Utilizing artificial intelligence to humanize your business
Everyone is always talking about the importance of networking. People take courses to learn effective networking strategies and pay good money to attend conferences and events that tout exclusive networking events. A lot of these strategies and events are aimed at growing your network-adding influential individuals from your industry or discipline to your personal Rolodex, thus expanding your own influence. One key but the often overlooked goal of networking is how to better leverage your current network to drive outcomes for the business. The true art of networking is growing and fostering relationships. Regardless of your industry, building healthy and actionable client relationships is extremely important for your business and it all starts with your CRM.
Most CRM platforms require manual data collection from multiple sources. This information is condensed into comprehensive files that can be used for future reference. Data cleanliness and integrity are of the utmost importance. AI-driven CRM solutions use intelligent algorithms to clean up the data and make it easily comprehensible with incredible speed and accuracy. These platforms function on the concept of ‘Relationship Intelligence.’
Professional relationships can only be efficiently utilized if your organization has insights into:
- When is the ideal time to outreach current and prospective customers?
- How the customer <> account manager relationship should be structured?
- What is the purpose of each customer touch-point?
Relationship Intelligence helps you find comprehensive answers to these questions by condensing all of your client data into lucid and actionable insights. Transactional data, social contacts, data about the client’s behavior and activities are all collected and analyzed to paint a 3-dimensional picture that helps you figure out how to be a strategic partner for your customers. In essence, it is a very ‘Kubrick- esque’ concept in the way that it forms an all-around, dynamic picture of the client, sort of like an intelligent hologram.
What this all boils down to; CRM automation software seamlessly compiles data into customized relationship maps, removing human error from the data entry and analysis equation. These programs work faster and more efficiently and save your employees time so they have more energy to form concrete, human relationships with clients on an interpersonal level. Customized relationship maps can positively impact your business in multiple aspects:
What if you could hire your sales team based on who they know? If you could understand which industries salespeople have contacts in and how strong those relationships are you can avoid hiring salespeople with contacts already within your database. Relationship maps are an incredibly effective way of finding out the depth and extent of a person’s professional contacts. These maps can help you objectively determine whether a candidate actually knows the hotshot CFO they claim to know. Apart from bringing in key accounts for your company, relationship maps can also help you determine how driven and experienced a candidate is. Consult the map to find out whether your potential employee actually closed the million-dollar deal they told you about.
Build strong teams:
Once the candidates are hired, these maps help you figure out their areas of expertise. By understanding the entire who’s who of your employees’ professional contacts, you can build more effective field teams that completely leverage your employees’ personal and professional networks. Allotting work according to a team’s ‘relationship territory’ has proven to be far more effective than doing so solely based on geographical location.
Grow your database
Statistics show that over 80% of all complex purchases start with a simple referral. The purchase then finally comes to fruition after consulting five to six decision-makers. Relationship maps help you pinpoint the influential decision-makers so that your sales team knows who to deal with every step of the way. Relationship intelligence and mapping are critical to widening, institutionalizing, and de-risking a client relationship.
The entire purpose of investing time and other resources into a CRM is to build a credible data repository; a database that can systematically store and process all the information about your clients. Automated CRM solutions do the job for your organization effectively in a time-bound manner while your sales executives can focus on the human aspect of the process. This blend of cutting-edge automation and human intelligence is already changing the way companies interact with clients. With innovations being made every day, it is safe to say that these intelligent systems will be an absolute game-changer.
Originally published at https://jodyglidden.substack.com.
