AI Revolution in Sales: 8 AI-Powered Sales Intelligence Platforms for 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service departments, delivering unmatched performance in a fraction of a second. The AI-based sales intelligence software market is a booming industry. It will grow by more than 3x in the next 7 years, crossing $7 billion in annual revenue generation by 2030. With generative AI trends blowing all other technology trends, it is obvious that Sales Intelligence platforms would gain massively by incorporating GPTs in their featured offerings.
But, would that be enough to push for more innovation and refinement in sales intelligence platforms with AI and deep learning?
Let’s find out.
Today, a majority of business leaders in sales and marketing organizations understand the role of AI-powered technologies such as content development, data visualization, automation, deep learning, predictive analytics, and recommendation generation. While it’s a fact that AI has completely revolutionized the marketing and sales landscape, starting with AI still remains a challenge, especially for small and medium-sized businesses that have little or no experience in previously working with these cutting-edge capabilities.
Take ChatGPT, for instance.
It’s like a super-fast content creator that can save your team hours of manual effort and countless proof-checking. Yet, its adoption in sales and marketing, without a fair amount of testing and validation, can cause confusion for your sales teams. While it can whip up catchy emails and taglines in a snap, sales personalization could fall wayward without an infusion of human intelligence.
Together, AI and human sales reps can effortlessly conjure up stunning emails that are personalized to match a customer’s sentiments. After all, AI is all about getting a job done with finesse, and injecting a serious dose of inspiration into your marketing and sales campaigns with minimum effort.
Also Read: 5 Ways to Use ChatGPT in Marketing and Sales
What is an AI-powered Sales Intelligence Platform?
According to Gartner, sales intelligence is defined as the information that sales reps use to nurture leads and sell relevant products and services. Today, sales teams are risk-proofing their strategies with powerful AI-enabled sales planning and intelligence tools. Salesforce found 70% of sales leaders now take fewer risks to meet customer demands.
Sales intelligence accelerates the sales process, facilitating quicker deal closures and retaining loyal customers. You need powerful sales intelligence software to enable sales acceleration for your organization.
An AI-powered Sales Intelligence platform is a cutting-edge technology that leverages artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to provide valuable insights, data, and predictions to sales teams.
- It assists sales professionals in making informed decisions, optimizing their strategies, and improving overall performance.
- The platform gathers and analyzes vast amounts of data from various sources, such as CRM systems, social media, and market trends, to identify potential leads, prioritize prospects, and forecast sales opportunities.
AI personalization in sales is all about using cutting-edge artificial intelligence to give your customers an extraordinary, tailor-made experience. AI analyzes customer preferences, past purchases, and online behavior—to predict what they might want next.
Why do sales organizations need an AI-powered sales intelligence platform?
Winning sales teams are masters at utilizing their time and resource judiciously. This infographic would help you understand the importance of letting an AI tool manage your sales intelligence engine.
Winning sales teams are masters at utilizing their time and resource judiciously. From looking into their contact databases to crafting personalized emails, to fixing meetings with a prospect, top sales professionals have learned the art of managing their resources effectively. But, even the best of sales teams need AI—because, even top sales teams could be spending 30%-40% of their time building relationships through tele-calling, cold emails, or chat messages.
Now, that’s where we think AI-based sales intelligence platforms can deliver the maximum ROI to high-growth organizations.
This is a practical breakdown of what a normal day in a sales rep’s life would look like:
| Sales contact database management | 40% |
| Customer service | 25% |
| Meetings, CRM, and Conversations | 25% |
| Planning and forecasting | 10% |
Now, each part of the sales process can be automated using AI. AI automation in sales handles data entry, updating customer info, and even sending follow-up emails—faster and more accurately than any human could. The level of AI automation in sales depends on the data your organization already owns or collects through different sales processes.
Read: Salesforce’s New Sales GPT and Service GPT Drive Productivity and Personalize Customer Interactions
For example, a Sales Intelligence Platform might use AI algorithms to analyze customer behavior and historical sales data to predict which leads are most likely to convert, enabling sales reps to focus their efforts on high-potential opportunities and close deals more efficiently.
It would make sense to utilize AI-driven sales intelligence platforms to manage a part or whole of the customer relationship management journey using virtual assistants, voice bots, or GPTs to fill in for the initial conversations. Customers are already aware of the various AI tools, and they are learning how to interact with the assistants for their various requirements. We can confidently state that AI-powered sales intelligence platforms can greatly improve the effectiveness and productivity of any sales organization within the first few weeks of adoption.
Research also backs our claim.
As per Salesforce’s findings, a significant 62% of sales teams anticipate adopting AI-based sales tools within the coming three years. One prominent example of such tools is AI-powered chatbots, which hold the ability to interact with potential customers, address their queries, and offer support, thus elevating customer experiences and leading to higher levels of satisfaction.
In the case of AI in B2B sales, AI works in a more holistic way. It helps you make smarter decisions, identify promising leads, and personalize your approach to each client.
So, where should you start with your sales optimization journey using AI?
We have identified the top AI-powered sales intelligence platforms that are enriching business teams with their innovation and knowledge centers.
Without much ado, let’s get to these AI-powered sales intelligence platforms.
Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Cloud is a powerful sales forecasting tool for modern sales teams. It bring in AI, automation, and predictive analytics under a single roof, which ensures that sales organizations don’t have to look at disparate CRM data for making quick decisions across the sales journey.
Also, Sales Cloud keeps adding new features and capabilities to improve sales performance management. For example, recently, Salesforce announced the general availability of a new salestech tool, called as Sales Planning. Sales Planning is offered as part of the Salesforce Sales Cloud.
Salesforce Einstein provides a wealth of valuable insights, predictions, and personalized recommendations to enhance sales performance and streamline processes. With Einstein, sales reps can make data-driven decisions, identify high-potential leads, and prioritize tasks effectively.
The platform uses advanced algorithms to analyze historical data, customer interactions, and market trends, enabling it to predict sales opportunities and potential roadblocks. This predictive capability empowers sales teams to stay ahead of the game and seize every promising chance to close deals successfully.
- AI-Driven Lead Scoring: Salesforce Einstein uses AI algorithms to analyze historical data and customer interactions, helping sales teams prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert. This feature saves time and effort by focusing on high-potential leads.
- Predictive Sales Forecasting: With predictive analytics, Salesforce Einstein can forecast sales outcomes more accurately. This helps sales managers make data-driven decisions and allocate resources effectively.
- Intelligent Opportunity Insights: Einstein provides real-time insights into sales opportunities, offering suggestions on the best next steps to close deals. Sales reps gain valuable guidance to navigate the sales process effectively.
- Personalized Recommendations: Using AI, Einstein delivers personalized product and service recommendations to sales reps, helping them tailor their pitches to meet specific customer needs.
- Automated Sales Tasks: Salesforce Einstein automates routine sales tasks, such as data entry and lead follow-ups, freeing up sales reps to focus on building relationships and driving revenue.
These features empower sales teams with data-driven insights and streamline sales processes, ultimately leading to improved performance and higher customer satisfaction.
AlsoRead: The Impact of Salesforce on the Advancement of AI in Marketing and Sales
Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI for Sales
Microsoft Dynamics 365 AI for Sales offers a wide range of AI-driven features and insights that can significantly boost sales performance and efficiency.
- Smarter and Effective Sales Calls: Conversation intelligence brings analytics and data science into play, boosting your efficiency and productivity as a seller. Every call is recorded and analyzed on the spot, generating key insights and action points during the conversation. And guess what? We’ve got you covered with meeting summaries automatically generated, saving you valuable time when capturing call outcomes.
- Better Collaboration with Sellers: Sales is like a team sport, and teamwork is essential for success. Sellers require access to subject matter expertise while dealing with clients, working with account teams from all over the world, and sharing important information with customers throughout the sales process. Luckily, Microsoft Teams chat is seamlessly integrated into Dynamics 365. This means you can collaborate with your team members right from within Dynamics 365. You get to use Dynamics 365 data as a central hub for all your Teams collaboration, and even link chats to specific records like leads or opportunities in Dynamics 365. It’s all about working together and making sales more convenient and efficient for everyone involved.
- Activity Prioritization for Better Impact: In Dynamics 365 Sales, the sales accelerator is your key to selling smartly. It’s all about building a robust and prioritized pipeline, providing essential context, and getting automated recommendations at every step of the sales process. This powerful tool helps speed up your sales sequence, making your selling journey smoother and more efficient than ever before.
- Predictive Lead and Opportunity Scoring: Here, machine learning models do the math and come up with a score for all your open leads and opportunities. This nifty score helps you figure out which records need your immediate attention. By focusing on the high-scoring ones, you can boost your chances of converting and closing deals like a pro.
Conversation intelligence, sales accelerator, and lead and opportunity scoring are all available each month, but there’s a cap on how much you can use. It’s enough to see a daily productivity boost, but if you want more, you can upgrade to Dynamics 365 Sales Premium.
Sales Hub
With Sales Hub, you get a feature-packed sales CRM that keeps all your customer data organized and accessible. But it doesn’t stop there! You also get sales engagement tools to personalize your outreach, gain valuable conversation insights, and automate repetitive tasks. Plus, quote and CPQ functionality ensure smooth and accurate sales proposals.
The best part? Sales Hub seamlessly integrates with over 1,400 tools in HubSpot’s app marketplace. It’s like having an entire arsenal of tools at your fingertips, tailored to suit your team’s unique needs.
No more wasting time jumping between different platforms or drowning in data. Sales Hub brings it all together in one easy-to-use interface that your whole team will love. Finally, you can focus on what truly matters: your customers.
From reaching out to prospects with personalized emails to setting up automated workflows, Sales Hub empowers you to make meaningful connections and generate new business like a pro. Embrace the power of Sales Hub, and watch your sales soar to new heights!
Email Templates: Easily turn your top-performing emails into personalized templates, perfect for sharing with your sales team. Streamline your outreach and boost productivity!
Email Tracking: Stay in the loop with instant email tracking. Know exactly when a potential client opens your email, allowing you to follow up at the perfect moment and close deals faster.
Document Tracking: Create a repository of valuable sales content. Share documents directly from Gmail or Outlook and track which content drives faster deal closures.
Conversation Intelligence: Unlock powerful insights with AI-driven Conversation Intelligence. Automatically capture call details and discover coaching opportunities to enhance sales performance.
Call Tracking: Maximize efficiency with call tracking. Prioritize your sales calls, make and record them, and let your CRM automatically log the details.
Sales Automation: Keep prospects engaged with automated, personalized emails and follow-up tasks. Stay top of mind throughout the sales journey, leaving no opportunity behind!
Sales Playbooks: Empower your team with battle-tested playbooks featuring competitive intel, call scripts, and positioning guides, enabling them to close deals swiftly and effectively.
Smart Quotes: Instantly create professional, branded quotes to seize the moment when your product is on their minds, expediting deal closures.
Sales Analytics: Gain complete visibility into your sales process, facilitating accurate forecasting and delivering exceptional results.
Pipeline Management: Effortlessly add deals, assign tasks, and monitor progress on user-friendly dashboards, making sales pipeline tracking a breeze.
On average, customers using Sales Hub witness an impressive 78% increase in their deal close rate within only 6 months. It’s a game-changer for boosting sales success!
Gong.io
Moving on to an AI-powered sales intelligence platform that focuses on conversation analytics, we have Gong.io.
This platform uses AI to analyze sales calls and meetings, extracting valuable insights to improve sales performance. Gong.io provides real-time feedback on conversations, helping sales reps understand customer needs better, optimize their pitches, and close deals with confidence.
Gong for Sales Leaders: It is all about “revenue.” Your ultimate goal is to drive revenue, and Gong is here to help you reach that success. By removing the guesswork from your go-to-market strategies and providing real-time insights into your pipeline, Gong empowers you to make informed decisions and boost your revenue like never before.
- Nail your strategic initiatives: Gain early insights into how your strategic initiatives resonate with buyers, adapting in real-time to achieve your topline goals.
- Improve team productivity: Gong integrates with your tech stack, streamlining sales workflows and automating manual tasks. Reps can focus on critical, deal-closing activities.
- Close more deals with AI: Get real-time visibility into your open pipeline and receive AI-backed insights to enhance deal-closing strategies, mitigate churn, and improve sales forecasting.
Gong for Sales Manager: Elevate every rep to the top performance by leveraging their winning behaviors, gaining better pipeline visibility, and making confident and accurate forecasts. Maximize your time and resources while empowering your entire team to excel.
- Increase sales productivity: Provide automation, insights, and next steps for your team, allowing them to focus more on engaging with buyers and less on manual tasks.
- Coach reps at scale: Identify and learn from top-performing reps to create teachable moments for the whole team. Track the impact of new initiatives on win rates and revenue.
- Trust your pipeline: Gain complete visibility into your pipeline by leveraging customer interactions, leading to more accurate and reliable revenue forecasts.
Gong co-founder and CEO, Amit Bendov says,
“Gong changed how revenue teams build pipeline with our customer-centric AI – now we’re changing how they engage with customers at every stage. We have leveraged our market-leading AI technology as the foundation for Gong Engage, which sets the entire revenue team up for success. Engage is the only solution that harnesses customer interactions at scale to drive high-quality engagement and ultimately, grow revenue.”
Gong for Account Executive: Unlock the power of Gong for Account Execs – your secret to closing more deals with AI. Simplify your workflow by automating repetitive tasks, leverage insights from top reps’ successful strategies, and receive AI-backed recommendations for the best next steps to drive your sales to success.
- Sell more efficiently: Access a central dashboard with prioritized action items, helping you focus on the most critical tasks and accelerate deal closures.
- Become the best: Learn from top reps’ best practices and adopt actionable habits that lead to more deals closing in less time.
- Engage with buyers meaningfully: Utilize Gong’s infinite memory to log all interactions and transform them into searchable data. Engage with confidence, without worrying about missing important details.
InsideSales.com
InsideSales.com offers a robust AI-powered sales platform that aids in lead scoring and predictive analytics. Their predictive technology analyzes historical data, market trends, and customer behavior to identify the most promising leads. Sales reps armed with InsideSales.com can focus their efforts on high-potential prospects, significantly increasing their chances of success and shortening the sales cycle.
Sales Prioritization and Forecasting: At its core, InsideSales.com utilizes advanced AI algorithms to prioritize leads and forecast sales outcomes accurately. By analyzing vast amounts of data from customer interactions, past sales, and market trends, the platform provides valuable insights into the most promising prospects. This enables sales reps to focus their efforts on high-potential opportunities, increasing their chances of closing deals successfully.
Build a Strong Pipeline with Account-Based Selling: Want a healthy pipeline that keeps flowing? Account-based selling is the way to go! Boost your engagement with buyer intelligence, giving you insights into the right people to connect with in the buying committee. Plus, we’ve got you covered with additional contacts who can influence the deal – even if they’re not in your CRM. Get ready to build a consistent and qualified pipeline with ease!
Smart Prioritization: One of the key insights provided by InsideSales.com is the ability to identify the best times to engage with potential customers. The platform can analyze data to determine the most optimal times for reaching out to prospects, ensuring that sales reps make their pitch at the right moment, and maximizing the likelihood of a positive response.
Conversica
Incorporating AI-driven virtual assistants, Conversica offers a unique solution to engage and qualify leads. Their AI-powered assistant, aptly named “Conversica AI Sales Assistant,” autonomously engages potential customers through natural, human-like conversations via email, SMS, or chat. By automating lead qualification, Conversica frees up sales reps’ time, allowing them to focus on building meaningful relationships and closing deals.
Streamline Inbound Leads with Conversations: Conversica Revenue Digital Assistants (RDAs) are on the case, engaging each inbound lead promptly. They confirm interest, validate fit, and even schedule meetings – all without Sales having to step in.
The AI assistant engages in natural conversations, allowing it to distinguish between serious prospects and those who might not be ready to make a purchase. This helps sales teams prioritize their efforts and focus on the most promising leads, saving time and resources.
Boost Your Sales Opportunities with Conversation-Qualified Leads: Get ready for more at-bats with conversation-qualified leads! Turn outbound efforts into inbound success without Sales having to lift a finger. It’s all about delivering hot leads to Sales through Powerfully Human™ conversations. Warm up your prospects with personalized dialogues that uncover revenue opportunities previously unseen. Leverage valuable insights to engage prospects like never before. With conversation-qualified leads, your sales opportunities are bound to skyrocket!
Moreover, Conversica’s AI-driven follow-up and lead nurturing capabilities ensure that no potential opportunity slips through the cracks. The virtual assistant can initiate personalized conversations, nurture relationships, and even schedule appointments with qualified prospects, leaving sales reps free to focus on closing deals.
With Conversica on board, sales teams can enhance their efficiency and responsiveness, leading to improved sales performance and higher customer satisfaction. This AI-powered solution has the potential to transform the way businesses engage with their leads and drive revenue growth.
Outreach.io
Outreach.io is a sales engagement platform powered by AI that helps sales teams streamline and personalize their outreach efforts. With AI-driven insights, sales reps can optimize their messaging, track engagement levels, and identify the best times to connect with prospects. The platform’s automation capabilities enable sales teams to efficiently manage large volumes of leads and create more meaningful interactions with potential customers.
Manny Medina, CEO and co-founder of Outreach, explains
“Today, Chief Revenue Officers are facing two major problems: pipeline coverage and conversion. They need to create an adequate amount of pipeline, and close it at a greater rate. That’s why Outreach has been on a journey to expand our offerings to solve our customers biggest problems today. Our goal is to provide sales leaders with a single platform to manage all of their deals – from creating more pipeline to closing more deals. Today’s announcements at Explore+ are an important milestone in our platform journey, and we look forward to continue innovating for the 30 million B2B salespeople around the world to help them unleash their selling potential.”
One of the key insights provided by Outreach.io is its ability to personalize outreach at scale. Through AI-driven algorithms, the platform can analyze customer data and interactions, enabling sales reps to craft tailored messages and follow-ups for each prospect. This personalized approach increases the chances of capturing the prospect’s attention and building meaningful connections.
Moreover, Outreach.io’s automation capabilities are a game-changer. It streamlines repetitive tasks like email sequences, scheduling follow-ups, and tracking customer interactions. This frees up valuable time for sales reps to focus on building relationships and closing deals.
The platform also offers valuable analytics and reporting features, providing insights into the effectiveness of outreach campaigns and individual performance. This data-driven approach allows sales teams to optimize their strategies and boost overall efficiency.
Recently, Outreach introduced its Sales Execution Platform, offering unprecedented capabilities for sales leaders to manage their team’s workflows, from pipeline creation to deal closure. Companies of all sizes are adopting this platform as their foundation to streamline and optimize sales methodologies and processes. With full visibility across the buyer journey and AI/ML models, reps receive deal insights, prompting targeted actions to boost conversion rates and close more deals. Turning signals into actions, Outreach’s platform leads to significant gains in deal management.
Also Read: AiThority Interview with Bill Patterson, EVP and General Manager, Applications at Salesforce
Clari
Rounding out our list is Clari, an AI-driven sales platform that provides real-time visibility into sales performance. By integrating data from various sources, such as CRM, email, and calendars, Clari offers predictive analytics to assess deal health and identify potential risks or opportunities. With Clari’s AI-powered insights, sales leaders can make data-driven decisions, allocate resources effectively, and maximize revenue growth.
Revenue Consistency: One of the key insights provided by Clari is its ability to accurately forecast sales opportunities. By analyzing historical data, customer interactions, and market trends, Clari offers predictive analytics that helps sales teams identify potential deals and make data-driven decisions. This forecasting capability allows businesses to plan and strategize effectively, maximizing revenue potential.
Clari’s AI-driven platform offers a comprehensive view of sales activities and performance. It aggregates data from various sources, such as CRM systems and communication platforms, providing a centralized hub for sales analytics. This empowers sales managers to monitor team performance, identify areas for improvement, and coach reps accordingly.
The platform’s intelligent automation streamlines manual tasks, saving time for sales reps, and enabling them to focus on building relationships and closing deals. Clari is undoubtedly a valuable asset in the arsenal of modern sales teams, driving productivity and revenue growth.
Here are some other alternatives that are known to be a favorite among customers.
What’s next with AI in Sales?
AI and sales could emerge as a winning combination for your growth-focused organization. In the dynamic world of sales, harnessing the power of AI has become indispensable for driving success. These sales intelligence platforms for 2023 offer a wide array of capabilities, from predictive analytics to conversation analysis, empowering sales teams with actionable insights and enhancing overall productivity.
By leveraging these AI-powered platforms from industry giants like Salesforce, Microsoft, and others, sales professionals can build stronger customer relationships, prioritize leads, and close deals with greater efficiency. As AI technology continues to advance, we can expect these sales intelligence platforms to play an even more significant role in shaping the future of sales in 2023 and beyond.
[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com].
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