AI for Sales Teams: Measuring Activity, Coaching, and Pipeline Impact
If you’re in sales, you’re probably already using AI for proposal generation, targeted emails, and lead scoring. If you aren’t using AI, you may want to start; there’s an overwhelming amount of data showing that AI-enabled sales teams outperform those who don’t use it.
88% of sales staff say it enables them to meet targets, and revenue gains from AI are more likely to be reported by people in sales and marketing, according to Salesforce. It eliminates the guesswork of sales and makes the entire process data-driven.
The question isn’t if you should be using AI, it’s how you should be deploying it. Using CoPilot or Gemini for emails, proposals, and other collateral is just the start. To keep up with a volatile economy and longer sales cycles, your team must use AI strategically. Specifically, automating low-value tasks, refining lead generation and scoring, and sales coaching.
Maximize Sales Efficiency by Automating Non-Selling Tasks
Ideally, 100% of a salesperson’s time is spent on “selling” tasks, which include sales calls and closing deals. A recent Forrester study found that sales staff spend 65% of their time on non-selling tasks like writing reports, attending sales meetings, timekeeping, and CRM updates. Automating these updates requires identifying the tasks and building an agent that reliably handles the process; the latter is typically what keeps this from happening.
You don’t need to build an AI agent for each task; the ability to automate usually resides in the tools you’re working in. Most CRMs, for example, have AI capabilities that enable automatic updates triggered by key events, such as a deal being marked as closed. It’s worth auditing the tools you’re using to determine if what you need for your team is available before exploring other solutions. If you have to do that, there are several AI tools on the market that are built specifically for sales.
Sales meetings and other management updates may be the most problematic non-selling tasks on the list. For meetings, reduce the frequency or number of attendees where possible and set time limits for speakers. Salespeople are naturally good at talking, but this can make meetings inefficient and time-consuming. Remember, every minute your people are at internal meetings is a minute they’re not selling. Quick weekly standups are fine; hours-long weekly meetings are not.
To reduce the frequency of management updates, consider a productivity management solution like Prodoscore, which provides AI insights into productivity and meaningful feedback to your staff.
Leveraging AI to Measure Sales Activity
The strategic deployment of AI must be grounded in actionable data. Sales activity is the fundamental driver of performance: if a sales rep is not engaging in high-value activities, they cannot close high-value deals.
For managers, understanding and quantifying this activity is not just about tracking time; it is the essential input for accurate sales forecasting and targeted coaching. By shifting focus from simply tracking results to measuring and optimizing the underlying activities that drive them, managers can proactively influence behavior, identify bottlenecks, and ensure the entire team is focusing its efforts on tasks proven to generate revenue.
AI-Powered Sales Coaching and Skills Development
Even the most skilled salesperson can use a boost. AI sales coaching tools can listen in on your meetings and offer feedback, sometimes even in real time. Again, some CRMs include this capability or offer it as an add-on, so check first before buying another tool. Salesforce recommends looking for the following in an AI coaching app:
- CRM integration
- Roleplaying (being able to bounce hypothetical situations off your coach)
- Security and compliance (firewalling of sensitive company data)
- Speech and sentiment analysis
Real-time AI coaching solves problems immediately by offering helpful feedback. Prodoscore, our employee monitoring solution, provides additional coaching for employees and managers, and helps your sales team build a template for star performers. It’s tool-agnostic and measures activity across multiple solutions and during meetings and calls. It’s quick to install and non-invasive, ensuring you maintain a high-trust culture.
Prodoscore uses predictive analytics to gauge when team members are overwhelmed, who may be at risk of disengagement, and other workforce analytics you can’t afford to be without.
Once you have insights into how your star team members spend their workdays, you can use that insight as a blueprint for success for the rest of your team. Not only will that data boost performance, but your sales managers will also improve their forecasting abilities.
Between automating low-level tasks, visualizing valuable activity, and getting real-time coaching, your sales team will be armed with the tools to meet their sales quotas.
