20% of the sales or marketing team functions could and should be automated today, through the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

20% of the sales or marketing team functions could and should be automated today, through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), but acknowledge that your organization still suffer on its basics.

Latest technologies, including generative AI (gen AI), are increasingly being adopted in marketing and sales, with open-source platforms and sales-tech players investing in gen AI innovations. The evolving digital-first business landscape calls for the adoption of these essential tools, which will impact how companies operate and engage with customers. Moreover, we can relocate resources used now in sales and marketing, either by using that OpEx (cost with salaries) for CapEx (technology and facilities), or restructuring.

AI is at top of the investor’s interest but it will be valued only by the top technology giants: Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google and Microsoft (FAANG+MSF)

Winning companies, experiencing a yearly market share increase of at least 10%, employ advanced sales technology, build hybrid sales teams, customize strategies for third-party and company-owned marketplaces, excel in e-commerce across the entire sales funnel, and deliver hyper-personalization. Venture capital investment in AI has also grown significantly over the past decade, showing the increasing interest in this field.

In a webinar I joined last week, Yossi Sheffi, professor at MIT, was asked where is best to invest, what business to start, and I was surprised that AI, Blockchain or other hot fields were not on his list. You cannot imagine yourself winning against FAANG, said Yossi. His recommendation was to work on identifying and solving the top 50 problems any corporate organization faces, things not related to just artificial intelligence or machine learning, the top of the iceberg. Only after doing that, you can say that AI provides its true value, over a clean process, a clean data set, and resilient/flexible organization.

Marketing will cease to exist without AI and sales will be partially automated

Hyper-personalized content and offerings in customer experience (CX) can be tailored based on individual customer behaviour, persona, and purchase history. AI can accelerate growth by providing sales teams with analytics and customer insights to capture demand effectively. It can also automate mundane sales activities, freeing up time to focus on customers while reducing costs. AI coupled with company-specific data enables granular consumer insights, allowing for personalized marketing and sales offerings.

Gen AI surpasses traditional AI-driven lead identification and targeting methods by leveraging advanced algorithms to segment and target relevant audiences. This enables businesses to efficiently analyze and identify high-quality leads, leading to more effective lead-activation campaigns. Gen AI can further optimize marketing strategies through A/B testing and predictive analytics, ensuring maximum return on investment. Throughout the sales process, gen AI provides continuous support, generating personalized content, assisting with follow-up emails, and acting as a virtual assistant, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates. It can also provide real-time negotiation guidance and predictive insights for deal closure.

As prospect/customer journey will be fully customized the logistics will be the first to face pressure. Support functions will also ask for a reshape.

After the customer signs on, gen AI has use cases in on-boarding and retention. It provides personalized training content, answers customer questions through chatbot functionality, offers real-time recommendations to sales leadership, and utilizes dynamic customer-journey mapping to drive engagement.

Recovering from the pandemic, we see now a bit of a plateauing for all online sales, maybe a slower growth, and many tech-savvy are wondering why companies are not accelerating gen AI implementation in sales and marketing.

The expected growth is up to 20% of sales, just by doing just three simple things: automate and simplify your sales process, feed the AI with your cleaned data, and adjusting your logistic capabilities to deliver fast.

Unfortunately, traditional businesses (excluding tech companies) do not have C-level executives enough trained for leveraging on tech vortex, not so say they recognize failing in 9 out of 10 tries. This happens also because those top 50 problems are either unidentified yet or not properly solved.

The run for numbers and high competition will accelerate the AI penetration in the next two years, a good time for fixing your company basics.

For now, accordingly to a Mckinsey study commercial leaders are cautiously optimistic about AI and anticipates a moderate impact (out of the 10 potential use cases, an average of 47% consider the impact as being very significant).

That is actually the threat - when you think it will never happen to you,

Cause it will.