You might not see how Artificial Intelligence can play a part in your b2b lead generation strategy at first glance. But, dig a little deeper and you’ll see that machine learning can help you identify even more leads.
While we are not saying robots should replace your sales team, AI could well be your MVP. Some marketers are already using it to identify more prospects. But it doesn’t stop there. It also helps them to improve their understanding of existing prospects and customers.
Let’s look at the 3 stages of using Artificial Intelligence to aid your lead generation:
Deeper understanding of your leads
Machines are better, or at least more efficient and accurate, at analysing and translating data. That’s not only from a time-consuming point of view but also for a deeper insight.
Allowing AI to access your existing data is the gateway to better lead generation, boosting your success. This helps you deliver better intelligence to your sales and marketing teams. Which in turn, enables you to focus on the right leads at the right time.
Getting that perfect storm of the right time, leads and methods, makes for more focus on closing.
Identify shiny new leads
AI can identify new leads and prospects suited to your ideal customer make up from existing data. Arming your sales and marketing teams with leads you may not have identified before.
By injecting your marketing channels and database, AI can provide you with the most accurate insights available. As well as identifying new pots of potential customers, it will also drop your non-engaged data.
In other words, AI will identify the contacts you are mailing to on a weekly basis that will never convert. This gives you the option to remove this part of your data, so you are only focusing on leads that matter.
This is the perfect way to align your sales and marketing teams, who we all know are famous for not getting on!
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Convert leads and close deals
Artificial intelligence will highlight your leads most likely to convert, and when.
According to the IDC, the average salesperson spends 68% of their time researching. That leaves only 32% of the time for admin, calling and closing. That simply isn’t enough time. But it is a proven fact that salespeople who use their time efficiently will convert more deals.
So, hand that 68% of research time over to AI and you’ve freed up over half the working week. This means your sales team can focus on converting leads and closing deals.
We have recently partnered with AI experts, BrightTarget. They reported customers enjoying a 34% reduction in sales activity, and a 12% increase on lead conversion. Work smarter, not harder.
