Intelligent Tech

See! We Told You AI Is Not the Enemy Here

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New Survey Shows That using AI in Sales Jobs Saves Time

A new survey proved that properly implementing AI at work, specifically in sales, helps employees do their jobs efficiently and more humanly.

  • 648 sales professionals and 300 business leaders participated in the survey in March 2023.
  • The survey found that the more automation manual tasks got the more efficient the employees become in the central part of their jobs.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools in sales jobs have saved employees over two hours of work each day, a new HubSpot survey says.

Context, first. HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that offers a suite of tools for marketing, sales, content management, and customer service. So, it’s safe to say they know a thing or two about sales.

In their recent survey, “Smart Selling with AI,” they explored the effect AI had on sales. To that end, they surveyed 648 sales professionals and 300 business leaders back in March of 2023.

Sales is a very human-centric job so one would think that introducing AI to the equation would ruin things and might even cost some people their jobs. In fact, for the better part of the last year or so, people seem to have equated AI with job loss. Now, introducing AI into any job, not just sales, triggers the employees’ paranoia about their expendability.

For the record, those feelings are completely valid as implementing AI requires some degree of ethics and morals, and based on what we’ve seen this past year, those are few and far between.

Anyway, back to the survey. Apparently, “only 37% of sales professionals’ time is spent building connections with prospects, leads, and customers” these days. Not very human-centric now, is it?

Why, though? Well, salespeople have a bunch of little tasks of admittedly low value that take up enough time and effort that they don’t get to spend much time on the selling part of their job.

That’s where AI came in. AI for sales jobs helps teams personalize outreach, build rapport, and spend more time selling. Here’s what they use:

  • 35% use AI tools that automate manual tasks (i.e., data entry, scheduling, etc.)
  • 34% use AI tools that offer data-driven insights (sales forecasting, lead scoring, pipeline analysis).
  • 31% use generative AI tools that help write sales content or outreach messages.
  • 28% Use AI tools that analyze or simulate sales calls for coaching purposes.
  • 26% use AI tools that assist with prospect outreach.
  • 25% use AI tools that assist with qualifying leads.

And here’s how they are using it:

  • Content creation
  • Prospect outreach
  • Research
  • Data analysis and reporting
  • To learn new skills like sales forecasting or a new excel function.

All of these are nice to know, but here’s the proof in the pudding of how good it can be if companies properly implement AI:

  • 85% say that AI makes their prospecting efforts more effective.
  • 79% say AI allows them to spend more time selling.
  • 72% say AI helps them build rapport faster.

All in all, sales professionals save around two hours and 15 minutes doing their job by using AI tools to automate manual tasks.

But these sales employees are just like you and me. None of us want to become so reliant on AI that we become dependent. However, if our companies implement proper guardrails and processes, everyone’s jobs and lives become easier and most importantly more secure.

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