Does it feel like your sales experts have to sacrifice personalization and thorough research for scale—and vice versa? Or like they’re constantly caught between endless prospecting tasks and hitting aggressive targets? Without an explosion in team headcount, it can be challenging to balance quality and quantity while juggling prospecting, outreach, lead qualification, and forward-thinking strategy.
Now comes the good news! That vision of your sales team firing on all cylinders, perfectly timing every pitch, closing deals left and right with no signs of slowing down? It’s just a few strategically-chosen AI sales enablement tools away–with studies showing that sales teams using AI tools are 1.3 times as likely to see revenue growth.
Learn how AI can support sales enablement efforts so your team can improve buyer engagement, drive quicker sales cycles, and unlock more revenue.
Can AI Improve Sales Enablement?
These days, it feels like everyone is using AI. But can it actually improve sales enablement? Let’s break it down.
Sales enablement describes anything that helps sales teams engage buyers and close deals as effectively as possible. This includes processes, tools, and strategies that align sales and marketing efforts, streamline workflows, and enhance buyer experiences.
AI takes these efforts to the next level by offering unparalleled automation, personalization, and data-driven insights. Forrester’s enablement and AI report found that revenue teams are leveraging AI to improve sales enablement, including:
- Using generative AI to create and refine content and learning pathways
- AI-guided pitch practice and scoring to sharpen seller effectiveness
- AI-powered dubbing and transcription to engage multilingual audiences
- AI-driven creation of quizzes and learning checkpoints to reinforce knowledge
- It’s like having a tireless, multilingual coach who never runs out of creative ways to help your team shine!
By integrating AI into their sales enablement strategies, organizations are unlocking higher productivity, optimizing sales cycles, and creating tailored, memorable buyer journeys that drive results. In a world where 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience, AI can help your buyers stay independent–without compromising personalization, responsiveness, or the human touch buyers still value when making complex decisions.
How to Use AI in Sales Enablement
Whether your team is struggling with touchpoint quality or quantity, AI can help. Here are some ways to use AI to optimize your sales enablement efforts.
1. Implement Automated Demos
Is your sales team booked up with meetings that aren’t converting? Or spending all their time personalizing demos for every lead? Even the most talented sales experts won’t see desired close rates if their calendars are full of unqualified introductory demo calls or endless product walkthroughs for low-potential leads.
You’re on the right track—your buyers absolutely need to see your product in action in order to make a decision and move forward with your solution. But that doesn’t mean you have to hold their hand as they discover it. Sharing automated demos is among the most impactful best practices for sales enablement because it puts your buyers in the driver’s seat and allows them to experience the power of your solution for themselves. That way, when they do hop on a call with your sales team, they’re already just a hairsbreadth away from saying, “Sign me up!”
With AI-powered, demo automation software tools like Consensus, your team can deliver personalized and deeply relevant product tours and interactive demos—all without eating away at your sales experts’ calendars. The platform asks your buyers about their key challenges and objectives to build a demo experience that delights and converts. Your buyers get what they want—a self-guided buying experience—and your sales teams save valuable time and energy.
Consensus is more than a demo automation software—the tool becomes a critical partner in buyer enablement and sales acceleration. Consensus users see 50% larger deal sizes, double their number of deals, and reduce their sales cycle by 30%.
Close more deals with Demo Automation
2. Personalize Customer Outreach
Repetitive follow-ups that just say, “Hey, bumping this message!” aren’t the most interesting or engaging. They waste both your team’s time and your buyer’s attention.
Instead, get personal and share resources your buyers actually need by using AI to craft highly targeted, meaningful content. AI tools can analyze buyer data to recommend and deliver insights, case studies, and tailored demos that align with specific buyer priorities.
With solutions like Consensus, you can customize demos and product tours to align with individual pain points and priorities. You can use Consensus to personalize your buyer’s journey at every stage and move your high-interest and high-value clients along with lead forms and CTAs integrated right into your interactive demos.
3. Automate Manual Sales Tasks
Without the right tools, your sales team could spend all their time on repetitive tasks like lead data entry, meeting scheduling, and writing follow-up emails.
When you assign those tasks to AI or automated workflows, your sales experts are freed up to focus on high-impact responsibilities like refining strategies, closing deals, and building strong customer relationships. AI can handle everything from automating personalized email sequences to scheduling calls and generating summaries from CRM systems.
4. Support Sales Coaching
Even the most talented sales experts benefit from coaching, but prioritizing time for mentoring and feedback can be tough on busy teams.
To scale coaching efforts, sales teams can use AI-powered tools like Gong to analyze reps’ calls, identify patterns in their closing techniques, and recommend areas for improvement. Some tools even offer real-time feedback during calls, helping reps refine their messaging and positioning while they work.
5. Record and Analyze Sales Calls
It’s all too easy to get caught up in the flow of a sales call—only to forget key takeaways and next steps. AI tools can help by recording your team’s sales calls, providing detailed summaries, and analyzing the conversations.
AI can pinpoint key objections and customer sentiment and then suggest the best messaging techniques for improving call outcomes. With complete records and instant suggestions based on relevant trends, teams can see improved close rates and more revenue.
6. Optimize Lead Qualification
There are only so many hours in a day, and even sales teams with the best tools and processes must be selective in which leads to prioritize. Using AI tools to optimize lead qualification means more accurate analysis of lead quality and better predictions around purchase likelihood.
For example, automated lead scoring plays a key role in the future of AI in presales. AI tools can assess your prospects based on data from various sources, bringing insights together to create a robust view of engagement levels and likely purchasing outcomes. For example, you could use Consensus to send targeted demos and then use the platform’s in-depth Demolytics to find out who is watching, engaging with, and sharing your demos.
With accurate engagement information in the palm of your hand, you can focus your time and effort on the most promising leads.
7. Improve Sales Forecasting
Businesses need accurate sales forecasts to mindfully plan budgets and guide hiring decisions. AI tools can integrate data from across your organization and the broader market to provide useful predictions for the future of your sales and revenue goals. These AI-powered forecasts help businesses allocate resources strategically—and pivot plans where necessary.
8. Streamline Content Creation
A successful sales process requires targeted content for every buyer stage. Between presales materials, outreach messages, and content aimed at buyer enablement, the demand for high-quality, expert content is endless. You can use AI and automation tools to simplify and speed up the content creation process by producing helpful first drafts, making editing suggestions, and consolidating research all in one place.
AI and automation content creation tools range from generative AI solutions to product tour software and demo automation tools.
9. Predict Buyer Behaviors
Accurate forecasting and a targeted follow-up approach stem from predictions about buyer behaviors. Use AI to dig into the exact pain points motivating your buyers using existing buyer data from sales calls, marketing performance, and more. Then, shorten your sales cycle with interactive demos, meaningful calls, and personalized content with predictive analytics.
For example, with Consensus’ Demolytics, you can access high-leverage, stakeholder insights. With every demo you send, your team can analyze view time, number of videos watched, number of tours viewed, level of engagement with each topic, and shares with other stakeholders. Your team can craft a strategy that resonates with each buyer, ultimately accelerating the sales cycle and driving higher conversion rates.
10. Enable Self-Guided Buying
High-pressure, “call-and-close” sales structures are out. Buyer enablement is in.
With so many options on the market for just about every type of tool, your buyers understandably need some time to get to know your solution before they pull the trigger. Investing in a new product requires team alignment, a thorough understanding of budget implications, and a clear picture of how that product will actually improve their day-to-day.
AI tools can support self-guided buying by creating tailored content libraries and or as interactive chatbots that provide relevant information quickly. Sales teams can also use AI to automate demos and product tours to get some of their time back. AI demos and product tours put your buyers in the driver’s seat so they can watch the benefits of your products unfold for themselves—without requiring endless live demos from your sales team.
Using Consensus, sales teams can automate several demo types with intelligent demo automation software. You can quickly scale your buyer enablement and education process while gaining useful insights and distributing highly shareable content among your stakeholders.
Book a call with our team to see what you can achieve with automated demos.
AI Sales Enablement Best Practices
Investing in sales enablement AI tools can trigger drastic positive change for your sales team. But it’s not always as easy as clicking “install” and suddenly seeing higher conversions. Lean on these best practices to make sure your AI sales enablement tools work for you and your team.
Set Measurable KPIs and Goals
Before you adopt an AI sales enablement tool, take time with your sales team to set measurable KPIs and goals surrounding the tool’s outcomes. These conversations lend visibility into the purpose of each tool and allow your team to accurately track success.
For example, a sales team adopting Consensus might set immediate measurable goals around the volume of automated demos produced and shared. Some goals should also focus on the results associated with the new tool, such as “Reduce sales cycle length by 15%” or “Increase win rate by “25%.” (Psst, if you’re wondering, Consensus customers have far surpassed those stats with 30% faster sales cycles and 2X deals closed!)
KPIs like these show your team if the tool and implementation strategy is on the right track over time. With the right suite of AI solutions, you should be able to measure meaningful value over time.
Ensure Data Quality and Security
As with any analysis tool, AI analytics are only as accurate as the data you feed them. Build in processes around data cleaning and data quality to see maximum benefits from AI tools. Inconsistencies, repetitive data points, or inaccurate entries can quickly turn a meaningful, actionable pattern into an unreadable mess. For example, if your AI tools pull from a team dashboard detailing buyer touchpoints but your team doesn’t keep the dashboard updated, the AI can’t produce meaningful insights for your team. Investing in strong data quality practices allows you to lean on your data and your AI tools as a source of truth and guidance.
It’s also your responsibility to ensure any AI tools operating within your business are respectful of buyer data and follow rigorous data security practices. Protect sensitive customer information and dig into ethical data practices as you decide which AI tools to invest in. With this approach, you can keep your business compliant while also honoring your relationship and trust with your buyers and customers.
Provide Training and Support for Adoption
Just as the sales cycle is multifaceted and very complex, many AI solutions also come with their own challenges and nuances. Train your team thoroughly as you adopt a new AI tool, and check in with added support on a regular basis.
AI tools are constantly evolving, and your investment in AI solutions will only go as far as your team’s acceptance and implementation of them. With so many tasks and ideas to juggle, sales teams need targeted training to understand exactly how each new tool can make their process easier, faster, and more effective.
Balance Automation with Personalization
In sales, both quality and quantity determine success. With a balance of tools designed for automation and personalization, sales teams can see meaningful growth not only in their numbers and prospecting database, but also in their conversion rates and revenue trends. Automation tools help boost that quantity, while AI personalization solutions seamlessly improve the quality of every interaction. For example, a CRM’s automation tools can help you scale up your outreach efforts and increase buyer touchpoints. From there, sharing personalized content with tools like Consensus help you make the most out of every conversation by addressing each buyer’s specific needs.
Of course, no matter which AI tools you bring into your sales process, there’s no substitute for a talented human sales expert. AI can be a powerful ally, but it’s your sales professionals who bring the vision, expertise, and strategic thinking that turns data into relationships and insights into action.
Embrace the AI-Powered Future of Sales Enablement
Your team of talented sales experts deserves the chance to excel.
Less prospecting, more closing.
Less “Just following up!” and more “I’m so glad you found value in the interactive demo.”
Less endless digging, more instant access to the right resources, right on time.
Less “We don’t have capacity to increase message output,” and more, “Look how we’ve scaled in the last few months!”
The key difference between a stuck sales team and one with sky-high conversion rates? A strategic suite of AI tools. The sales teams that embrace the AI-powered future of sales enablement are those primed for exponential growth and smooth scaling in the near future.
The right set of tools differs for every team, but one tool you shouldn’t skip? Consensus. This interactive demo software turns your sales team into a powerhouse of relevant, personalized content. Send over self-led product tours and automated demos all without eating away at team calendars, then watch as your potential buyers distribute that content throughout their team of stakeholders. Teams using Consensus close 2X more deals 30% faster. How’s that for efficiency?
