We’re a few years into artificial intelligence’s mainstream entry into businesses across industries, and its growth isn’t about to stop anytime soon. The global market size of AI surpassed $180 billion this year and is expected to top $800 billion by the end of the decade.
AI, of course, can mean many different things in many different applications. From generative AI in chatbots to machine learning algorithms for predictive analytics, its use cases and potential benefits range widely. But especially within the sales and marketing realm, these use cases can have a massive impact on driving alignment and ultimately leading to tangible revenue and customer generation improvements.
Effectively leveraging AI for sales and marketing, of course, means finding tangible ways to use available tools to drive these outcomes. Ultimately, AI facilitates alignment between the two departments. Studies show that when sales and marketing units are aligned, businesses tend to see profit growth that is more than 25% faster than their peers.
Fortunately, through the effective use of AI technology, these alignments can become more natural and realistic to implement. Keep reading for a thorough exploration of why that alignment matters, and how artificial intelligence for sales and marketing can work to drive that alignment.
The Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment
In most organizations, regardless of industry, marketing and sales tend to be different departments. Sure enough, their organizational functions are different. Marketing is charged with brand building and awareness efforts in one-to-many channels while sales focuses on closing the deal through one-to-one conversations.
At the same time, while these functional differences matter within the organizational charts, they can (or should) be impossible for customers to differentiate. For your target audience, any interaction with your organization prior to, during, and after the purchase should be consistent in messaging, tone, and technical information. Only a consistent experience throughout the customer journey can maximize your chances of building the relationship with customers you need to close the deal and build long-term loyalty.
To achieve that feat, sales and marketing alignment is a crucial part of the puzzle. Both departments need to work together closely on everything from messaging to data exchanges to build one consistent experience. It’s why this type of alignment has a range of proven benefits, including:
- 38% higher sales win rates.
- 67% improvement in closing deals.
- 36% higher customer retention rates.
And yet, according to one study published by LinkedIn, the average marketing and sales targeting overlap in B2B businesses is just over 15%. It’s probably why, according to HubSpot, nearly 40% of sales leaders cited better alignment with marketing as their top priority for the new year. That’s where AI for sales and marketing enters the equation.
How AI for Sales and Marketing Enhances Alignment
Aligning your sales and marketing team is a complex and complicated process. But make no mistake: as highlighted in a recent Forrester Research article, data has to come before the people:
“The biggest gap to realizing revenue alignment is not a lack of sales and marketing people working together, it’s the lack of data to analyze, visualize, and recommend the next step and each step in the prospecting and buying cycle.”
AI plays a core role in that process as the biggest driver of data analysis in recent years. Consider these five ways in which it can help to increase efficiency and communication in both departments, contributing to greater alignment and more sales.
1. Access to Rich Prospect Data to Hand Off and Qualify Leads
Through AI-based solutions, marketing teams collect data that builds comprehensive prospect profiles for their sales counterparts. Examples include:
- Website browsing data, including the types of pages and information individual prospects have spent the most time on when researching your business.
- Demographic data collected through a wide range of sources from browser cookies to social media information.
- Intent-based data, which can be gathered through conversational AI solutions like chatbots that track the types of questions and concerns potential customers have when interacting with them.
All this information can be near-impossible to aggregate and analyze. Through AI processes and machine learning, that process becomes dynamic in real time, helping to create comprehensive profiles of each prospect and lead. That profile, in turn, elevates the quality of each lead, helping sales teams build better and more customized pitches while increasing their conversion rates.
2. Enhanced Personalization Throughout the Buyer Journey
Partially as a result of the information gathered through and with the help of AI tools, sales and marketing teams can also join to accomplish a core goal every prospect looks for: a personalized, customized journey on their way to becoming a customer. Every piece of data, in fact, can be used to create more relevant messaging at every stage of the sales funnel.
This type of deep personalization goes far beyond inserting a first name in an email. Through AI solutions, even new leads will have enough information that their initial email automation flow is customized to their specific needs. If they’ve frequently visited the pricing page prior to becoming a lead, initial messages can be all about competitive and discount pricing to encourage engagement.
The further a prospect moves through the sales funnel, the more enhanced this personalization can become. By the time the final sales pitch is given, each lead can feel like they’ve built a true relationship with your business, enhancing their chances of becoming a customer.
3. Advanced Analytics for Sales Forecasts and Enhancements
In addition to prospect data, AI for sales and marketing also has the potential to leverage quantitative information for better sales forecasts. Most businesses struggle with this step, with fewer than 25% of organizations able to forecast their sales at 75% or higher accuracy.
AI systems improve that accuracy, predicting outcomes using past lead and conversion data. Through that process, these systems can more accurately predict which prospects are most likely to convert into customers, which prospects may be best to target for future outreach, and how to structure deals that are most convincing for prospects to undertake that conversion.
This type of predictive modeling, done right, can become invaluable for organizations across industries. The resulting forecasts not only accurately estimate sales revenue, but can also predict the performance of individual team members and ROI predictions at different levels of sales and marketing spend.
4. Automation of Sales and Marketing Routine Tasks
Sales and marketing AI tasks tend to revolve around automation—even and especially if that automation involves other tasks that were previously difficult to automate, like personalization and advanced data processing. Through that automation, sales teams can gain valuable time back that they would have otherwise spent on the manual execution of those tasks.
For example, a dynamic and personalized lead nurturing campaign that crosses multiple channels takes the place of individual outreach. That vast swathe of prospects at the top of the sales funnel that would take up most of a sales agent’s time now automatically moves through the funnel. When it happens automatically and in real-time, prospects will benefit, but so will the sales team whose time now frees up for more strategic tasks.
One common application of this gained time is with prospects at the bottom of the funnel, who do need more personalized outreach and communication. Another is to spend more time on the strategic analysis of what tactics work for conversion, and which don’t—which is another area where AI can be immensely valuable.
5. Dynamic and Real-Time Evaluations of Processes and Tactics
Finally, the data procured by AI systems can be a helpful tool to evaluate exactly where sales and marketing teams and efforts are performing well, and where they could benefit from improvements to enhance conversion rates and ROI on their efforts. Examples include:
- Deep performance analysis that goes beyond nurturing email open or click rates and tracks each tactic’s impact all the way to conversion.
- Prospect-level analysis to better understand which tactics drove particular segments toward the conversion.
- Handoff analysis to better understand where a lead’s move from marketing to sales responsibility will be most efficient.
Thanks to these evaluations, sales and marketing teams can further enhance their efforts—ultimately leading to better performance.
Improving Sales Efficiency through AI Digital Assistants
Put it all together, and AI for sales and marketing will transform the organization, driving alignment and business success. The exact results of the approach, of course, depend on the systems and tools you choose to implement.
That’s where AI digital assistants enter the equation. Implemented throughout your digital channels, they allow your prospects to get instant answers to any questions they may have. At the same time, collecting data about prospects benefits them all the way through the sales funnel for better analytics and more relevant messaging.
Through tools like these digital assistants, organizations across industries can enhance their sales efficiency and help their businesses succeed.
