From Cold Calls to Warm Leads: How AI is Revolutionizing the Sales Process

Transforming Sales: A Post-AI Playbook

In a recent discussion with Rob, the Head of Go-To-Market at Copy.ai, we covered some  topics around sales, marketing, and leveraging AI to improve processes.

Here are some of the key questions asked and takeaways from our conversation:

What did the traditional sales process look like before AI?

Rob explained that most companies follow a similar playbook - SDRs booking meetings, AEs taking those meetings, SEs running product demos and POCs, and AEs closing deals to hand off to customer success.

It's a very manual, inefficient process requiring lots of headcount.

As Rob put it, it's like the "Hummer" of sales teams - expensive and inefficient.

How can AI help optimize the sales process?

AI can reason and think like a human to take on traditionally manual tasks.

For example, Copy.ai built an AI lead scoring system that looks at a prospect's background, role, industry etc. to determine their potential fit and value, just as a salesperson would.

This is far more accurate than rules-based lead scoring models.

In fact, he often finds himself surprised at how accurate these leads are. Since the workflow provides a reasoning for "why" it's classifying some leads as Tier-1, Tier-2, and Tier 3, Rob can quickly understand the context for it's reasoning.

Sometimes he disagrees with the classification, but after reading the workflow's "why," he realizes the lead might actually be worth pursing.

What are some of the key AI workflows at Copy.ai?

• Identifying anonymous website visitors by finding their LinkedIn to build rich prospect profiles
• Classifying prospects by fit and value to auto-route them to sales
• Extracting key talking points from sales calls to auto-populate CRM and identify new content topics
• Generating 15+ pieces of marketing content from each sales conversation

This aligns marketing, sales, and success around customer needs.

That said, one of the problems Copy.ai faces in selling a platform is that it can do a little bit of everything.

Rather than just being for a single department like sales, marketing, or customer success, Copy.ai workflows can be used for just about anything.

Most calls start with a prospect asking, "Ok, so what can this thing do?"

The response is always in the form of a question: "What do you want to build? 😉"

It's why the sales calls have transformed into less "selling" and more showing the types of problems we can actually solve for companies.

How can AI content creation enhance the sales process?

Instead of cold outreach, the sales process becomes focused on customer conversations.

ranscripts from those conversations then automatically generate content like blog posts, social media updates, podcasts etc. This creates more personalized, relevant content.

In fact, sales call transcripts can now be used to create 1:1 landing pages to increase account-based marketing (ABM) efforts. With a list of emails and LinkedIn URLs, you can create hyper-personalized landing pages at endless scale.

Imagine sending a lead a URL link with their name in the heading, a description of what problems they specifically face in their role, and personalized recommendations on how this user can leverage your product to fix it.

Does AI replace marketers and sellers or augment them?

AI augments human capabilities, turning marketers into editors to increase output and quality. The ideas come from real conversations, so humans still feel ownership over the content.

AI eliminates tedious tasks like data entry and content creation, freeing up humans to have more strategic conversations.

As someone who's done SDR work in the past, I can honestly say the process already felt robotic -- and I'll gladly leave those tasks to the actual robots.

Key Takeaways:

• AI can optimize outdated sales processes by automating manual tasks
• Workflows like lead scoring and data extraction improve CRM hygiene
• AI content creation from sales conversations creates better buyer experiences
• AI augments (rather than replaces) marketers and sellers
• The future of sales focuses on personalized conversations vs. cold outreach

The bottom line is that AI aligns organizations around customer needs for better experiences. This ultimately translates into sales and revenue growth.

To learn more about AI-powered go-to-market, be sure to connect with Rob on LinkedIn and follow the Copy.ai page! 

Note: This recap was generated with Copy.ai workflows. The conversation was real, human, and insightful, which led to a strong post, several social media posts, an audio file, and more.

Be sure to try workflows for yourself by signing up for Copy.ai (new accounts come with 200 free workflow credits to get you started!).

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