Does AI Belong in Your 2023 Sales Strategy?
A couple of months back I got an AI engine to write an article titled “The Advancement of AI: How Replaceable Are We?” Granted it wasn’t as complex/advanced as ChatGPT, but it opened the article with…
“Artificial intelligence is one of the most exciting technologies to emerge in recent years. It has disrupted industries, including sales and marketing, by enabling companies to automate many aspects of their business. While some people may be worried about getting replaced by AI (and rightly so)...”
The cheeky blighter might actually believe it can take our jobs ??
More recently, Tim Hughes shared “A blog on social selling written by ChatGPT”
The Results
Overall, I believe that, while both articles were fairly extensive and informative, they lacked direction and felt wishy-washy. They told us so much with really telling us anything. Clearly these bots were able to quickly compile a vast array of information but they lacked substance and deeper insights. It felt a bit cold, It didn’t really evoke emotion with storytelling, as the bot hadn’t lived and accrued stories to tell. All things that I believe to be crucial to any great… well, even good piece of content.?
Yet it hasn’t prevented Cold Calling experts from jumping on this wave to fearmonger about how ChatGPT is the end of Reps that aren’t using the phone. (Maybe there is a reason that each year in the Gallup poll Salespeople are clumped together with politicians in the lowest echelon of trust rankings).
Of course, metric-driven, time-poor businesses will look for any way to drive efficiency, and rightly so. However, I think this leads to a worrying trend that when something (cut from the efficiency cloth) works, it is driven to death. As has happened, to e-mail, more specifically cold e-mailing. Whether you like it or not, it has died a death. Within the space of 5 days, I received 8 emails from one rep. This scattergun, batch and blast, en masse approach, has meant that an email inbox is such a noisy, chaotic and saturated place that even the most well-crafted, beautifully tailored emails will fall on deaf ears.?
Is Cold Calling any Better?
I’ll hold my hands up, I’ve never been a huge fan of cold calling. Now perhaps this was because I was tarnished by the seemingly inherent lack of trust associated with it, from my days as a telesales agent at various businesses, in which… well let’s just say there are some very interesting stories from my time there. I won’t divulge too much information but some of the salespeople either thought they were on the trading floor of Stratton Oakmont (Jordan Belfort’s Brokerage) or had completely misinterpreted the term 'White Gold' (at one of the businesses we were selling PVC Windows, Doors & Conservatories).
In short, we were trained to battle with the person we were calling until they would concede. While in the B2B world, it is perhaps not so severe, but there are certainly similarities.
You disagree?
Why then do businesses spend so much time training their staff in objection handling? Yes, I understand that the objections are rarely the real reason for lack of interest, but it’s an excuse for the prospect to get off the phone and far away from the person on the other side, who in the eyes of the prospect is as conniving, slimy & predatory as DiCaprio’s depiction of the Wolf of Wall Street… and this is because they’ve entered the Zone of resistance, a place where trust is never built. ?
It appears that few of the people involved in a cold call actually enjoy or get value from the experience:?
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This might be because it takes an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect… and only 28% of those answers result in actual conversations and not instant rejections.
If we look at the 0.3% appointment-booking rate and a 20% win rate, it would take 6,264 cold calls to make just four sales.?
What does the future hold?
I personally don’t see a sustainable future for the use of AI-generated content and messaging, particularly within the B2B world, because well if we’re honest look at where these automated methods have gotten us. We have reached a point in which it’s harder than ever to generate pipeline and more difficult than ever to close deals of substantial enough AOVs. Why? Because there is a gross lack of trust. Which again is the reason we are on par with politicians.?
This is where I believe the current system is broken… The traditional sales funnel is a terrible measure of sales cycles.?The reason is, it is built upon waste, and has bred terms such as “contacts/data being burned” - pestering someone so much that you can no longer communicate with them, without harassing them.
For that reason, I believe we need to shift our perspective, flip the funnel on its head and enter every interaction with prospects thinking about growth, rather than just trying to push them through the sausage machine.
Depending upon which research you follow, the modern B2B buying cycle is between "57%" (Gartner) & "90%" (Forrester) complete before we, the sellers are made aware of the opportunity.?
Furthermore, In a survey of nearly 1,000 B2B buyers,?43%?of surveyed respondents agreed that they would prefer a rep-free buying experience (Harvard Business Review).
The way forward??
Whether this is through a referral, recommendation, endorsement, or a relationship that you’ve built.?
Social enables you to leverage all of the above and more, it closes the distance between buyers and sellers, enabling us to build consensus early and sidestep traditional roadblocks, facilitating personal and reciprocal relationships, that breed trust.
So I ask you, where does Social sit within your strategy?