Conversational Interactions and AI: Enhancing the Digital Buying Experience and Closing the Gaps in Your Sales Process

Digital-first interactions are now the key to the B2B buyer journey, thanks to the pandemic. This shift has increased the value and importance of digital interactions in the marketing and sales processes and highlighted the ever-changing lines between the sales and marketing tech stacks.

Market share is at risk for organizations that don’t meet buyer expectations for personalized omnichannel communication. How can B2B sales and marketing leaders manage these complex buying processes while addressing these issues? This question requires a multifaceted answer. Technology is just one component.

• WhichTechnologyTo deploy
• To equip the rightRoles
• Which?StageThe buying process

Technology can only be as effective as its users and the governance processes that support them. The data generated by technology and the insights that are gleaned from it magnify the technology’s impact. These insights will be key to separating B2B companies and, specifically, sales and marketing departments.

Virtual assistants are one technology that can close performance gaps in your sales and marketing funnels. There are many leakage points in the funnel that can reduce marketing’s effectiveness as well as sales’ ability maximize sales’ efforts. This is often due to a lack of agreement between marketing and sales on the following:

• Qualification and advancement criteria for opportunities
• Each stage has its roles and responsibilities
• Measurable success metrics

Conversational AI is more than a “dumbbot”. It can be a powerful tool to address funnel leakage problems when it is implemented and designed in accordance with the company’s culture (what the customer experience should be) and funnel metrics. Conversational AI focuses specifically on non-human interactions during the buying process, and collects information that improves human interactions.

• Prompt: Meeting modern buyers’ expectations for immediacy.B2B buyers today expect providers to be available and proactive in every step of their digital journeys through all channels and touchpoints.
• Consistent: Always chasing leads that sellers don’t get to sell.
• Personalization: Keeping opportunities moving between human touchpoints.B2B buyers today are planning omnichannel journeys that involve meaningful interactions with sales and marketing from beginning to end. This is done in a way that shows a knowledge of buyer preferences and contact history.

The ability of virtual assistants to be prompt, persistent, personalized, and personalized allows them to address the funnel leakage problem, as well as the many complaints between sales and marketing that result from these top-of the-funnel issues. Marketing leaders are disappointed that leads not being followed up on by sales representatives. Sales leaders complain that there aren’t enough qualified leads for marketing to create robust pipelines to achieve revenue goals.

Virtual assistants can be a great way to improve the efficiency of your sales and marketing efforts.