What Sales Reps Get Wrong When Leveraging AI for Sales Outreach

78% of gross sales professionals agree that AI could make them extra environment friendly at their job – together with gross sales outreach.

However whereas AI can open many alternatives for scaling and enhancing your outreach, this know-how continues to be new to most of us, and that newness can result in potential missteps.

Right here, I spoke to gross sales specialists to uncover what gross sales reps get incorrect when leveraging AI for gross sales outreach and techniques to treatment them.

What Gross sales Reps Get Mistaken When Leveraging AI for Gross sales Outreach

1. Approaching AI as a copy-and-paste software.

Within the fast-paced world of gross sales, AI can seem as a fast resolution for producing content material. As an example, you possibly can fireplace up ChatGPT, ask it to write down a prospecting message, and hit “ship” in lower than a minute.

Nonetheless, Mike Kaput, Chief Content material Officer at Advertising and marketing AI Institute, cautions in opposition to this.

“AI writing instruments ought to by no means be a easy copy-and-paste resolution. Should you’re utilizing them this manner, you are creating the very same kind of content material that anybody else can, and what is the level of that?” he instructed me.

But it surely‘s not only a downside of being unoriginal. As Kaput additionally factors out, AI-written content material is not infallible. It might comprise outdated or inaccurate info, which might simply slip via the cracks. In reality, solely 46% of gross sales professionals imagine they might be capable of inform if AI instruments generated the incorrect info.

Whereas it could sound counterintuitive, human intervention is important to utilizing AI accurately. For instance, Kaput and his crew on the Advertising and marketing AI Institute use AI to assist the writing course of, not change it.

“We nonetheless have people write our content material, however we save 75% of the time it takes us to provide content material by making use of AI to duties like summarization, ideation, analysis, and outlining,” he defined. “Then, a human can focus 100% of their intelligence and creativity on a completely distinctive piece of content material with a robust perspective that opponents cannot duplicate with AI.”

2. Utilizing AI to extend the amount — not the standard — of outreach.

AI is a content-creating machine, however that does not imply it ought to be used as such.

“While you determine to implement AI, your objective should not be to ship 17 extra emails a day,” stated Jake Dunlap, host of the Jake Dunlap Present. “Should you implement these instruments accurately, they need to assist you ship zero extra emails a day. However they may get your high quality up by 20-30%.”

Kaput echoes an identical sentiment, telling me: “Simply because you possibly can ship extra outreach utilizing AI doesn‘t imply you must. And, frankly, that is not probably the most useful use case for AI in terms of outreach.”

To extend the standard of your outreach, Kaput recommends utilizing AI to take the extra mundane duties off your plate, supplying you with extra time to tailor your messaging. He additionally mentions utilizing AI assistants to higher perceive your viewers.

“AI assistants can assist you construct deeper connections along with your viewers. By treating AI instruments as ‘digital patrons,’ you possibly can ask questions on key ache factors and emotions across the subject, product, or service you are doing outreach for. By working with a machine on this manner, you possibly can really be a lot extra human and empathetic (and finally simpler) in your outreach.”

3. Not personalizing your outreach.

“Amazon, Netflix, Shopify, and others have reset buyer expectations, which have crept into the B2B purchaser expertise,” stated Matthew Bowman, World Development VP & Advertising and marketing Government at Teleperformance.

These days, patrons do not simply need personalization, they count on it.

After we activate Netflix, we would like customized film suggestions. After we open the Spotify app, we would like curated playlists. And after we open a gross sales electronic mail, we wish to learn a message that resonates.

In different phrases, when anybody can use AI to generate prospecting messages, personalization will grow to be the good differentiator.

“We’re seeing a number of leaders fearmonger that AI customized outreach goes to flood inboxes and kill the channel. In my view, it will get higher,” Rocco Savage, Head of Development at Regie.ai, instructed me.

Rocco factors out that inboxes are already flooded with unhealthy emails, however AI might make the distinction.

“The way forward for outreach goes to work so much like advertisements the place you’ll obtain customized, focused outreach primarily based in your shopping for intent, leading to emails you doubtless wish to obtain versus those you do not,” he added.

Gross sales professionals appear to agree — 66% both strongly or considerably agree that AI instruments can assist them personalize the shopper expertise, in line with HubSpot’s State of AI Report.

4. Taking the human salesperson out of the image

AI is automating a variety of sales-related duties — like outreach — however it should not replicate the salesperson on the coronary heart of it.

As Ryan Gunn, Director of Demand Gen & Advertising and marketing Ops at Aptitude 8 instructed me, “Gross sales will nonetheless require a human contact, however AI can put the instruments in your hand that it’s essential shut the deal.”

As AI continues to form the gross sales panorama, gross sales professionals have to make use of a balanced method. Whereas AI can streamline processes and improve effectivity, salespeople nonetheless have to “deliver it house” with their distinctive experience, expertise, instinct, and other people abilities.