What would your sales team rather do: talk to prospects or enter data in your CRM? (We have a guess…)
Even the most dedicated sales rep can drown in busywork, between updating the pipeline with new deals, recapping conversations, and preparing internal reports.
Fortunately, a lot of the repetitive tasks in sales are a great use case for artificial intelligence. Incorporating sales AI into workflows isn’t just for enterprise companies — teams of all sizes can benefit from AI technology.
Not sure how sales AI can work for your team? We’ve got some examples, especially if your team is overwhelmed with sales-related tasks.
What is AI in sales?
According to HubSpot, sales reps spend up to an hour a day on administrative tasks. On top of that, 45% of sales professionals are overwhelmed by the number of tools in their tech stack (like Gong or Slack, in addition to a CRM). To prepare for a single meeting, they may need to review notes in the CRM, comb through past conversations, and find the right script. Not to mention the time spent on post-call follow-up.
Now imagine that AI does the heavy lifting for you. Sales AI tools can enhance and streamline many aspects of the sales process, such as:
- Automating manual tasks like data entry
- Summarizing past interactions for easy review
- Identifying customer sentiment for each call
And if your business uses self-serve options (like a chatbot), AI can provide potential customers with initial information, such as pricing, before connecting them with a human to discuss their needs.
Check out our list of the best AI tools for small businesses.
5 signs your sales team is working inefficiently (and how AI can fix it)
Even if your sales process seems to be working okay, removing inefficiencies like switching between apps and manual data entry could make it even better. Goodbye busywork, hello more closed deals. Here are a few signs it’s time to adopt sales AI:
1. Manual data entry is wasting time
Emails, calls, text messages, LinkedIn messages, Slack messages, meetings… Now imagine trying to log all that in your CRM. Many salespeople do this manually, but they often forget, run out of time, or just skip it. The result? Your CRM isn’t as powerful as it could be.
How AI helps: AI automatically logs every interaction, cutting down on admin work and giving you a full picture of sales activity.
2. Incomplete CRM data is leading to lost deals
An outdated or incomplete CRM makes it impossible to forecast sales accurately or spot other issues. Maybe your sales strategy needs tweaking because of a competitor or market shift — but without solid data, it’s hard to make the right decision.
How AI helps: Integrations and AI tools auto-log call data, flag missing or incomplete info, and recommend next steps based on past deals or conversations to help teams make smarter decisions.
3. Coaching based on gut instinct yields inconsistent results
Some reps consistently hit their quotas, while others fall short. But why? You might have a guess based on conversations, but that’s not the same as real data. To improve conversion rates, you need to understand how reps engage with prospects. You could listen to sales call recordings, but that’s time-consuming (and may not always tell the whole story).
How AI helps: Sales AI call intelligence analyzes calls and other interactions to pinpoint the behaviors of top performers. It can even recommend tactics to help underperforming reps improve.
4. Data silos are causing a lack of visibility
Deals are often the result of interactions across marketing, sales, and customer support. You have valuable insights — like the impact of a successful marketing campaign or positive support interactions — but that data is scattered across different tools or even siloed within your sales team.
A unified view of this data will help your reps make better decisions during the sales cycle, leading to improved performance.
How AI helps: Integrations sync customer data across platforms, creating a single source of truth. AI then analyzes and summarizes the data, making it easier for sales leaders to get actionable insights and spot patterns.
5. Lost trust due to inconsistent customer experience
Let’s say one rep adds detailed notes to your CRM and has great context for interactions with prospects. Another rep’s notes are few and far between. If someone else on the team needs to fill in while a rep is on vacation, what happens to the customer experience? A prospect may feel like your company understands their needs… until they talk to someone who’s out of the loop.
How AI helps: AI ensures reps have the customer data they need, from past interactions to objections and voice call sentiment analysis insights. That way, any rep can quickly get up to speed and provide a seamless experience, even if they’re covering for someone else.
6 ways to use AI in sales to boost performance
We gave examples of how AI can help in different scenarios, but what does this look like in real life? And how can AI customer communication tools support your current sales tech stack?
1. Smarter call and conversation insights
Every sales conversation is unique, and AI can turn conversations into data. AI-powered sentiment analysis tools can analyze the customer’s tone, keywords, and conversation patterns. With conversation intelligence, you can detect buying signals (like purchase intent) or identify churn risks.
For example, OpenPhone’s call tags use AI to analyze calls and automatically flag negative sentiment, competitor mentions, common objections, or anything else you’d like to track. Armed with this data, your sales team can keep track of insights or improve lead scoring.
Related: Lay the foundation for quality assurance (QA) with this customer service quality assurance checklist.
2. Keep CRM data complete and centralized
Automation and integrations eliminate manual CRM updates so your salespeople spend less time on administrative work. You can auto-log AI-generated call transcripts, sales emails, and more. With everything in one place, your reps can also use AI to summarize customer interactions or an AI chat assistant to ask questions about deals.
As a phone system for sales teams, OpenPhone has native integrations with Salesforce and HubSpot. If you use another CRM, you can use Zapier or Make to log your call information. These integrations ensure you’re not missing any data sources in your CRM.
3. Forecast demand and busiest times
Do you know your busiest time of year? How about your busiest time within a month? AI helps teams forecast demand and predict peak hours so you can optimize your staffing and outreach.
Analytics and reporting in OpenPhone help you track call and text volume, helping you spot trends over time. While not AI-powered, these insights can help you make data-backed staffing decisions so you don’t lose deals due to a lack of resources.
Want to use text messaging for lead generation, stay connected with customers, or send case studies to a prospect? Turn leads into deals during your busiest times with these sales text message examples.
4. Coach and train based on real data
AI is incredibly good at spotting patterns, especially with access to large datasets. AI-assisted sales coaching and call recording AI tools can flag calls that are good examples for your team, such as common sales objections and how your best reps overcome them.
An AI solution can also spot successful deal-closing phrases or moments when a potential customer seems to lose interest.
In OpenPhone, sales managers can easily search AI-generated call summaries and transcripts by keyword. This saves time and improves your internal coaching. You can also use call views to easily find calls by date, sales rep, or call tag.
5. Improve outreach and follow-ups
Your sales reps might rely on templates when sending follow-ups, but generative AI can help them personalize emails and calls based on past conversations.
Your sales reps can add custom contact notes in OpenPhone, which can help them keep track of where a deal is in the pipeline, objections, and next steps. Our AI-powered text message response generator analyzes conversations and suggests 2-3 personalized responses, adapting to the rep’s style and language over time.
Need some inspiration? Check out our follow-up text message examples.
6. Use agents when your team is unavailable
Have a shared number your team takes inbound calls from? AI voice agents can handle calls when reps are unavailable during or after hours. Once you feed the AI agent the right knowledge, they can answer common questions and gather information so you can follow up later. That way, you don’t just miss the call and they move onto another business.
If you use OpenPhone’s agent, Sona, you’ll get a clear summary of the conversation for easy follow up.
Get started with AI-powered sales using OpenPhone
The more your team can rely on automation, integrations, and AI, the more time they can spend closing deals.
OpenPhone’s AI sales features, like AI-powered call summaries and transcripts and custom call tags, are built to give teams more visibility and access to powerful insights. Plus, sales collaboration is easy in OpenPhone with shared phone numbers, internal threads, and custom contact notes.
Want to start automating your sales process? Sign up for a free seven-day trial of OpenPhone.
