Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way sales teams and marketers conduct their daily functions. However, despite all the current and projected advances (and benefits) surrounding AI in these departments, there are still far too many myths and fears that exist.
Here, we try to debunk some of these common myths and fears by trying to separate fact from fiction:
AI will Replace Jobs in Marketing and Sales
With all the recent advances when it comes to artificial intelligence, one common fear is that AI will replace the need for certain types of roles within the typical marketing or sales department. Industry leaders however often dispel this fear by stating that AI is at a stage where humans need to train themselves on how to use the technology to drive their goals and impact, without fearing about it taking their jobs.
This is where the right kind of training needs to be provisioned within organizations, to allow marketing and sales teams to have access to the right information surrounding the impact of AI to their role. AI can enable a marketer’s and sales person’s efforts by vastly reducing the time spent on certain repetitive tasks, by helping them sift through large quantities of customer data more easily, by sharing timely suggestions when it comes to who to reach out to when and with what type of messaging: these are just some of the basic examples of what AI can do to enable a marketing and salesperson as of today.
Also Catch -> Episode 153: Personalization and the Future of Sales with Collin Mitchell, Chief Evangelist at Humantic AI for more on AI
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AI-Powered Tools Are Too Expensive To Implement and Use
Newer technologies have their own set of benefits (and drawbacks), the secret lies in using the best of its capability to drive your own business goals.
While certain AI powered tools built specifically for enterprise use cases may seem too over the budget for smaller teams, the choice when it comes to AI powered tools are several today. ChatGPT for instance can be used by the smallest of teams by adopting the basic $20/month plan.
The secret lies in understanding what type and choices of AI powered tools are available in the market today and then making a final choice basis features, budgets and current expectations.
When it comes to implementation: drawing from point 1 above, with the right training, team members should learn how to use these tools to their advantage. It is not necessarily expensive to adopt and implement AI tools within an organization and moving toward an AI powered and data driven process is not necessarily an expensive feat either.
Non Tech Savvy Marketers and Salespeople Won’t be able to Cope with AI
AI powered tools, if implemented and used with the right framework can enable teams to work better. It can result in faster response times and greater accuracy.
Seeing that any modern organization today is expected to drive digital first experiences for end users and for members and employees within the organization, the secret lies in upgrading and updating systems with the right training happening in parallel.
Most industry leaders swear by the need to have their teams learn how to use AI prompts for instance to drive future output with those tools. While using any kind of martech or salestech today demands a certain level of technical expertise, the fact remains that non tech savvy professionals can easily be trained to jump onto the AI bandwagon without too many challenges.
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How is AI impacting marketing and Sales? Listen to this podcast episode for more:
End Note
Drift’s recent State of Marketing AI Report suggests that AI adoption is a top priority for marketers today. This would not be the case if the common myths and fears around AI were a 100 percent true.
While it is important to set up the right AI practices and frameworks before any kind of training, use or implementation, the industry trend today speaks to greater optimism when it comes to AI mainly due to its many benefits:
AI can save time and allow marketers to scale their efforts a lot faster than before; besides offering better personalization and segmentation capabilities, AI tools can help drive efficiency and accuracy. Over time, it can prove to be a lot more cost effective while providing brands a competitive advantage in the market, if used correctly.
For your Added Listening Pleasure: Ketan Karkhanis, EVP & GM, Sales Cloud, Salesforce speaks about the increasing use of AI in sales and marketing, hit the Play button now!
