For many businesses, AI is like a new star recruit who everyone feels nervous around and cautious about. This is largely because of the myths that still persist about AI taking jobs, requiring employees to become data scientists and machine learning experts.
And yet an AI-enabled sales strategy has the potential to enable sales professionals and drive performance. From sales analysis and forecasting to lead management, AI can help improve efficiency in the sales process. What AI needs then is a proper introduction, not a sudden announcement at a staff meeting or hastily circulated memo that makes sales — arguably one of the lively parts of any business — feel like it’s turning into a technical process rather than a valuable and talented team. The results can be damaging if those on the sales team fail to adopt or take advantage of the AI capabilities in their CRM, or try to find ways to work around it.
So rather than letting your technology investment go to waste, it is beneficial to figure out an approach to AI onboarding that isn’t threatening. This can help integrate these sales or prospecting tools usefully and naturally into day-to-day work.
1. Build trust before the introduction
If you were introducing a new team member to a client, would you bring them to a meeting unannounced? Would you simply tell everyone their name and expect the relationship to thrive? Probably not. Instead you would lay the groundwork — selling your new hire to the client before they ever meet.
Similarly it can work better to lay the groundwork first instead of calling your sales team into a meeting to tell them AI is now part of their toolkit. Start by discussing the team’s own data and sales performance: win rates, losses, goals, and progress. These should be sales KPIs and numbers the team already trusts and values, so they’ll be sure to pay attention.
Only then should you move the discussion into a business case about how AI sales tools might help improve those numbers. Develop your best sales forecast or estimate based on how AI could identify additional opportunities, avoid costly mistakes or predict otherwise unforeseen events. This positions AI as a sales tool useful to the team’s success — not something that will undermine their success.
2. It’s always a race — demonstrate AI’s time-saving benefits for sales reps
Sales reps don’t love administrative work, whether it’s creating and submitting reports, scheduling meetings, answering emails or updating customer records. The reality is, admin work in the sales process also takes them away from the one thing they’re all good at and the very thing they earn commission on — selling. In fact, the average sales rep spends less than one-third of their time selling.
It can really help if sales operations can show, not tell, your team how powerful reclaiming some of that time back would be. Most sales reps love a little competition — they thrive on achieving a goal! So set up a game with reps racing each other and the clock. Choose two competitive reps and give them a pile of data to input into a spreadsheet to create a sales report, and a number of emails to answer and correlate with calendar information to book meetings. Ask them to ensure they update customer records as they go. Use a stopwatch and give them 20 minutes to complete the task. Meanwhile, have a third rep complete the same task using Einstein GPT— you’ll need to make sure they’re familiar with using it.
When time’s up, congratulate the sales rep who accomplished more of the tasks. But before declaring them the winner, talk about how AI can help improve sales management – by automating processes , updating your CRM and eliminating much of what we use spreadsheets for today. And ask the rep who was using AI what they would do with the extra time they didn’t spend on admin. The whole team will see for themselves that the right technology can free them up to do higher-value tasks and achieve sales growth.
3. Make AI the new member of your sales team
When technology behaves like a person — hello Siri and Alexa — it feels less intimidating. So why not give your new AI capabilities the same advantage?
Connect with your marketing department to develop a representative image you’ll use to associate with your new AI capabilities. Show the AI persona’s face on screen in your team meeting, and talk about them as though you are introducing a new admin assistant who will be helping out the team.
Say you were launching an AI chatbot – introduce its persona like any other member of the team. Speak about the AI skills it offers, such as answering common customer questions and managing enquiries, at the same time freeing up the customer service staff to handle the more complex cases that require a human touch.
The point is to demonstrate that if the AI were a high performer with exceptional capabilities, they would be enthusiastically welcomed. So why not do the same for the technology that can deliver those capabilities?
4. Transform your critics into advocates
Getting the new technology’s harshest critics to pitch it can be a great way to turn a sceptic into a fully-fledged AI advocate.
Salespeople thrive on competition and on coming up with ingenious ways to convince even the most resistant customers. You can turn that to your advantage as you bring in AI.
After walking through your business case and demonstrating AI’s ability to supercharge CRM, challenge members of the team to do an on-the-spot pitch as though they needed to convince the company to try the technology out. Offer a real prize for the rep who delivers the most convincing pitch, and maybe add bonus points for those who would characterise themselves as uneasy or doubtful about AI’s abilities. It’s a useful technique to help the team get comfortable with the benefits of AI features in their CRM and can turn sceptics into fans.
Getting fully comfortable with a new team member can take time. But when that new team member is AI, it’s worth putting effort into introducing and onboarding it with an awareness of your sales team’s potential reluctance and a creative approach to overcoming it.
