What Is AI Cold Calling, and How Does It Work in Sales?

As a sales professional, you know how challenging cold calls can be. Prospects can be indifferent, even hostile, if you can get them on the phone in the first place. It can feel like a constant stream of rejection. But there's a reason why cold calling has been around for ages: it can lead to valuable deals, despite the low number of calls leading to a sale. And now, this sales technique is being augmented in a powerful new way: AI cold calling.

Thanks to AI cold calling, sales teams can work the phones more efficiently, with smarter strategies and higher likelihood of success. Let's explore AI cold calling and how you can take advantage of this new technology to boost your sales numbers.

• What is AI cold calling?
• The benefits of using AI in cold calling
• Best practices for successful AI cold calling

AI cold calling uses artificial intelligence to refine and improve the cold calling process. It helps reps build awareness of their products, form relationships with prospects, and close deals. Sales teams use AI tools, which mine CRM data, to improve the success rate of their cold calls. AI cold calling also helps sales professionals with manual tasks such as call scheduling, lead scoring, and more. This enables sales professionals to focus on nurturing relationships with potential customers.

It's important to note that AI cold calling differs from automated calls, or robocalls. With AI cold calling, human sales reps are still the ones interacting with prospects, but with a powerful digital assistant by their side — one that can dial numbers and record data, among other things.

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In a nutshell, AI is transforming the way cold calling works, making this traditionally tough sales tactic more powerful than ever. Let's take a closer look at the advantages of AI for boosting cold calling success.

• Note-taking and transcription: With AI sales tools, sales reps can devote their full attention to conversations, rather than multitasking between listening and manually taking notes. An accurate transcription becomes immediately accessible after the call, allowing sales reps to review the call and take next steps immediately. And if your AI sales tool is synced with your CRM, the system will automatically log the call for you so you can review it later.
• Conversation analysis: From sentiment analysis to voice modulation detection and keyword recognition, AI can give sales reps real-time feedback and insights. This enables reps to pivot if the conversation goes off track or a valuable opportunity arises from a prospect's response.
• Easier and more accurate lead scoring: Depending on your sales strategy and goals, AI can track key factors and score leads quickly to see which ones will offer the biggest benefit. Instead of manually assigning scores to a prospect, sales reps can let AI handle it — which means more time for human interactions and relationship building.
• Automated follow-ups: After sales reps make a cold call, AI can send automated follow-up emails to leads based on predetermined time frames. This keeps leads from falling through the cracks and drastically cuts down on administrative headaches for sales professionals.
• Personalized script generation: Creating personalized call scripts can be a time-consuming process. AI can use customer data to create a call script tailored to the prospect, giving reps a starting point.
• Follow-up call planning: By using AI sales tools, sales reps can ensure that after making that first cold call, they hit the right notes during crucial follow-up conversations.
• Coaching: AI's ability to mine data for insights is a huge benefit to sales teams. It can analyze cold-call transcripts to identify common roadblocks and provide guidance to circumvent those problems and close a sale.

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Considering how to implement AI cold calling into your sales operations? Use these best practices to ensure a successful cold calling process.

Kick things off by incorporating features that address specific pain points in your sales process, such as time-consuming manual tasks like note-taking or lead scoring. Additionally, survey your reps to see what they're struggling with during cold calls, such as script generation or follow-up calls. One way to ease your team into using an AI cold calling tool is to introduce it gradually, with your most receptive reps learning the ropes before implementing it into the entire organization. AI in sales can work wonders if your team understands its value and how best to use it, so be sure to communicate its benefits and offer training early on.

To get the most out of an AI cold calling tool, it's crucial to integrate it with your CRM. Machine learning allows AI to learn and improve by analyzing past interactions and other key data stored in your CRM. By parsing data from transcripts and notes supplied by reps, your AI cold calling tool will continue to improve the way it generates call scripts, helps score leads, and coaches sales professionals.

Review key metrics to see what's working and what's falling short. Using AI for cold calls is not a set-it-and-forget-it motion. You must continually measure ways to tweak your AI tools for better performance, but you might also discover that certain functions should revert back to human reps. For example, analyze how your AI cold-calling tool handles lead scoring, and compare it to metrics from when humans handled that process. If your team uses AI-generated call scripts but struggles to convert prospects, review how your AI product has been handling this action to see what's not working.

Local privacy laws and regulations can be a sticking point, so review your AI sales tools to ensure they're 100% compliant. Recording calls and the storage of customer data are two common areas where rules and regulations can be complex. When adopting a cold-calling tool, do your due diligence beforehand to confirm that the provider's product aligns with privacy laws in your market. It's also important to train staff regularly to ensure they understand regulations and how to use AI tools appropriately.

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While AI cold calling tools can do a lot for sales teams looking to increase productivity and personalization, they are not a replacement for the human touch. Emotional intelligence and empathy are distinctly human traits that currently cannot be replicated by technology. Instead, AI can intelligently partner with human reps for greater efficiency and actionable insights. Sales teams that embrace this dynamic collaboration will not only see their cold-calling success rates soar, but they will also watch their bottom line grow.

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