High-performing salespeople spend significant time on repetitive, manual tasks like email follow-ups, calls, meeting scheduling, lead management, sales tracking, sales forecasting, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data entry, generating reports, etc.
This is in addition to pressure from execs to meet (and even exceed) your quota.
While essential, these menial responsibilities sap the time and energy better spent on high-impact sales activities like building relationships, nurturing leads, and closing deals.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. Recent advances in AI have birthed sophisticated sales assistant tools that automate many repetitive tasks bogging down sales teams so they can redirect their efforts to the human aspects of the job.
In this guide, we explore the top AI sales assistant tools available alongside how to choose the best fit for your organization.
What is an AI Sales Assistant?
An AI sales assistant is a virtual sales assistant powered by artificial intelligence to support sales teams by automating various sales tasks and workflows.
These assistants leverage natural language processing and machine learning to perform routine tasks like drafting emails, updating records, scheduling meetings, and analyzing customer data.
Their goal is to save sales teams time on repetitive and low-value work so they can focus on strategy, relationship building, and closing.
There are different types of AI sales assistants, and they all have their specialty like:
Conversation intelligence tools: They automatically record, transcribe, and analyze calls to extract valuable insights for sales teams.
Email lead generation tools: They generate more leads by automating prospecting and follow-ups based on recipient behavior and personalizing messages.
Sales performance analysis tools: They focus on analyzing your performance to provide insights to help you optimize your strategy.
Lead qualification and scoring tools: Instead of wasting time on unqualified leads, these assistants qualify leads, so you only focus on leads likely to convert.
Content creation tools: They create content like emails, social posts, and follow-up notes at a prompt.
Tools for maintaining good CRM hygiene: These ones ensure your CRM records are accurate and up-to-date.
The Benefits of AI Sales Assistant Tools
Here are a few of the biggest benefits of using an AI sales assistant.
1. Time-savings
As stated, AI sales tools can take over certain manual, time-consuming, and non-selling tasks you must do daily.
In turn, this helps you gain back hours each week that you can use for other strategic initiatives that drive revenue.
2. Enhanced customer management
AI helps you understand, engage, and serve your customers better.
It does this with personalized recommendations, tailored and efficient communication via chatbots, and accurate prediction of their needs/preferences. This gives you a competitive advantage and keeps you ahead of customer demands.
3. Improved lead quality
Unqualified leads who waste your time and resources are a thing of the past with sales assistants.
These tools assist in lead scoring and evaluation to help you prioritize those most likely to result in successful deals.
4. Higher close-deal rates
With more qualified leads, personalized customer interactions, and efficient time management, you will close more deals than ever.
5. Better decision making
When AI is in the picture, you can obtain valuable insights from analyzing performance data, customer interactions, and lead behavior.
These insights enable you to make data-driven decisions that benefit your company.
6. Scalability
Because AI virtual sales assistants can handle a large volume of work, they allow businesses to grow while maintaining an effective sales operation without significantly increasing headcount or spending more money.
7 Best AI Sales Assistant Software
So, what tools should you be using to boost your sales process? Here are 7 of the best ones available.
Copy.ai is one of the leading AI sales and marketing platforms in the world, with over 10 million professionals and teams using it.
Copy.ai combines advanced natural language processing and generative AI to generate content, research, prospects, etc. Its aim is to automate repetitive sales tasks and help you win more deals.
Key features
AI Sales OS that optimizes your sales process from beginning to end. It’s the first of its kind and automates workflows so sales teams can be more productive. There is a workflow library which contains existing workflow templates you can use:
Copy.ais workflow librarylets you can create a custom workflow for your specific needs. For example, here’s a custom workflow that finds prospects, crafts a personalized cold email, and sends two follow-ups based on the activity on the previous emails.
Ability to generate content: CopyAI ramps up your content creation because it can generate different types of content like blog posts, social media posts, video scripts, landing pages, and emails. It also helps you scale personalized content across every touchpoint.
Brand Voice to ensure consistency across all content types.
Language model agnostic i.e., uses different language models like OpenAI GPT (3, 3.5, 4), Anthropic Claude, etc, for best results.
Bulk Operation: So you can import a CSV file of inputs and run the workflow at scale You can also export the CSV file.
Integrate with your favorite AI sales software like Salesforce, Zapier, Excel, Intercom, Slack, etc.
Pros
It’s especially great for B2B sales and marketing teams.
Very easy to set up and use with its intuitive interface.
Workflow templates are available, so you don’t have to create one from scratch.
For solo and minimal users, the free plan might be enough.
CopyAI community where you can connect with other users and learn more about using the tool effectively.
How Sales Teams Use Copy.ai
Openprise uses CopyAI’s automated workflows to personalize email sequences, automate lead enrichment, and automate meeting insights.
The CopyAI sales team uses it to personalize cold outreach, follow-up emails, keep a clean CRM, recommend battle cards, and automate dead opp sequences.
Pricing
Free with limited functionality.
Pro at $36/month (billed $432/year) with more functionalities.
Team at $186/month (billed $2,232/year) for power users
Be sure to join our community to access more detailed guides and like-minded professionals excited about scaling their success with AI.
2. Chorus
Chorus, a product of ZoomInfo, is a conversation intelligence solution that helps revenue teams save time and effort by capturing and analyzing sales calls and meetings to provide insights. These insights then inform follow-up emails, help teams improve their performance, and increase prospect engagement.
Key features
Call recording and sales analytics with highlighted next steps to make following up easy.
Ability to search and find previous recordings, which can be useful in training other team members.
Sentiment analysis to know how prospects feel about your product or service
It integrates with Zoom, Google Meet, Salesforce and more.
Pros
It allows you to listen to your customers without the distraction of manually taking notes.
It helps you improve your talking skills and pitches.
Cons
The transcripts are not always accurate.
It can be pricey.
It focuses on elevating sales calls and lacks workflow automation and content creation abilities, unlike CopyAi.
How Sales Teams Use Chorus
To get data on how to improve their processes and inform their strategy.
To automate their entire attribution process.
Pricing
Although its pricing is not public, it starts at $8000 for three seats. Additional seats cost $1200 each.
3. AI Sales Assistant by Pipedrive
Pipedrive offers an AI Sales Assistant add-on for its popular CRM platform to help sales professionals improve their performance. How?
By giving them “access to a personal virtual assistant that uses the latest AI technology to help them prioritize their efforts, focus on the right deals, and identify potential bottlenecks in their sales pipeline,” according to Shaun Shirazian, Chief Product Officer at Pipedrive.
Key features
Analysis of sales pipeline to predict the probability of winning deals and recommendations to improve chances of success.
Actionable insights on deal velocity.
Summaries of email thread to save you from rereading the whole thread.
Email generator that writes email at a click.
It integrates with Zapier, Microsoft Teams, Hubspot, Zendesk, etc.
Pros
It lets you make well-informed decisions and win more deals.
There is a community where you can connect with other users and ask questions.
Cons
It’s still in Beta, so there might still be bugs and functionality problems.
To get into the Beta, you must be an active Pipedrive user for your sales processes.
How Sales Teams Use AI Sales Assistant by Pipedrive
To track successful deals and their value.
To prioritize leads.
To understand their strengths and areas of improvement.
Pricing
14-day free trial.
For paid plans, there are:
Essential: $9.90/month, billed annually
Advanced: $19.90/month, billed annually
Professional: $39.90/month, billed annually
Power: $49.90/month, billed annually
Enterprise: $59.90/month, billed annually
4. Drift
Drift offers a conversational sales platform that helps businesses engage with their potential customers in real-time to drive more sales. The platform provides tools like chatbots and live chat to facilitate conversations and capture leads directly on the website.
Key features
Live chat so prospects can talk to a real human in real-time.
AI engagement score that shows the engagement rate based on their interactions at different touch points.
Notifications of lead’s activities, even on your phone.
Qualified leads can book a call on your calendar anytime.
Over 50 native integrations with tools like Salesforce, Salesloft, Slack, etc.
Pros
It lets you know which buyers are most engaged and when they’re active.
It allows for fast, real-time communication with website visitors.
Cons
There are occasional bugs like delays in sending notifications or canceling meetings.
It is expensive.
How Sales Teams Use Drift
They get the insights they need to connect with the right prospects.
They use it to accelerate their sales cycle and increase conversion rates.
Pricing
Starting from $2500/month, billed annually.
5. Seamless.AI
Seamless.AI is used to find verified cell phones, emails, and direct dials for people they want to sell to. It is the first and (currently) only real-time search engine for B2B sales leads.
Key features
Chrome extension to find numbers and email addresses
Confidence level indicators which estimate how reliable a piece of information is.
‘Writer’, a feature that can generate various content types like upsell emails and marketing messages.
Ability to filter company search results by metrics like company size, location, company name, employee count, and job title.
Integrates with Salesforce, Hubspot, Outreach, LinkedIn, Salesloft, etc.
Pros
It’s an easy way to find the contact information of decision-makers you want to reach out to.
It has a user-friendly design and interface.
Seamless.AI reduces prospecting time, and aids list building.
Cons
Sometimes, the data provided is incorrect or not current.
Many users encounter problems while trying to cancel their subscriptions.
Customer service is not so great.
How Sales Teams Use Seamless.AI
To get the contact details of prospects.
To find the intent of prospects before contacting them.
Pricing
Free for up to 50 credits.
6. Invoca
Invoca provides call tracking and analytics software that enables businesses to drive more revenue with call intelligence.
It is designed to help sales teams enhance customer interactions, optimize marketing efforts, improve conversions, and gain valuable insights from customer conversations.
Key features
Sales Intelligence feature that uses AI to analyze and score customer interactions.
Call tracking abilities to examine call interactions.
Machine learning technology that details attribution for phone conversions to measure campaign performance.
Actionable AI insights from conversations.
Integration with Google Analytics (GA) and other tools.
Pros
It provides insights into the customer’s journey to help you improve the overall customer experience.
It has a great customer success team to onboard and get you started.
Cons
Transcriptions are inaccurate at times.
Functionality is limited outside the US.
How Sales Teams Use Invoca
To improve reps' performance on calls.
To Identify missed sales calls who are willing to buy and re-engage them
Pricing
Pricing is not publicly available. You have to contact them to get a quote.
7. Salesloft
SalesLoft is a popular all-in-one platform that helps sales representatives build pipelines, deliver revenue, retain customers, and accurately forecast.
It is an AI-powered sales tool with over 5000 users.
Key features
Analytics report to track performance and make data-driven decisions.
Automatic synced call logs and contact with your CRM.
Real-time buying signals help sales reps identify the right time to engage with prospects and close deals.
SalesLoft integrates with several third-party software tools like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Slack, Gmail, Outlook, Gong and more.
Pros
It helps increase customer engagement and response rates.
SalesLoft is great for SDRs who need help organizing their outreaches.
Cons
It can be expensive for individuals and small businesses.
It might be too complex and overwhelming for a beginner.
How Sales Teams Use SalesLoft
To streamline their sales communication process so they engage leads better.
To forecast sales outcomes.
Pricing
Not publicly available.
How to Choose an AI Sales Assistant Tool
When incorporating an AI-based sales assistant into your company operations, consider these pivotal steps to ensure you make the right selection tailored to your unique needs:
Step 1: Identify Your Needs
As a sales manager, understanding your team's requirements is key to identifying an AI-powered virtual sales assistant that aligns with your business objectives.
Step 2: Look for Personalization Capabilities
The right AI sales assistant should support the creation and optimization of personalized content across numerous channels to elevate customer experience and engagement.
Step 3: Check for Seamless Integration
A quality AI-powered sales assistant will easily integrate with your existing CRM and other databases, ensuring streamlined data management and efficiency within your sales operations.
Step 4: Consider the User Interface
Your chosen AI solution should feature an intuitive, user-friendly interface. This ensures your team can adopt and utilize the tool with minimal transition challenges.
The perfect AI sales assistant will be scalable enough to handle increased usage, data, and demand without issues. Additionally, it will offer customization options to tailor content, workflows, integrations, and features to your unique business needs.
Step 6: Review the Pricing Structure
A crucial step in selecting AI-powered sales assistants is ensuring the pricing structure fits within your budget and doesn’t come with hidden fees or charges.
Step 7: Evaluate Analytics & Reporting Features
Your virtual sales assistant should have robust analytics and reporting capabilities. This functionality allows sales managers to track team performance and identify areas for refinement over time.
Step 8: Review Compliance & Security Measures
Being cognizant of the importance of data security is paramount in your selection process. The chosen tool should maintain compliance standards and offer security measures to safeguard your valuable sales data.
Step 9: Weighing Strengths & Weaknesses
Remember, every AI-powered sales assistant has its strengths and weaknesses. As a sales manager, your final decision should hinge on your specific needs, current processes, and tech stack components.
Get started With CopyAI
According to Bain & Company, 40% of companies are already adopting or evaluating the Generative AI technology. If you don’t want to be left behind, review the top seven AI assistants listed here and their capabilities.
But if you still don’t know which to choose as you’re new to the technology, try Copy.ai. It is the ideal assistant for sales teams with its AI Sales OS and content creation capabilities and is simple to start with.
Also, be sure to join our community to access more detailed guides and like-minded professionals excited about scaling their success with AI.