External sales are still in circulation, but are declining compared to internal sales. Thanks to the back office, companies can lower costs and increase their efficiency thanks to digital technology.
One of the technologies designed to improve this is Ciara, the first digital virtual assistant for sales people. According to the founders of Ciara, they are in the process of creating the "Alexa for sales calls".
This means that Ciara can fully understand a conversation. Based on this understanding, it will teach sales people real-time sales promotion skills.
Why is this particularly important? According to Salesforce, sales reps only spend 34% of their time selling. They spend the rest of their time entering data, making offers, and other tasks. And these tasks keep them away from customers, which means that their quotas are missed.
As internal sales continue to grow, companies need to train, integrate and provide the resources they need more efficiently. Konstantin Krauss, one of the co-founders of Ciara, addressed precisely this point in the press release.
Krauss says: “The job market for sales staff is growing day by day. For SaaS companies or other industries that typically sell at a distance to be successful, they need to quickly upgrade their employees, provide them with sales resources, and give them access to training. We are happy to offer Ciara on the market to help on all these fronts! "
The Ciara platform is driven by the success of AI and real-time communication that is currently being used by virtual assistants. Alexa is a good example of this.
As a sales assistant in the office, Ciara has playbooks with which sales staff can provide the right answers. With real-time support, Ciara offers actionable advice on customer calls. And while a sales call is taking place, an employee in Ciara can take notes. This information can then be synchronized with CRM solutions such as Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive.
In addition, sales teams can create custom and interactive sales guides, manage playbooks, and structure their sales phone calls. With the existing Playbook, sales staff can quickly answer customer questions about competition, prices and new product functions. And the more you use Ciara, the better it will be if you learn from daily interactions.
Ciara can be a training tool for new candidates. Not only by providing relevant data, but also by structuring their phone calls as they gain more experience. This enables new hires to increase their sales success early in their development.
Internal sales are growing due to the way consumers and businesses are now interacting with technology. When someone wants to buy a product or service, they first look for it online. By the time they make the purchase decision, they have all the information they need. And in most cases they make the first contact.
Whether by email, chat or phone call, this contact is made to a sales representative. How the employees react determines whether the customer will continue the purchase. This underlines the importance of adequate training and the provision of the right tools.
Although digital virtual assistants have not yet been used for indoor sales, this makes sense. After all, the questions customers ask sellers come from play books. If the virtual assistant can answer all the questions in the game book, it means more time for the seller to make sales.
Ciara is now available for free here.
Image: Depositphotos.com
