Déjà Knew: The New Sales Superpower

Now that ChatGPT has taken center stage in the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), I hear a lot of talk about how sales (and marketing) would be impacted.

Here's an excerpt from my book, Sales Ex Machina: How A.I. is Changing the World of Selling, released in 2018 that talked about how companies were already using the predictive power of AI.

Get a free copy of the book here if you're interested?

Let’s turn our attention to what fuels any Machine Learning system. Data! How much data do you produce on a daily basis? Most people have never taken the time to think about the vast amount of information that a system is gathering on you. The amount of data you produce (data exhaust) is incalculable.?

The sum total of all this scattered data, if such a thing were ever assembled (i.e., gathered), is how much data you’re potentially emitting into the digital ecosystem. How much of this data is yours? 100%. How much of it do you own? 0%. How will this data be used? Well, that depends on who has the data and what their intentions might be.

Here’s one more example of how the system is being used to anticipate your needs. Dennis Berman of the Wall Street Journal had the opportunity to interview Aetna’s Chairman and CEO Mark Bertolini in a forum titled The Future of Healthcare: On the Predictive Power of Today’s Machine.

The process of digitizing medical records is underway, and now retailers and insurance companies are using that information to determine what to sell to you and when. Bertolini said,

“We know with a major retailer that people diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, generally within two-three weeks before being diagnosed, change laundry detergent beforehand because it causes their skin to itch and smell differently because their blood sugar is so high."

Think about that for a second. The AI was able to index the right data to determine you had diabetes before you even knew it! That's a 2-3 week headstart that allows these companies to target and market to you. They knew before you knew!

We’ve all had that creepy feeling when we think of something and days later we get an email or direct mailer with a coupon invitation to stop by and indulge at a discounted rate. I like to call this moment “déjà knew” (already knew).?

The system knew based on my online search queries, websites I’d visited, or recent purchases I’d made that I was in the mood for Italian food. The predictive power of the algorithm spit out my name, linked it to a partner provider (i.e., the nearby Italian restaurant), generated an email with a discount offer, and sent it to me.

Now imagine for a moment that a salesperson had this type of predictive power at their fingertips.

• How would that change the salesperson’s ability to sell more effectively?
• How would that change the salesperson’s prospecting efforts?
• And further, imagine how this déjà knew superpower would impact conversations with a client and the salesperson’s ability to influence that client’s decision-making process.

We may not know the future of AI's impact on selling, but we do know this for a fact. Every client, voluntarily or involuntarily, is constantly emitting discrete information into the datasphere. Alone, this data reveals little; in the aggregate, it reveals their intention, motivation, and true state. This is the new cognitive advantage in selling.

Victor Antonio, Download "Sales Ex Machine" here.