Generative AI is a force to be reckoned with in entertainment, media, politics…and business. It’s changing the way we create art. It’s changing the way we create content. On a mass scale, it’s changing the concept of identity and even of reality. And it’s changing the way we sell.
The traditional sales pitch was a one-way monologue. It was all about me (the product), and not about you (the customer). It didn’t involve asking probing questions to discover the customer’s true needs and pains. “We have what you need,” was the assumption; “Buy it as is or let’s move on.”
Today, sales is a conversation of discovery. It’s a dialogue about your prospect’s situation, problems, concerns and issues. For salespeople, it’s as much about listening as talking. It’s about responding to conversational context – you ask questions, you listen, you empathize, you find (and sell) solutions to ease pain. It’s an interactive process.
The Challenge of Pivoting at Scale
The thing about interacting with humans is that you never know exactly where a conversation may take you. That’s why building seller proficiency on new messages – for new hires (onboarding) or veteran sales team members (everboarding) – is so important. These crucial processes hone pivoting skills, helping salespeople respond effectively to both unexpected queries and common objections.
The challenge is that especially in a tough economic climate, sales leaders need to handle many staff without a lot of sales enablement resources. They’re scrambling to better automate, digitize and equip their sellers to have more effective conversations. Yet despite their best intentions, these professionals just don’t have the time to personally certify every seller on every talk track. Sales enablement at scale – onboarding, everboarding, coaching and upskilling – just isn’t cost effective or logistically feasible, and sales are suffering because of this.
This is exactly why we integrated advanced generative AI algorithms into Jenny – our AI-powered interactive sales enablement training partner. Generative AI is what drives content generation platforms like ChatGPT-3, Jasper and visual art creation services like DALL-E 2. It’s the cutting edge of AI, and it’s a game-changer for sales enablement at scale.
Generative AI in Action
AI-powered sales enablement is the right tool at the right time for sales training focused on discovery, not pitching. For sales enablement at scale, these solutions can provide a safe environment for sales teams to practice and build fluency in new and existing messages. What’s more, AI solutions eliminate the expert bottleneck – freeing up sales mentors and managers to continue driving revenues.
Yet leveraging AI to teach effective discovery demands technology that doesn’t parrot a script, but rather responds to unique input with unique output. Second Nature solves this by using generative AI as the basis for a wholly original, fully conversational approach to sales training and coaching.
Jenny’s natural language conversation engine constantly parses conversational context – user, product, market, and more. This enables Jenny to respond to questions she’s never faced, answer follow-up questions that reference previously-covered conversational topics, and also respond effectively when conversational context evolves or even changes abruptly. For example, Jenny could say how many sellers are on her team, and later reference how many are in each location so they correctly add up. She can also draw on general knowledge about a city, referencing landmarks in the area without skipping a beat.
Jenny’s rich discovery functionality has enabled our users to ask her open-ended questions about products – more accurately simulating a real sales conversation. It also helps her accurately and consistently identify points of friction – ensuring that teams are fully ready to have an impactful customer conversation and are not just reverting to pitching.
The Bottom Line
Generative AI is already enabling products like Jenny to respond to open-ended and emotionally charged input. For example, if you get angry at Jenny, she’ll respond accordingly based on the words you used. Looking forward, we see this technology evolving to enable responses based on visual prompts like facial expressions and auditory cues like tone and volume of voice. We have only scratched the surface of what generative AI can do for sales organizations and the salespeople within them. And the transition from building seller proficiency on sales pitch to building seller proficiency on sales discovery is just the first step into the brave new world of smarter, more effective AI-powered sales solutions.
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