Pipeline Management Strategy for More Wins

              One of the things I like to track are stories I heard in kindergarten that persist through life.  The Emperor’s New Clothes is one of them.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in meetings, listening to what is being discussed and ideas explored and wanted to yell out, “THE EMPEROR IS NAKED”. ...

                The last seven blogs provide a business-case approach to infusing AI through the entire sales process.  One of the purposes of this blog series was to demystify AI by using AI for Sales as an  example.  Media tends to portray AI as a magic bullet.  Actual implementations show the less “black box” an AI solution is and the more “glass box” approach, the more utility it provides to the user.  The utility is created by uncovering the key drivers of an outcome and managing those drivers to increase results. ...

                  Ever had the situation where: an important sales opportunity is in danger because of inactivity and it goes unnoticed; the opportunity is sold but they don’t have the budget till next quarter so the sales rep needs to “stay close”; or the opportunity wants to buy but “isn’t there yet” and needs further ongoing education?   ...

                  I mentioned in my first blog on AI for Sales, when you hear the phrase “AI for sales forecasting” it feels like the solution is an algorithm to predict “the sales number”.  This is only partially correct.  While the ultimate goal is an accurate sales forecast, AI for sales forecasting requires artificial intelligence to be infused throughout the entire sales process.   The last 6 blogs have walked through different AI use cases for each of the different areas supporting the sales process to build a foundation for applying AI to create a more accurate sales forecast.  With that background we are ready to review AI use cases for calculating different versions of the sales forecast. ...

                  This is the second of two blogs reviewing artificial intelligence use cases to support sales pipeline accuracy.    The first blog focused on artificial intelligence for guided selling. Guided selling is key to maintaining a realistic sales pipeline by ensuring that sales team rigor, discipline and process are consistent across all opportunities. This blog focuses on sales pipeline management and sales rep coaching.  It includes tools to help: ...

              The next two blogs cover AI for the sales pipeline.  This blog focuses on AI for guided selling.  Guided selling is the process of prescribing optimal sales execution steps to the sales reps to enforce an efficient sales process.  The tasks and process are based on sales patterns of past close-won, and close-lost opportunities.  Guided selling is key to maintaining a realistic sales pipeline. ...

                  An accurate sales forecast requires a crystal clean sales pipeline.  A crystal clean sales pipeline requires a deep history on most buyer/seller interactions for each opportunity.  By having a deep history of these interactions you can apply AI to identify buyer patterns and better guide the sales process.   Unfortunately most sales organizations do not have enough information about each opportunity to apply AI to assist in the sales process. ...

                  The topic of artificial intelligence [AI] for Marketing covers many different areas including content delivery, content generation, social media, personalizing emails, attribution, and optimizing lead gen, just to name a few.  This blog focuses on applying AI in the marketing funnel for optimizing lead gen and marketing attribution[MTA].  ...