6 Types of AI Sales Tools You Need to Know

A recent Harvard Business Review article reported that while lagging behind other business functions incorporating digital technology, "Sales is primed to quickly become a leading adopter of generative AI… AI-powered systems are on the way to becoming every salesperson's (and every sales manager's) indispensable digital assistant."

In the meantime, a new report estimated that by 2025, 75% of B2B sales organizations will reinforce their process with AI sales tools. This is excellent news for those in sales, because only about 33% of your sales team’s time is spent actively selling. Wouldn’t you like to increase the time your sales team spends actually connecting with prospects and customers using AI sales tools? 

That said, the art of sales is and always will be human-centered. AI isn’t here to replace your sales people; your team's ability to create and nurture human connections will always be essential. In a way, using AI in sales encourages your team even more human by offering you data and insights to create even more dynamic human connections.

In this blog post, you'll learn 6 different types of AI sales tools.

Each tool addresses a touchpoint in the typical customer sales journey. Many tools overlap along the journey and should always be integrated, so workload is not duplicated. The functionality these tools bring to the table will enhance your sales team's performance and results and save your company time and money. Let's look at each category, and at the end of this blog, you’ll find a list of AI sales tools.

1. Conversational Intelligence Tools

Conversational intelligence (CI) software uses AI to analyze communication data, such as sales phone calls, webchats, or emails. It can transcribe and record these interactions, analyze them, and provide insights to improve future sales interactions. 

Conversational intelligence helps your sales team better understand your customers, optimize their performance, and improve their outcomes. AI has enhanced the typical call monitoring solution into CI by providing concise call summaries, natural language transcription, keyword monitoring, real-time alerts of concerns based on keyword or sentiment analysis, and more. CI provides real-time actionable insights into communication data that can help your sales teams perform at their best.

For example, Calldrip's call monitoring software records and analyzes sales calls and provides feedback and coaching opportunities for that salesperson. 

2. Lead Generation Tools

A lead generation tool is a sales software that generates, identifies, captures, and stores qualified leads. These tools identify customer-related patterns and insights. 

AI helps you personalize your messages to target individual customers based on their preferences and behavior. Lead generation tools also use AI to score and qualify leads to help your sales teams focus their efforts by identifying the leads most likely to convert. By leveraging AI in lead generation, you can generate more high-quality leads and increase their revenue and growth potential.

Want to learn more about AI in sales and AI sales tools? Download this free ebook!

3. Lead Nurturing Tools

Lead nurturing is the process of starting and strengthening relationships with potential customers. AI lead nurturing tools enhance this human connection by providing your sales team with valuable and relevant information that will engage leads throughout their buyer's journey. The goal is to build long-term authentic relationships, increasing the likelihood of a purchase.

An AI-driven sales assistants can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your sales process by automating specific tasks like qualifying leads, storing customer information, and sending personalized automated communications like scheduling confirmations. AI also drives chatbots to answer questions and provide customer service. These types of chat-based sales software, or digital sales assistants, should deepen customer connections by providing a positive and valuable experience every time they engage with your company. 

For example, Calldrip offers AI sales assistants that are completely customized to your business. Create multiple AI-powered assistants to tackle specific customer engagement objectives, including nurturing sales leads, responding to service requests, and more. Your AI sales assistant will instantly respond via text, even when your team isn’t available to take the call, and follow-up to continue nurturing the lead. Give it a try - free for 30 days!

4. Sales Analytics Tools

Sales analytics tools gather and analyze your team's sales performance data. These tools track your overall and individual sales revenue, conversion rates, and customer behavior. The insights generated enable your team to identify areas for improvement, optimize messaging that is working, and make data-driven decisions. In addition, these tools often include AI-driven data visualization resources to access and analyze sales data at any given moment. 

With the help of AI, sales analytics tools analyze and identify patterns and insights that might be too complex for humans to do on their own. Additionally, AI helps sales analytics tools predict future sales trends better, giving you a competitive edge.

Our AI-powered call monitoring tool automatically records and transcribes your sales calls, generates a transcript, conducts sentiment analysis, and even generates a summary of the call so that you can quickly understand what happened at a glance. And because we offer an integrated, all-in-one sales enablement and acceleration solution, this functionality works perfectly with our built-in sales coaching.

5. Sales Coaching Tools

Ongoing sales coaching can make a measurable difference in your success. Companies with a coaching program see 7% greater revenue year over year. Sales coaching tools provide resources for training, onboarding, and upskilling your sales reps. These tools often incorporate features such as training and certification courses, skills assessments, role-playing exercises, and guided selling software.

AI-driven sales coaching tools provide customized and personalized feedback to individuals based on their performance. The tools analyze sales activity data, such as call recordings and email interactions, to identify strengths and areas for improvement. This data-driven approach can be more effective than traditional coaching methods because it considers each individual's unique sales approach and provides real-time feedback to improve performance. 

Calldrip offers award-winning software that includes ongoing call coaching, conversation scorecards, customized KPIs, and purpose-driven playbooks. It provides your sales team with innovative guidance, tools, and AI-powered insights to improve sales performance and productivity.

6. Sales Enablement Tools

Sales enablement provides your sales team with the resources, training, and tools they need to find, nurture, and close more deals. The functions in the other AI sales tools we discussed in this blog post may be included in a sales enablement tool. Sales enablement entails integrating clear sales processes, ongoing sales training, high-value resources to share with prospects at key moments, a clear, easy-to-use system for collecting and managing sales resources, performance tracking and measurement, and iterative sales coaching. 

More than 75% of companies using sales enablement strategies have seen their revenue increase between 6% to 20%.

In sales enablement, AI analyzes data to help your team better understand customers' needs, pain points, and buying behavior. Sales enablement tools can also increase lead generation by providing data to create more targeted marketing campaigns. You can use these tools to optimize workflows by automating time-consuming tasks like lead scoring and qualification, which frees up your sales reps to focus on building positive human relationships and closing deals. 

Calldrip's all-in-one sales enablement solution builds positive human connections and adds value to your sales team and your customers, at scale. Here’s how:

• Integrate with your CRM and existing lead sources to track and score inbound inquiries.
• Provide rapid lead response and AI-powered lead nurturing to follow up with leads via phone calls and text messaging.
• Supercharge sales coaching with a variety of performance-focused solutions, including call monitoring as well as lead and call scorecards.
• Offer automated review capture to ensure that happy customer feedback is captured and shared.
• Include features like web chat, business text messaging flows, virtual respondent, and more to engage leads.
• Conduct conversational analytics to identify your best marketing channels and customer data.
• Provide industry-leading sales call coaching tools to enhance team performance.

One Thing to Keep in Mind 

As you consider incorporating AI sales tools into your daily workflow, please keep one thing in mind. Generative AI is new and evolving. There will be even better offerings on the horizon. We expect AI-powered technologies to become every salesperson's digital assistant. But AI will never replace the power of human connection. Don't overlook that important piece of the puzzle as you consider digital sales tools. 

Your Next Steps

Incorporating AI into the sales process requires a strategic approach that identifies where AI can add value to your customers and team. The five functions outlined in this blog post are an excellent place to start. 

• First, identify areas within those five functions where AI-driven insights and automation would be useful. 
• Next, define clear goals for incorporating AI, such as improving efficiency, increasing revenue, or reducing costs. 
• Research and evaluate the solutions that meet your goals and integrate with your existing systems and software. 
• Make sure to incorporate any new tool into your workflow without creating extra work or barriers to efficiency. 
• Once combined, track and test the effectiveness of your new tools. 
• Finally, choose a vendor that will work with you to introduce your new tools into your team's workflow seamlessly, so you see your return on investment immediately. 

If you’d like to see how Calldrip’s all-in-one AI sales tool can enhance your team's performance, please book a demo today.