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AI’s impact on sales
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The Future of Sales?
How much can you really replace humans in the sales process? If you’ve been looking into AI sales solutions for clients or your own business, I’m sure this question has been on your mind, too.
According to AI enthusiasts like Thomas Ryan, the CEO and Founder of Bigly Sales, the answer is a lot – perhaps more than you’d think. I wanted to know why, so I welcomed him onto a recent bonus episode of The Business of Techto hear more about this potential reality from an industry expert. He’s got a track record of making a strategic vision happen and his leadership, including a remarkable 1500% revenue growth at Barton and Associates.
Here’s Ryan’s vision for a future where nearly every sales rep is replaced by AI.
How AI is Already Changing the Sales Process
I kicked off our conversation with the headline: how are AI sales agents changing the sales process?
Ryan explained that Bigly’s AI technology – which is already available and in use with customers – automates the lead intake process, primarily through SMS. When someone fills out a form through social media or a landing page, his company’s AI speeds up response time by texting leads almost as soon as they express interest.
Using natural language, the AI answers questions and goes back and forth until it persuades the lead to book an appointment. To move leads to the next stage of the process, the agents connect with the company’s calendar system
As for how the agents are built, Bigly puts the company’s information and technical specs into a vector database, including answers to the 20 most common sales questions. This helps the AI grab responses quite quickly without using a ton of tokens (which would drive up the price of running the AI).
Bigly’s solution also includes a landing page generator with an identity management system layered on top:
“If you suddenly have leads or you want to know who’s coming to your landing page, we can actually get most of the individuals as soon as they hit the landing page. We have their name, cell phone, email, home address, the value of that home, their approximate income, and probably about 20 other data points, such as how many kids they have, et cetera,” he explained.
Who’s Benefiting the Most
As of now, Ryan’s AI is most successful with B2C clients like home services and life insurance. Because these types of companies rely on ‘lead to speed’ more than B2B clients, the AI really helps sort through a high volume of leads as quickly as possible.
According to Ryan, this type of AI can already replace the standard Sales Development Representative (SDR) because you don’t always need to know that you’re speaking to a real human to make a purchase. He used a roofing company to illustrate why:
“If you don’t pick up that phone and get back to that lead right away, and they have a leak in their house, they’re gone… So, I would find a broker online and see, okay, they’re rated four or five stars. And the first one who picked up, I’m probably going to talk to them and get a quote. And as long as the quote doesn’t seem crazy, I might just as well go with that guy,” he said.
He doesn’t think his AI will replace the drinks and dinner sales style, but for inquiries where customers just need speedy service, AI is already replacing the slower human version of these B2C sales.
How IT Teams Can Leverage the Tech
So where do we, as IT folks, come in? I asked Ryan how we can leverage this tech within our existing client infrastructures, and he explained that Bigly’s AI has an open API where anyone can use direct webhooks for smooth integration.
If you need a way to pitch this to your own customers, consider using Ryan’s argument:
“I see the AI being super persuasive that it’s going to be better than any sales rep on earth,” he said.
A Bold Prediction For the Future of Sales
Okay, so that’s a pretty bold prediction. Ryan’s reasoning here is that unlike even the most experienced sales reps out there (who’ve only had 10 calls a day for 25 years to learn their craft), AI can leverage thousands of hours of training to master the art of persuasion for every potential lead out there:
“Where I see this going over the next couple of years is the AI will know everything you’ve ever written on everything you’ve ever written on Facebook; it will know your politics. It will know the issues that you care about. It will remember your kids’ names. And it will be hyper persuasive in how it explains things to people,” he argues. Plus, it will have perfect knowledge of the product and perfect knowledge of the general world.”
TLDR: Ryan believes AI will replace most sales.
In fact, he believes that any type of job that involves computers — programming, security, graphic design, accounting, and analysis – will be done better, faster, and cheaper by AI within the next year or two.
But what about the industry disruption? What about the people?
Ryan doesn’t exactly know. For sales specifically, he does think that the inevitable lack of people will make people crave human interactions, boosting the importance of face-to-face contact in securing bigger, more high-stakes sales.
And, like we’ve heard others argue about AI, he mentioned that we’ve been in this situation before:
“This happened with farming equipment coming into the fields. If you go back 200 years, 90% of people worked in the fields. If you asked them, what am I going to do? You know, I wouldn’t have it right,” he said.
But no matter what happens next, he does know that things are going to change quickly and dramatically.
How Can Businesses Stay Effective in the AI World?
I asked Ryan for a final takeaway here, and his advice was simple: do it now. Don’t wait.
“You don’t have to wait for version 3 or version 4 or version 5. The technology is here now. It’s advancing by the day. I always tell people that if it doubles every three months, that means it’s a million times more powerful in five years. And AI is moving faster than that right now,” he said.
Feeling inspired to put AI to work with sales? Disturbed by the replacement potential? A mix of both?
If you’re at least interested in hearing more about Thomas Ryan’s work, you can find him at www.bigleysales.com.
As always, my inbox is open, so send along your thoughts, stories, questions, or whatever else is on your mind.
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