Are Bots The Future Of Sales?

The rate at which technology has been developing over the last several decades has been nothing
short of outstanding. The most prominent changes of this sort can be observed in the IT industry,
with each year bringing its share of innovative new devices, applications, and services. One of the
up-an-coming technologies which has been creating a lot of buzz in recent times is artificial
intelligence. Increasingly sophisticated AI algorithms are starting to see more and more use by
businesses from all sectors. As AI in business is quickly becoming the new norm, sales leaders and
business development professionals are trying to figure out how to use these technologies to better
serve their clients.
What AI brings to the table first and foremost is a way for businesses to improve their operations in
two key areas: information analysis and communication. Having quality, up-to-date data about their
existing, as well as prospecting customers is vital for sales representatives that work in the online
environment. Equally important for closing deals is the ability to communicate with customers at
each stage of the sales funnel. In what follows, we will explore how exactly does having an AI on
your side help businesses in their attempts to gather information and communicate with their clients
and customers.

The Role of AI in Modern Business

Sales teams work with data on a regular basis. The better informed a salesperson is, the better the
service he or she can provide to customers and clients. Unfortunately, the web modern-day web is
full of dubious, poorly-justified information, and there is more being uploaded every day. It is
therefore necessary to use all available means to sift through the proverbial dirt to find nuggets of
data that you can actually use. As we will see, AI-based software is the perfect candidate for
performing this kind of tedious, but nonetheless essential work.
The other cornerstone of modern sales is communication. Modern means of exchanging information
at a distance has allowed businesses to keep in touch with their clientele before, after, and during
the process of making a sale. However, with the proliferation of instant-messaging applications in
the online world, customers now expect to get a response to their queries withing 24 hours of asking
a question. Small businesses with a limited staff can have a hard time responding to everyone on
such short notice, which is why AI-driven communication assistants are starting to see more and
more use.

Bot Basics
A bot is the most commonly used piece of AI tech on the market today. Simply put, a bot is a piece
of software that is programmed to automatically perform a limited set of tasks. Bots are not very
powerful in terms of what they can do, but they can accomplish their predefined tasks at speed
unmatched by humans. They can also do these tasks indefinitely, whereas a human would quickly
get bored by doing the same thing over and over again. This makes bots excellent candidates for
doing repetitive work that requires little supervision. Various kinds of bots are becoming
increasingly available on the market, allowing small businesses to find one that suits their budget
and needs with little difficulty. Some established uses of bots include:
Big Data Analysis
The adoption of various information technologies into our day-to-day life has led to the generation
and storing of large amounts of digital data on a regular basis. This data is rife with patterns that
businesses can exploit for creating better sales strategies, provided they know how to extract them
from the sea of information. This is easier said than done due to the sheer size of the data-sets up for
analysis. Going through such data manually is next to impossible, so businesses are outsourcing this
kind of work to bots.
Through a process called machine learning, bots can be trained to scour data to find specific
patterns in customer behavior, or they can be left to work without any supervision in order to find
previously unobserved trends.

Personalized Marketing
Another way to use bots to increase sales, is by having them track customer preferences and
behavior in order to recommend additional purchases by means of cross-selling and upselling. This
is the model Amazon has successfully been using for years – just how many times you have added
an additional product to your online shopping basket on account of Amazon's "frequently bought
together" item suggestions.
The same principle can be applied to digital marketing in general. Bots can be used to monitor
various kind of marketing campaigns in order to provide various sorts of data about consumers,
including their behavior on social media, purchasing decisions, time spent on site, etc. This data can
then be used to gauge which kind marketing campaign is best suited for a particular demographic,
or even a specific customer.
It is even possible to take things a step further, and allow bots to making marketing decisions on
their own. This kind of automation is most often used for lead nurturing in email marketing
campaigns. Bot can keep track of how a customer interacts with a particular business in order to
send them the right kind of content at the right moment, increasing the odds of them converting
down the line.

Chatbots
So far we have talked about using bots solely for behind-the-scenes tasks, but their utility for sales
doesn't stop there. Bots are now widely being used as tools for increasing customer engagement by
acting as conversation partners online. The best example of this is a chatbot, a piece of software that
can interpret user voice or text-based input, and provide output that resembles natural language.
Chatbots are widely used for providing 24/7 customer support, for searching for information online,
and even for completing sales, all without direct supervision. Some customers even seem to prefer
bots to live people in specific contexts, as they are able to provide information they need in a more
timely, consistent manner.

Conclusion
With the digital market becoming more competitive with each passing year, businesses are taking
every advantage they can get to ensure they come out on top. Bots are a prime example of this
tendency, as they allow sales teams to automate the more tedious tasks they have to do each day,
giving them more time to explore the more creative aspects of their work.