Repfabric’s Vision on the Future of AI in CRM Systems
AI, AI, AI! – Artificial Intelligence is all you hear about today. It’s all over the news, social media, and even the politicians are trying to figure it out. Some say it will save the world, others say it will be the end of the world. But what does it really mean for manufacturers, representatives, and distributors?
Read on to learn how AI will exponentially improve your ROI on your CRM system.
Get a CRM that Fits Your Business Type
The first thing is to make sure that you have a CRM that matches how you do business, capturing opportunities, samples, quotes, commissions, and customer touches. The data in your CRM is vitally important because that is what AI will be using at its foundation.
Think of AI as an intern who in the beginning might not know all they need to know. AI embedded in your CRM will learn how your company works, what decisions you typically make, and what processes you follow. It will learn within your environment, not just from the web like ChatGPT but your confidential information is never shared.
Let’s talk about some specifics. Where will AI help, what impact will it have on your salespeople and your processes?
AI as a Sales Assistant
Imagine that you’re preparing to visit a prospect. You research online to see what’s new with the company.
- Is the VP of Sales the same?
- Have they merged with or acquired a new company?
- How did they do last year?
- Is their revenue up?
- Are they promoting any new products?
- What is your history with the company?
- How many times have you contacted them?
- What have they bought from you in the past?
- Do we have any open orders or samples with them?
- What’s their spouse’s name, and do they have any hobbies I could mention to help break the ice?
Gathering this information takes time – time that takes away from selling. Now imagine that your AI sales assistant has been taught that this is the type of information you need. With a click of a button and a few seconds, you will be presented with all the information you need. What took hours now takes just a click – increasing efficiency and responsiveness, giving your salesperson more time to sell.
AI as a CRM Assistant
The most common questions asked when purchasing a CRM are, “Will my people use it?” and “How much time will it take for my team to keep our data updated?”
You already know the importance of a CRM system in capturing and managing customer and prospect information, opportunities, samples, and quotes. However, managing that information can be expensive and time-consuming. This is where an AI CRM assistant like Repfabric can help.
In the near future, AI will monitor your customers’ behavior and react based on how your company naturally responds. For example, it may draft an email response and suggest next steps based on an email’s content. It may analyze an email and create an opportunity in your CRM system with tasks for your sales staff to follow up on. It may also create, or update quotes based on instructions in your customer emails. Your AI CRM assistant can enter your sales team’s data so your staff can keep your CRM system up-to-date without spending too much time on their computers.
Using AI to Enter Commission Data
AI empowers your sales team with productivity support, but AI can also help with your sales and commission management. This critical information is time-consuming to import and assign to the correct accounts. Creating import profiles, updating profiles, and aliasing to the correct account can take hours, sometimes days. Using AI to import commission data can help with this. AI can learn how you match names, create import profiles, add new accounts, and manage splits. Using intelligent document processing it finds the relevant data in the source file like spreadsheets and correctly imports it for you.
White Space Tracker
For those not in multi-line sales, “white space” refers to the untapped or underutilized opportunities within a customer’s portfolio. These are areas where a rep can sell additional products or services that the customer is not currently purchasing but could benefit from.
AI can assist in finding new opportunities by matching products you’ve sold across your lines and pointing out the white space that would complement your customer’s product well. AI can suggest targeted marketing campaigns to fill that white space based on the amount sold by the product line. For example, you sold line X to company ABC but have not tried to sell lines Y and Z, which offer complementary products to line X.
AI can find that white space for you and help write an email campaign to target those customers helping to fill that white space.
Summary
AI will change the world and how we work, just like the mobile phone did. Think of how differently you worked before the invention of mobile phones (if you were around back then). The change didn’t happen overnight. We went from pulling over to use a payphone to car phones, brick phones, Blackberry, and flip phones, and finally, the iPhone. Today, we cannot imagine living without our phones, so much so that we panic if ours is more than an arm’s reach away.
You will see change and growth faster with AI than the mobile phone as AI is a tool that learns and gives us the power to streamline our business processes, making them more efficient and giving our staff more time to be proactive and productive. Don’t be afraid of AI – take your time, take advantage of tested practices, and leverage the capabilities that make sense to grow your company.
About Repfabric
Repfabric is a pioneering technology company specializing in sales effectiveness solutions for manufacturers, rep agencies, and wholesale/distributors. With a mission to enhance the productivity and profitability of sales professionals, Repfabric develops advanced CRM and sales management tools designed to optimize sales processes and increase efficiency. Committed to driving innovation and excellence, Repfabric leads the way in sales technology solutions, delivering measurable results and competitive advantages to their clients. For more information, please visit repfabric.com.
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