Artificial Intelligence in B2B sales

There is an interesting article I found recently, "Artificial Intelligence in B2B sales: Impact on the Sales Process" . We should be not surprised that sales in business to business will be affected by artificial intelligence(ai). Sales is directly responsible for the generation of revenue and establishing business relations to customers. So making it more efficient and optimizing it with the help of new technologies does not come as a surprise, it's pure logic.

The article is highlighting eight different ways of how ai can be usefull in the B2B sales process. At this point, I want to dive deeper into three of these possibilities.

Profiling the prospects

Profiling should lead to a complete analysis of the purchase bahaviour of the prospect. Why did the prospect decide to buy? And what were the steps in the purchase process? Was there anything critical which could have prevented the prospect from buying in the end? AI should gather all information needed to answer these questions, starting with the browsing behaviour, mouse behaviour, past purchases, past pricing behaviour etc., the way we act online can give away a lot of information.

Chatbots

Based on this information, which should be available on the spot, a Chatbot can make the first approach by offering and informing about the product online. Based on the profile the Chatbot will chose a certain tactic to deliver a value proposition to the prospect. Also cross sell potential can be generated. Which other sides did the prospect visit? How long did the prospect stay on these sides? How much did he scroll? Etc. Using this information in a first approach is something which was not performed previously. All gathered information can be then forwarded to a technical sales person which can then take over the sales process. Also recommendations for further steps can be shared with the sales person as well.

The next step in the Chatbot technology will be a Chatbot which engages in a conversation on the phone. It will be a bot which can imitate the voice of a human in a perfect way and is not recognizable as an AI bot. But, the bot will be capable to analyze the voice of the purchaser. Based on the voice profile during the call the bot will then calculate purchase probabilities and obstacles for the business.

Dynamic pricing

Based on all gathered information the AI can recommend a certain tendency in pricing. Voice and web profiles will lead to an individual profile of the buyer based on which the seller then will make pricing decisions.

Conclusion

Artificial Intelligence will not fully replace a technical sales person. Sometimes a sales decision needs to be made which does not seem to be rational. An example would be to sell with a negative margin. Or offering bigger volumes because of a last minute information from the supplier. Also, the culture of the company needs to be mirrored in the sales process. Especially there, it's the front desk of each company. And sometimes maximizing sales at any cost does not fit to the culture of the company. Sometimes you might want to build a relation with the prospect first before even initiating the sales process. If we look towards Asia, the bond between business partners is very important. Without this bond, there is no trust and without trust there is no business.

So, HI, human intelligence, is here to stay. There will be an intertwining between AI and HI in B2B sales which will lead to a faster and more efficient sales process without losing the advantages of human bonding.

Happy selling!