Machine Learning Makes Life Easier

The use of sales and marketing technologies has become a critical piece of the puzzle for organizations looking to increase their sales productivity. Yet, chances are most organizations are missing out on a substantial opportunity to boost their sales revenue.

In today’s modern marketplace, enterprises must be able to confidently quantify and convey which content and messaging should be provided to sales reps in order to drive revenue and engage buyers.  Once sellers are equipped with the right content and data, the bigger challenge organizations face is how to take their static sales presentation to a dynamic interaction that resonates with their potential buyer. In short, teams need to know which content articulates their value in real-time.

But how?

The Holy Grail

Organizations that believe they cannot quantify the revenue of individual sales assets are not alone. Many enterprises face the problem of not knowing what their sellers are presenting when they download, edit and display a PowerPoint, which makes it hard to understand what pieces of content are driving results. Through the utilization of machine learning, sales and marketing teams can now automatically track every page and piece of content presented during a sales interaction, and provide dashboards and reports for their marketers to qualify the impact content had on company revenue.

Companies that implement machine learning technology can finally measure:

  • Which stories resonate best in specific sales situations
  • The impact various types of content have on sales interactions
  • Which content directly drives revenue and which content doesn’t
  • The contribution of sales tools, such as interactive calculators and value assessments, to overall revenue
  • Which sellers are leveraging the latest sales stories and whether they see more or less success than their peers

Machine learning technology allows marketing teams access to an entirely different way of prioritizing content creation and assessing the value of their efforts, which is now based on revenue growth, sales wins and deal velocity rather than vanity metrics and verbal feedback from the mouths of their sellers.

Making it even more challenging to measure the true benefit of each asset, busy sales reps are notorious for entering as little information as possible in CRM — but understandably so. These mundane tasks take a large chunk of time away from what they want to be doing, and what they do best, selling. According to Salesforce Research, sales reps spend 17% of their time on data entry and other administrative tasks.

But what if machine learning could make their lives easier?

A Seller’s Perk

The use of machine learning technology takes the responsibility of data entry out of the seller’s hands and automates it, which allows managers visibility into when a sales presentation occurs and which customer and CRM account the meeting was with. This means that sellers can focus less on the back-end administrative tasks and more on executing the most effective selling interactions. Taking the burdensome responsibility of logging every meeting detail off the plate of a seller results in a seller more focused on the nuances and talents of selling.

Without the use of machine learning, it is likely that sellers will leave data incomplete, meaning sales and marketing teams are at a loss for what material and messaging is truly closing deals.

Marketing leaders who can make decisions based on precise data can move faster and more effectively because they know what works and what doesn’t. Yet, when some managers rely on metrics such as downloads and notes, which could have been rushed, logged inaccurately or even logged hours after the encounter, it hinders the sales and marketing teams’ ability to align on content that leads to successful selling interactions. Through machine learning technology, both teams can gain accurate insights into what content is driving results by receiving real-time rigorous reports.

Sales teams using machine learning technologies see:

  • Increased productivity: Reduced manual data entry will allocate more time for sellers to focus on perfecting their craft
  • Align sales and marketing teams: Effectively identifying which content is presented and driving results will align sales and marketing teams
  • Insights and data: Through automated data syndication, sellers will have an easier time measuring content success

Rather than investing in and promoting sales content that doesn’t work, machine learning provides team leaders with a better understanding of what content resonates with buyers and helps them easily identify which presentations drive sales.

To make sellers’ lives easier, they no longer need to manually log their meeting activities and can rely on machine learning to automatically detect when a sales presentation took place, which account it was under and which contact was involved. Instead of relying on the seller to enter every page presented back into the CRM, machine learning provides managers with the confidence they need to ensure they are receiving real-time intuitive reports from every interaction.

Carson Conant is CEO of Mediafly, a technology company that provides mobile sales enablement software.

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