have AI Nurture Clients
It costs 4-5x more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. This is also true for leads. They're much easier to retain, nurture and close than to acquire from scratch.
Fortunately, AI makes nurturing both easier and more effective for sales teams. For example, tools like Nurture.ai and Conversica.com can help sales teams by…
- Re-engaging leads and talking to them in believably human ways
- Making decisions independently of a human operator
- Monitoring old leads and re-engage them when the time is right
- Using popular messaging services like Whatsapp, Telegram, etc
- Analyzing past communications to find new opportunities - e.g. a lead wanted a specific feature, and now you have it
One cool thing about Nurture.ai specifically is that it’s made to set up sales calls with prospects that are ready to convert. It can complete the nurturing process independently of a human operator. This is unlike old-school nurturing automations, which required lots of input.
In Closing
AI tools are getting increasingly proficient at sales prospecting processes. They can nurture leads, gather customer intelligence, and even analyze sales reps’ performance for areas of improvement. This helps companies squeeze every last cent out of each opportunity.
That being said, there’s no replacement for a real, human connection. As more and more sales processes become AI-driven, it’s important to remember that.
To spark more connections using video, join Sendspark. Break through the noise, create personalized videos at scale using AI, and boost sales performance with a free account today.
