Have you ever experienced a moment where selling seemed effortless? With AI, this can be the new normal. ChatGPT can amplify performance and give your sales team the top-of-mind support they need to boost sales revenue.
A recent survey by Epsilon and GBH Insights discovered that 80% of customers are more likely to do business with a company if it offers a personalized customer experience. The majority (90%) stated that they find personalization appealing. To add, Mckinsey has shared that customers don’t just want personalization, they demand it.
Now, as a salesperson with limited time and resources, it is only possible to personalize some interactions. With multiple prospects and customers vying for your attention, you can’t focus on a single prospect in your database.
Is a CRM System the Solution to Your Prospect’s Expectations?
Most of the time, yes. A CRM system is an essential tool for several reasons:
- Unifies the team: a properly managed CRM tells managers, marketers, sales, and customer support reps what they should do next. First, define and target the right prospect. Then, disqualify prospects. Third, assess the problem/need, etc. Your CRM provides everyone (including customers) with their marching orders. There’s clarity about what to do and how to do it.
- Helps to enforce standards: imagine that you have a specific workflow or process you’d like your sales team to use when qualifying a prospect. Let’s say you need specific information from your prospect (e.g., validated contact info, a precise budget, and a clear timeframe). A CRM is a must-have; it gives your manager, co-workers, and leadership a clear understanding of (a.) what’s needed, (b.) what you’ve received so far, and (c.) it explains your progress (or lack thereof).
- Aggregates data over time: here’s an example – you’re managing a team of 10 sales reps who, collectively, have lost their last 25 deals. You have no idea why but executives are breathing down your neck, demanding that you turn things around. You read your sales rep’s notes and analyze the reports in your CRM. You discover that your organization offers 50% less than your competitors but charges 75% more. This explains the lost deals.
- Reports on performance: executives want each sales rep to hit quota. Is that happening right now? Profit per employee (sales rep) is down; it should be 4:1. Why isn’t this happening for us? Where are we falling short? CRM reports help you to answer performance questions.
As you can see, the value of your CRM is enormous. But still, sales teams are underperforming.
Data suggests that most salespeople:
- Don’t have a sales process (so they don’t know what to do)
- They don’t receive much in the way of support from their managers
- Most of the time, they don’t know what they’re doing wrong
Your salespeople aren’t the problem. A lack of systems and procedures is.
Combining CRM and ChatGPT is a straightforward way to provide your team with the support they need.
Let’s take a look at how CRM and ChatGPT can help your business increase sales:
1. Use CRM and ChatGPT to Qualify Prospects
Prospecting is hard, but it doesn’t have to be. Let’s say you’re a salesperson responsible for closing five prospects per month. Your sales manager has given you the specifics of your target audience; you know your ideal customer, and you know how to qualify them. What you don’t have is time. Use ChatGPT to build a starter list of prospects.
In our imaginary example, we’re a B2B salesperson looking for real estate brokerages in the Chicagoland area. We’re selling our real estate photography services, and we want to get our foot in the door with five brokerages this month.
We prompt ChatGPT with the following:
“List 150 real estate brokerages in the Chicagoland area.”
This list is outstanding.
In a few seconds, we’ve just generated a list of real estate brokerages to add to our list. We can do this for lots of other suburbs in the Chicagoland area. We can do this to differentiate between specific groups (e.g., real estate agents vs. Realtors). We can even do this based on size or any other variable, and we can do this in seconds.
Next, let’s say you’re paid on commission and responsible for generating your own supply of leads, and you have a quota to meet. Here’s how you do it.
- Use ChatGPT to build a targeted list of prospects in your desired location
- Verify your list with Google Bard
- Hire a virtual assistant agency to vet the list and verify that all of the details are accurate
- Load the verified list into your CRM
- Use the pitch workflows in your CRM (and your irresistible offer) to convert your list to prospects
- Take prospects through your sales process and close
The more targeted and precise your list, the more effective your offer will be.
*Note: The problem with AI is that it’s still learning. Google Bard, Open AI’s ChatGPT, and other tools are still not as accurate as they could be, but that’s changing. Does this mean these tools are no longer valuable? Not at all.
2. Use CRM and ChatGPT to Craft Your Pitch
You have a list of prospects. Now it’s time to craft your pitch.
To do that, you’ll want to speak with your manager to get a clear sense of the things you:
- Can/should say
- Cannot say
- Can but shouldn’t say
- Need to verify with legal before saying
- Should never say because they’re illegal
Now we’re going to reach out to ChatGPT for some ideas.
Here’s the query.
“I’m a photographer, and I sell staging and photography services. My service will help real estate agents sell homes faster. Please give me brief bullet points outlining how I can pitch my services to real estate agents while avoiding the stigma that comes with cold outreach.“
ChatGPT provided a list of 10 ideas.
Some of these ideas were generic and unhelpful (e.g., maintain an online presence – obvious). Others were helpful and it was possible to craft a pitch. Here are four of the workable ideas.
- Offer value upfront
- Develop partnerships
- Pursue referrals
- Collaborate on content
We decided to start with #1, “offer value upfront,” since it’s the option with the lowest barrier to entry. We asked ChatGPT for help again, and we received 10 ideas on ways to offer value upfront. Here’s a list of those ideas.
Here’s a list of the top ideas.
- Free educational resources
- Portfolio review
- Case studies
- Virtual staging samples
- Rewards for referrals
Any salesperson worth their salt can amplify these ideas.
Take #2, the portfolio review, for example. Which option is more compelling for your prospects?
- You offer to review the images in a real estate agent’s portfolio for a fee or
- You share the agent’s listings with prospective buyers and ask them what they think about their photos. If prospective buyers think their property photos are terrible, they want to know. You create an irresistible offer where you provide them with incredible staging and images free of charge. In exchange, they agree to share 10 of your referral kits (each month) with other real estate agents.
Which one would you choose?
Here’s another important detail to remember when working with AI.
Legalities.
If you decide to offer rewards for referrals, for example (#5), that could be a violation of RESPA, which would mean big trouble for you. The idea above (b) works because there are no fees or kickbacks whatsoever. This detail is the reason why you’ll need to vet and validate anything AI spits out. They’re assistants, nothing more. You still need to be in the driver’s seat.
3. Use CRM and ChatGPT to Write Follow-Up Emails
In a previous post, we mentioned that only 3% of your customers are ready to buy. This means 97% percent of your customers are not ready to buy. However, approximately 40% of your prospects will buy at some point in the future.
This is a huge opportunity if you’re willing to lean on your CRM and ChatGPT for assistance. So here’s the thing. If you’re like most people, you’ve mistakenly asked ChatGPT to write follow-up messages (e.g., emails, text, scripts) for you.
If you’re sending out follow-up emails that read like this:
“Hi Mr. Prospect,
We spoke two weeks ago, and I’m just following up to see if you had a chance to take a look at our offerings. Please get in touch with me soon to discuss.”
You’re a pest.
If you’re going to get results, you’ll need to take a value-driven approach that’s personalized.
Like this.
“Hi Mrs. Prospect,
Wow, Zillow says completed transactions have dropped by 22.5%! (crazy, right?). 15 of the Realtors in your office said they’ve lost a huge amount of business due to the recession. They’re worried a real estate crash is coming.
I’m offering some free info to help you convert your dead leads into new business. It takes five min. to explain, and there’s no obligation.
Interested?”
See the difference?
There’s a simple way you can get ChatGPT to help you with this.
Ask about customer problems.
“What are the red flags or signs that a real estate crash is coming?”
This information was confirmed with Google Bard, focusing the question on specific areas.
Once the data was returned, further research was done to confirm or deny information.
You can use the data from your CRM and ChatGPT to craft messages in a variety of contexts, including HR, customer support, marketing, sales copy, and even sales advice! Do your best to submit precise and accurate messages. The better you are at creating a precise question, the easier it will be to create a winning pitch, message, or response.
4. Use CRM and ChatGPT to Improve Sales Performance
Every salesperson needs feedback to grow. And this feedback isn’t always an easy thing to implement.
Let’s say your manager calls you into his office for a one-on-one and gives you the following feedback. “When you share pricing information, do it with confidence.” Helpful yes. Actionable, also, yes.
But how exactly is a salesperson supposed to implement this feedback?
Here’s the specific version of the question shared with ChatGPT.
“I’m a salesperson, and I’ve just had my one-on-one with my manager. She says I need to confidently share pricing information with prospects. How do I discuss price confidently with prospective customers?”
And here’s the response.
This is very impressive.
At first glance, this looks like generic advice that’s not really all that helpful. Look deeper at each of these responses.
Each of these responses (a.) approaches the fears around price from a different angle, (b.) provides the antidote to the fear that comes with price discussions. If you’re role-playing, for example, a good training partner will repeatedly hit you with worst-case scenarios. When they trip you up, or you stumble over your words and shut down (because you don’t know what to say), you’ll have clear indicators pointing to the areas that need improvement.
Take the feedback you’ve received from your manager and plug it into ChatGPT. Use your AI assistant to brainstorm and create a list of ideas you can use to boost sales. Then, test each of these ideas, working through them systematically to see which one improves your close rates.
Add notes about the specific strategies and tactics you’re focused on, so you’re aware of the items that produce consistent (positive) results over time. Test the winners against other winners, identifying the ideas that rise to the top over time.
Final Thoughts
CRM and ChatGPT are game changers in the right hands. When combined with an AI assist (i.e., ChatGPT), your CRM system enables you to anticipate every objection and question consistently over time. This upfront analysis and consistent listening make selling feel effortless and simple.
If you’re a data-driven organization, this could be your new normal, where most of your interactions with prospects end with you taking the order and closing the sale.
Pipeline CRM helps companies like yours decrease time-to-close, increase productivity by 50% or more, and boost sales by as much as 10x. Don’t take our word for it; let us show you how Pipeline can help you attract, win, and retain customers.
