A Beginner’s Guide to AI Sales Assistants

Sales teams today are juggling a bunch of non-revenue generating tasks that take away 70% of their time. These admin tasks range from creating lists, researching prospects, managing CRM entries, sending follow-ups and creating collateral for each prospect. Enter AI sales assistants!

What are AI sales assistants?

AI Sales assistants are software applications that use artificial intelligence (AI) to help sales professionals with their day-to-day tasks. They can take over all the mundane and time-consuming tasks that sales teams have to manage currently - prospecting, CRM updates, sending reachouts, follow-ups, meeting scheduling, and even real-time coaching for sales reps during calls. By handling repetitive tasks, AI sales assistants free up sales reps to focus on what they like the most - building relationships and closing deals.

How are AI Sales Assistants different from other Sales Software?

Unlike traditional sales software, which requires manual input and is limited to organizing sales activities, AI sales assistants proactively manage things on their own in a workflow. For example, CRM software stores customer data and tracks sales interactions but doesn't make real-time recommendations or automate tasks. AI sales assistants go further, automatically pulling meeting transcripts, identifying key points, and updating CRM fields accordingly. Additionally, while sales software typically functions in a static, rule-based manner, AI assistants learn from data and improve over time, making them more adaptable and efficient.

Benefits of using AI sales assistants

AI sales assistants offer numerous advantages that can significantly improve sales operations:

Automation of Repetitive Tasks

AI assistants take over mundane tasks such as updating CRM systems, scheduling meetings, and sending follow-up emails, allowing sales teams to focus on higher-value activities.

Enhanced Personalization

AI assistants analyze data from multiple touchpoints to personalize each interaction. This makes outreach more relevant and increases the chances of conversion.

Real-Time Insights

During calls and meetings, AI assistants can provide real-time feedback, guiding sales reps on how to respond to objections or suggesting which products to highlight based on the prospect's needs.

Improved Accuracy

AI can automatically capture and input data into CRM systems with greater accuracy than humans, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring that no crucial information is missed.

Scalability

AI sales assistants can handle large volumes of data and interactions, allowing companies to scale their sales operations without increasing headcount.

How Sales Teams can Leverage AI Sales Assistants

AI sales assistants can streamline almost every aspect of a sales team's workload. Here’s a deep dive into the ways these tools revolutionize the sales process.

Prospecting, Researching and Outreach

Prospecting a new lead, researching them and conducting multi-channel outreach requires significant time and effort. These are extremely important things to achieve sales success but they take a lot of time and are very difficult to do at scale. An AI sales assistant makes it easy for your sales team by automating all activities related to prospecting, research and outreach.

Prospecting Potential Leads

The AI assistant scans various sources (social media, company websites, business directories, industry news, 3rd party data providers) to identify potential leads that match the ideal customer profile based on predefined criteria such as industry, company size, and role.

Research About the Prospect and Company

AI assistants will collect all the required information about the prospect and the company by conducting thorough research on leading platforms like ZoomInfo, Apollo, 6sense, Crunchbase, LinkedIn, Clearbit, Bombora, and more. These details are sent in an easy-to-read format to the sales rep over Slack. If the sales rep wants more info, they can ask the agent directly on the Slack thread and the agent will fetch more details.

Automating LinkedIn Connection Requests

Once an account is identified, it’s important to do an omnichannel reach-out. For B2B businesses, one place their prospects are always available is Linkedin. Manually reaching out to them is very challenging. AI can send personalized connection requests on LinkedIn.

Automating LinkedIn Messages

AI agents can send tailored DMs to leads on LinkedIn to timely engage prospects effectively.

Cold email outreach campaign

AI assistants can create an email outreach campaign that is personalized to each prospect’s specific context and pain points. It can also send out follow-ups at optimal times, and analyze response rates to refine the outreach campaign over time.

Lead Qualification and Routing

Effective lead management and qualification are essential for driving sales success. AI sales agents can significantly enhance these processes, ensuring that all leads are scored, marked as qualified or unqualified, and efficiently routed to the right sales reps.

Lead Scoring and Qualification

Not all leads are equal, and some require more immediate attention than others. AI sales assistants can automatically score leads based on their behaviour, engagement levels, and other relevant factors. AI can then assign a score to each lead, indicating its potential value and priority. They can thus mark a lead as qualified or unqualified.

Lead Routing

Once leads are enriched with detailed information, it’s important to route them to the appropriate sales reps who are best suited to handle their specific needs. AI sales assistants can automate lead routing by using predefined rules and criteria, such as industry, geographic location, lead source, product specialization, workload, etc. This ensures that leads are handled by the most suitable representative, increasing the chances of conversion.

CRM Management

Keeping CRM updated involves repetitive and time-consuming tasks. These admin tasks take up valuable time that sales teams could otherwise spend on engaging with prospects or closing deals. AI sales agents can significantly enhance CRM management by automating these tasks, ensuring data accuracy, and improving overall efficiency.

Updating CRM with Prospect and Company Research

Sales reps often need to input details such as contact information, meeting notes, and follow-up actions. AI assistants can update the prospect and company research as fields in the CRM automatically. This helps the sales reps save time on manually updating CRM for every prospect.

Enriching CRM with Information from Meeting Transcripts, Email and Phone Conversations

AI sales assistants enrich leads by analyzing past interactions, such as emails, calls, and meetings, to pull additional insights. They can update the CRM with these insights to provide a fuller picture of each prospect.

Creating Deals

The AI agent can automatically create new deals in the CRM when a prospect passes the threshold.

Updating Fields and Deal Stages in CRM throughout the sales cycle

As deals progress through the sales pipeline, it's crucial to keep the CRM updated with the latest information. AI sales agents can automatically update CRM fields as soon as new information about the prospect or the company presents itself.

Post-demo Followups

After demo calls, sales reps have to make sure their follow-up game is on point. They have to send highly personalized and relevant follow-up emails, schedule the next meetings, and send custom presentations and proposals. AI sales assistants can automate these post-demo tasks, saving your team a lot of effort and time in doing so.

Send Effective Follow-Up Communication

After a demo, it's essential to send personalized follow-up emails that resonate with the prospect. AI assistant will automatically extract key points from the meeting transcript, such as pain points discussed, product features of interest, and any objections raised. They will use this info to create highly relevant, customized follow-up emails that keep the prospect engaged and make them ready for the next stage of the sales process. AI can also generate collaterals such as product brochures, case studies, or custom presentations for the prospect.

Sending Invites for the Next Round of Discussion

Scheduling follow-up meetings is another critical step in the post-demo process. AI sales agents can handle this by automatically sending invites for the next round of discussions, coordinating with the prospect's availability, and ensuring that all necessary stakeholders are included.

Creating a Follow-up Task for the Sales Rep

To ensure that no follow-up actions are missed, AI assistants can automatically create tasks and reminders for the sales reps. This reduces the risk of follow-up delays and keeps the prospect engaged throughout the sales process.

Automating Proposal Generation

Once a prospect expresses strong interest, the next step is often to send a detailed proposal. AI sales assistants can generate customized proposals based on the prospect's specific requirements, preferences, and the details discussed during the demo.

Sales Enablement with Objection Handling and Content Recommendations

AI sales assistants can provide critical support to sales reps by analyzing conversations in real-time and offering insights, recommendations, and strategies that can help sales reps navigate challenging interactions and capitalize on opportunities.

Real-Time Sales Coaching and Objection Handling

During sales calls, reps often encounter unexpected questions or objections that require immediate and effective responses. AI sales assistants can act as a virtual coach, analyzing the conversation as it unfolds and offering real-time coaching tips to the sales rep. This real-time coaching ensures that sales reps are better equipped to handle objections confidently and effectively, increasing their chances of closing the deal.

Personalizing Sales Pitches Using Sentiment Analysis

AI sales agents can perform real-time sentiment analysis by monitoring the tone, pace, and language used by the prospect. By adapting the sales pitch based on the prospect’s emotional cues, AI helps create a more empathetic and responsive sales experience, improving the likelihood of a positive outcome.

Detecting Upsell and Cross-Sell Opportunities

During live conversations, prospects may inadvertently reveal needs or interests that indicate potential for upselling or cross-selling. AI sales agents can detect these cues in real time, identifying opportunities to offer additional products or services that complement what the prospect is already considering.

Sales Analysis and Recommendation

Post-call analysis can offer invaluable insights into the effectiveness of sales strategies. AI sales assistants can play a significant role in this process by automating the analysis of sales activities and providing actionable feedback.

Monitoring Sales Rep Performance

AI assistants can continuously track key performance metrics for each sales rep, providing a comprehensive view of individual and team performance. AI can identify patterns and trends that indicate areas of strength as well as opportunities for improvement.

Analyzing Call Recordings for Feedback

AI assistants can review call recordings in detail and identify key moments, sentiments, and outcomes within each conversation. This analysis can pinpoint specific areas where a sales rep may have missed opportunities, handled objections poorly, or failed to align with the prospect’s needs.

Best AI Sales Assistant Tools

Locale.ai

Locale.ai offers a complete suite of AI-powered sales assistants designed to automate key sales tasks, including prospect research, CRM updates, follow-ups, and real-time coaching during calls. It provides a human-in-the-loop system where AI-driven actions can be reviewed before execution, giving sales teams control over the AI's actions

• Use Case: Automating pre-call research, CRM updates, and personalized follow-ups.
  
  

Clay

Clay is one of the most powerful AI tools for automating lead enrichment and sales outreach. It integrates with over 75 data sources, ensuring that your contact and company information is always up-to-date.

• Use Case: Automatically enriches contact information for outbound campaigns.
  
  

Gong.io

Gong.io is an AI sales assistant tool focused on capturing and analyzing customer interactions. It helps sales teams understand how their conversations are going and provides insights on how to improve sales pitches.

• Use Case: Captures customer interactions and provides data-driven insights to improve sales effectiveness.
  
  

Regie.ai

Regie.ai is an AI-driven platform designed to automate email and content creation. It allows sales teams to create personalized email campaigns, follow-up sequences, and outreach materials that are tailored to each prospect.

• Use Case: Automating personalized email sequences and follow-up campaigns.
  
  

Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai specializes in call recording and transcription. It captures voice data from meetings and phone calls, creating transcripts that can be used for follow-ups, meeting notes, or CRM updates. Fireflies also integrates with various tools like Slack, Google Meet, and Zoom, making it versatile for different teams.

• Use Case: Recording and transcribing meetings for later analysis and follow-ups.
  
  

Crystal

Crystal provides personality insights, helping salespeople tailor their communication style to match the personality of their prospect. Using social data and behavioral analysis, Crystal gives real-time recommendations on how to approach each prospect, whether via email, on a call, or in a meeting.

• Use Case: Personalizing outreach and communications based on prospect personality analysis.
  
  

Avoma

Avoma is an AI Meeting Assistant and revenue intelligence tool that helps customer-facing teams by providing meeting recordings, transcripts, and summarized notes. Additionally, it offers real-time coaching and actionable insights, helping sales reps ramp up faster and improve over time.

• Use Case: Recording and analyzing meetings to provide insights and coaching for sales reps.
  
  

Attention.tech

Attention.tech provides a real-time AI assistant that helps sales reps during live calls. It offers real-time coaching, conversation scoring, and revenue insights, ensuring sales teams stay on track. Attention is designed to improve conversational quality, handling objections effectively, and helping reps focus on selling.

• Use Case: Real-time call coaching and conversation analysis.
  
  

Sybill

Sybill is a meeting assistant that automates administrative tasks such as call summaries, note-taking, and follow-up email drafting. It uses AI to identify key takeaways from meetings and helps sales teams keep track of follow-up actions and tasks.

• Use Case: Summarizes sales meetings and send personalized follow-up emails
  
  

Locale.ai: One AI Assistant Platform to Rule them All

Locale.ai stands out for its ability to automate the entire sales process, from prospecting and personalized outreach to CRM management, post-demo follow-ups, and real-time sales guidance. This isn’t just empty bragging, we have the muscle to prove it. Our collection of AI sales assistants can automate all sorts of sales processes for you. They can mimic the way salespeople work and help you replicate the star rep’s playbook throughout the company and close more business. Here are some reasons why you should use Locale:

Customize your parameters for each assistant

Tailor agent settings and behaviors to meet your specific needs and scenarios like filling your custom fields in CRM, incorporating specific data points in company research, etc

Everything happens within Slack

Seamlessly integrate and operate directly within Slack, so you don’t have to open any new tools and tabs.

Human-in-the-loop for approvals

Enable human oversight with approval mechanisms for critical decisions made by AI agents.

Agent-based pricing

Flexible pricing model based on the number and usage of agents so that pricing can grow along with your company’s needs.

SOC II compliance

Locale has strict adherence to SOC 2 standards that ensures robust data privacy and security practices.

Use agents out-of-the-box

Deploy pre-configured agents in 5 mins just by integrating your sales tools and selecting your unique parameters.

If you're intrigued by the possibilities and want to deploy AI assistants for yourself or your sales team, we’re here to help.  Schedule a call to learn more.