How SDRs are using generative AI to win
New Month, New Quarter, New Energy! We’re on newsletter 3 of the #CareerMasteryWithAI series. Whether you had a smashing or challenging quarter, the great news is we’re only halfway through the year and you can still win. By taking advantage of AI, you can supercharge your efforts to achieve results far beyond any expectations you can imagine.
Today, we're diving deep into the world of generative AI tools and their transformative impact on specific jobs within the tech industry. To kick off, we'll focus on two sales roles; SDRs (Sales Development Reps) and AEs (Account Executives). We'll explore the challenges these roles typically face and how generative AI can be harnessed to increase productivity and drive results.
SDRs and AI
SDRs are the lifeblood of every sales team. They are the ones who fuel the sales pipeline, ensuring a steady stream of potential customers for the sales team to engage with. They are the ones who ignite the sales process, setting the stage for BDMs and AEs to close deals. Without SDRs, many sales processes would be comparable to trying to drive a car without fuel (or charge) - it simply wouldn't work.
However, the role of an SDR comes with its challenges. In fact, It is one of the most demanding roles in sales. If you’re an SDR reading this, I’m sure a lot of this will resonate. You’ll usually have to work with high volumes of data, sift through this data to identify potential leads, understand their needs, and determine how your company's product can meet those needs. This is a time-consuming and often overwhelming task.
In addition to dealing with data, you’ll most likely also have to perform a lot of repetitive tasks, including sending out hundreds of emails and making numerous calls each day. These tasks, while necessary, can be monotonous and can take up a significant portion of your time.
Another challenge (which I’ve faced myself when I was an SDR) is the need to personalise as much communication as possible. In today's world, where prospects are bombarded with sales pitches from all sides, personalised communication is key to standing out and making an impact. Effective SDRs will need to tailor their communication to each potential lead, taking into account their needs, interests, and pain points.
This requires a deep understanding of the prospect and a skill for personalisation, both of which can be challenging to develop and maintain.
This is why generative AI is such a game-changer, because now you have a tireless, reasoning, and intelligent digital companion that acts as an extension of the skill sets you need the most support with.
ChatGPT for SDRs
To overcome the challenges mentioned above and supercharge yourself in your role, you can leverage tools like ChatGPT . These tools don’t just give you the ability to automate tasks, they give you the more powerful option of augmenting your capabilities as an SDR, enabling you to do more with less, and empowering you to excel in your role.
ChatGPT, can automate responses to common prospect questions, freeing up time for you to focus on more complex tasks. This AI-powered chatbot has been trained on a diverse range of internet text, allowing it to generate human-like text based on the input it receives. It can handle a wide variety of prospect questions, from simple questions about products to more complex requests for information.
If you want to understand your prospects better, their pains, needs and the best way to answer questions that may arise in your interactions with them; check out the section below; it outlines a really effective way to make use of ChatGPT (or Chatappily? ) as an SDR.
When engineering a prompt, I always try to follow the doctrine; it’s good to ‘Prime’ before you ‘Prompt’
Prime: This is the initial setup or context that you provide to the AI. It's like setting the stage for the AI to understand the context of the conversation or the task at hand. The prime can include information about the your preferences, the task's requirements, or any other relevant information that helps the AI understand the context better. The prime can be explicit, such as a direct instruction, or implicit, such as a subtle hint or suggestion. The goal of priming is to guide the AI's responses in a specific direction.
Prompt: This is the specific question or command that you give to the AI after the prime. The prompt is what triggers the AI to generate a response. It's the direct instruction that tells the AI what to do. The prompt should be clear, concise, and specific to get the best results from the AI.
TLDR; "it’s good to ‘Prime’ before you ‘Prompt’" means that it's beneficial to provide a context (prime) before giving a specific instruction (prompt). This approach can help the AI generate more accurate and relevant responses. It's like giving the AI a heads-up about what's coming next, so it can prepare and respond appropriately.
Use case example:
Go to ChatGPT or Chatappily? and submit the text below section by section; personalise it to your role and see what sort of results you get - Feel free to share them in the comments.
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Prime - 1:
About me and my company: "We are a leading provider of cloud-based solutions, helping businesses streamline their operations and improve efficiency. Our solutions are designed for small to medium-sized businesses in the retail sector. Our clients typically see a 30% increase in operational efficiency within the first three months of using our solutions. You can learn more about us at [company URL]." Only respond with “Understood” or “I have clarifying questions”
Prime - 2:
About the prospect and their company: "The Prospect is the CEO of a medium-sized retail company [prospect company URL] that is looking to improve operational efficiency. Like much of their industry, they've been struggling with inventory management and are looking for a solution that can help them streamline their operations. My company’s clients in the retail sector have found our solutions to be extremely beneficial in addressing these challenges. You can learn more about how our company’s solutions can benefit their company at [solutions page URL]." Only respond with “Understood” or “I have clarifying questions”
Prompts:
etc.
By using AI this way, the responses it produces would be hyper-tailored to each query, providing an effective way to scalably generate detailed and personalised responses that can not only answer any prospect’s questions but also highlight unique and personalised value propositions of your company’s products.
What taking advantage of AI tools looks like in the real world
Alex, a friend of mine is an SDR at a fast-growing tech startup. He was grappling with the challenge of managing his time effectively due to the high volume of leads he had to process. He was spending a significant portion of his day responding to routine prospect questions, leaving him with little time to focus on becoming more strategic in his approach.
Last quarter, Alex made a decision to look into generative AI tools to see which ones he could leverage against the challenges he’d been facing. He started using ChatGPT and Zapier to automate responses to common customer queries. He used prompts like the ones mentioned above to generate detailed and personalised content for his outreach too. This freed up a significant portion of his time, allowing him to focus on more strategic tasks, where he found ChatGPT to be very effective at helping him too.
The impact was immediate and significant. Alex noticed a marked improvement in his productivity. He was able to process leads more efficiently, engage with customers more effectively, and exceed his sales targets. By leveraging generative AI and automation, Alex was not just able to improve his performance, he was able to transform his role, making a significant contribution to his quota.
A note for Sales leaders
The use of AI tools by SDRs is not just about increasing efficiency and productivity. It's about transforming the way SDRs work. It's about freeing them from mundane, repetitive tasks and empowering them to focus on what they do best - building relationships, understanding customer needs, and driving sales. It's about giving them the tools they need to excel in their roles and contribute to the success of the business.
Remember, the future of work is not something that's happening to us - it's something that we're creating. And with generative AI, we have the power to create a future of work that's more efficient, more productive, and more fulfilling.
The only thing left is to embrace the power of these tools, harness them to drive our growth, and create a future of work that we can all be proud of.
In tomorrow’s edition, we’ll dive deeper into tools that help AEs and BDMs manage complex sales processes.