In 2024, sales and marketing experiences using AI and data. Marketers can use AI to create segments with real-time data and automate campaigns to speak to those audiences more effectively. AI also helps with content creation, like generating subject lines, copy, and even images, and can offer guidance on time and frequency of communication so consumers are more likely to respond.
With B2B customers, CG brands can also use those same tactics, as well as predictive analytics, to generate customized demand forecasting, deliver automated quoting and pricing, and power data-driven account management to identify growth opportunities based on individual accounts’ history and performance.
Pro tip: Be sure your AI is keeping your trusted customer data within your own systems. Creating assets with Chat GPT, for example, exposes your confidential data to the public and allows public large language models (LLMs) to be trained on your proprietary information. Look for an AI solution that masks your data, forgets the prompt once it generates its response, and does not store your information outside your own systems.
Lean into data to jumpstart guided selling
Our research shows that 87% of B2B buyers expect sales reps to america phone number list act as strategic advisors. But how can they do that when sellers are swivel-chairing between spreadsheets, customer emails, and various reporting tools? They’re wasting time on rote tasks rather than strategic thinking, sacrificing efficiency and accuracy in the process.
Once you’ve unified your data and applied AI, key account managers (KAMs) can easily access info like base and incremental volume prediction and guidance on strategies to forecast and build account plans. They can even enable automated deck creation for monthly and quarterly business reporting by simply asking AI. This helps KAMs plan and pivot quickly as well as compare scenarios, so they can create the most effective plans for their accounts.
In 2024, sales teams will literally talk to their data to maximize selling opportunities.
Using AI, forward-thinking sales organizations will ask natural language questions like “What are my top-performing promotions nationally?” or “What new items have been accepted but not shipped yet?” AI will respond with insights about the products KAMs should sell in particular stores and in what quantities.
AI can also help KAMs generate customized sales pitches for their accounts and create personalized sales plans based on their unique performance and goals. AI will handle the time-consuming number-crunching and analysis and can structure key account management conversations across hundreds of customers, all from the same data.
Pro tip: To further improve efficiency and effectiveness, sales teams should build prompt libraries with pre-defined templates, questions, or scenarios that can be used with AI. Pilot the initiative with your top KAMs to see how they use the library. Drawing on a proven collection of prompts means consistency across questions and responses for all accounts. It also saves the sales team time and can take into consideration compliance and regulation issues.