It's a pretty common idea to have sales and marketing teams work together on an account-based marketing strategy.
But most companies fall short when it comes to execution.
This usually happens because of misalignment between sales and marketing, which leads to missed opportunities.
Sometimes, the sales team focuses on meeting their daily quota of touchpoints. That causes them to lose focus and not spend enough time on hot leads.
Other times, the marketing team fails to generate quality leads, which results in an influx of unqualified leads. Sales reps waste a lot of time working these leads, causing frustration and trust issues between sales and marketing.
There's a better way:
Combine your current sales engagement platform (think Outreach or SalesLoft) with an AI automated virtual assistant.
An AI automated virtual assistants scale new lead qualification while nurturing promising leads and qualifying those ready to talk—all without growing headcount.
These assistants act as digital teammates working alongside marketing and sales to ensure you follow up with, nurture, and qualify all leads at scale.
That helps you schedule more meetings for sales reps using automated, personalized, and contextual responses and follow-ups over email, chat, and SMS.
In fact, our data shows that organizations that have used AI-powered assistants to enable sales have attained:
- 3x more SQLs without adding headcount.
- 35% increase in rep productivity.
- 19.5% increase in quota attained.
- 25% more qualified leads handed over to sales.
Scale ABM by Combining AI and Sales Engagement Tools
Sales engagement tools like HubSpot or SalesLoft give users the ability to execute outreach at scale. They also empower sales to automate and streamline the sales process, saving time and money.
When you combine these tools with AI assistants, there are massive benefits.
No Lead Gets Left Behind
Sales reps often focus their time on top-tier leads. But where does that leave lower-tier leads who have potential but aren't ready to convert?
They often get left behind. They fall through the cracks or get ignored.
This is where an AI automated virtual assistant can help. AI does all the heavy lifting to convert colder leads through outreach and nurturing. Once qualified, it hands off leads to a live sales rep.
It takes an average of sixteen touchpoints to get a response from a lead. Most live reps give up after the first no. As a result, most leads end up unconverted because sales teams lack the bandwidth to follow up.
You Take a More Proactive Approach
When you combine AI with your sales engagement tools, you automatically enter inbound leads into the qualification process.
AI does the heavy lifting and categorizes inbound leads based on their characteristics. No more leads waiting around to be scored. If and when the lead becomes qualified, it gets automatically handed off to sales.
Augment Sales and Marketing Productivity
Automation and AI are the driving forces behind digital transformation. Using this technology with the tools you already have, you have an unprecedented ability to increase ROI, improve efficiency, and increase productivity.
To learn more about how AI is redefining the lead nurturing and qualification processes while reducing costs, click here.
Yael Darom
Yael Darom is Head of Marketing at Exceed.ai, a conversational AI marketing platform that helps you engage every lead and set more qualified meetings.