AI-powered sales automation software helps sales teams to be more successful.
The technology provides real-time insight and support, enabling sales reps to prioritize leads and have more efficient workflows. As a result, they can take advantage of every opportunity and close more deals faster.
It also allows sales leaders to make informed decisions and devise effective sales strategies.
In this article, you’ll learn how AI sales automation works and which tools to consider using. You’ll also learn about the benefits of the software and some best practices for using it.
What is AI sales automation?
AI sales automation is software that uses artificial intelligence to handle repetitive sales tasks and help sales teams work more efficiently.
Using machine learning algorithms, it can automatically update customer records, schedule follow-ups and suggest the best times to contact prospects based on past sales data.
AI sales automation also analyzes data to spot areas for improvement in sales performance, generate meaningful sales reports and forecast results.
With the software, sales teams can save hours each week by automating manual tasks like data entry and follow-up scheduling. This gives salespeople more time to focus on building relationships with prospects and closing deals to meet their sales quotas.
For example, while a sales rep is on a call with a potential customer, the AI can automatically log call notes. It also sets reminders for next steps and suggests relevant sales materials based on the conversation.
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5 top AI sales automation tools
When choosing sales automation, AI, functionality, ease of use and pricing are just some factors to consider.
Here’s a breakdown of the top five AI-powered sales tools.
1. Pipedrive
Pipedrive’s AI CRM boosts sales teams’ success with its AI-powered Sales Assistant functionality.
Pipedrive’s Sales Assistant analyzes CRM activity to automate key tasks at each sales cycle stage. The AI tool then alerts sales reps about missing deal values and identifies overlooked opportunities. It also suggests specific actions to move deals forward.
It even identifies deals with a fair or high deal probability, suggesting the next best action for sales representatives to take (shown below).
The AI Sales Assistant prevents deals from stalling by alerting teams to critical moments in the sales pipeline. When deals reach the final stages, the AI prompts immediate action to maintain momentum. It also flags deals with no scheduled activities, helping reps prevent promising opportunities from falling through the cracks.
Pipedrive’s AI sales automation features combine to help sales reps close deals and boost sales.
For sales leaders, Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant strengthens pipeline management by analyzing deal patterns and win probabilities while providing data-driven insights for more accurate sales forecasting.
Price: AI Sales Assistant is available with Pipedrive Professional, Power and Enterprise plans starting from $59 per user per month. Try the tools for free today with a 14-day trial.
Note: Beyond AI capabilities, Pipedrive includes two key features to support sales and marketing:
The Automations feature creates activities and sends emails based on deal updates. When a deal moves to negotiation, for instance, it automatically schedules a follow-up call and alerts the sales manager. This feature is available on Advanced, Professional and Enterprise plans.
Campaigns, Pipedrive’s email marketing software, lets sales teams set up automated email sequences with pre-designed templates to nurture leads through the sales process.
2. Potion
Potion is an AI-powered video creation platform for sales outreach. It enables reps to make cold-calling videos.
Potion helps salespeople create personalized video emails through AI-generated content and screen recordings, like the example below.
Potion’s AI technology replicates each user’s face and voice in these videos. It even includes natural lip movements and gestures. This makes it easy for sales reps to engage in video outreach and create content at scale.
The missed call feature automatically sends personalized AI videos after unsuccessful connection attempts, allowing sales reps to maintain momentum and progress conversations even when they can’t reach prospects directly.
Price: from $99 to $299 per month per workspace, plus custom enterprise plans.
3. Surfe
Surfe is an AI-driven LinkedIn integration platform that allows sales professionals to connect their LinkedIn accounts to other tools.
Reps can streamline their workflows and save time when conducting sales prospecting on Linkedin.
When sales reps connect Surfe to Pipedrive, they can directly add prospects to their sales CRM from the social media platform.
Surfe automatically searches over 15 premium databases to find verified emails and phone numbers for LinkedIn profiles, saving time on manual data enrichment.
Surfe’s AI-powered message templates can also be used to start a conversation via LinkedIn direct message or InMail.
Price: from free to $79 per month.
4. Apollo.io
Apollo.io is an AI-powered B2B sales platform. The software’s AI assistant uses the world’s largest database to help sales teams conduct effective B2B prospecting.
With the help of AI, reps create prompts about their ideal customer profile (ICP).
Apollo.io then searches through millions of data points to generate insights about potential prospects, including their fit with the user’s ICP. Below, you can see how it evaluates a prospect’s behavioral fit based on their engagement with marketing websites and other software.
Reps can use these insights to refine their ICP list and then write effective introduction emails using Apollo’s generative AI to create personalized openers.
Apollo.io integrates with Pipedrive to create a seamless two-way sync between the software. When reps update one platform, the new information instantly appears in the other – and vice versa. This keeps contact information current and reliable across platforms.
The integration can automatically push records from Apollo.io into Pipedrive based on a specific deal stage. For example, the AI adds Apollo.io contacts to Pipedrive once reps categorize them as qualified leads.
Integrating the two platforms enhances efficiency, improves data accuracy and allows sales teams to maintain a trustworthy database.
Price: from free to $149 per month.
5. Zapier
Zapier is an automation tool that allows sales professionals to create customized workflows known as “Zaps”. The platform integrates with various applications, turning CRMs into sales workflow hubs.
Zapier performs Zaps for a vast range of use cases through its AI functionality and integrations with other tools.
For example, the software creates “to-do” action items from Slack reactions and generates blog posts from Google Form responses.
Users can also use Zapier to create AI-powered custom chatbots that answer questions and nurture leads.
Zapier’s integration with Pipedrive allows sales representatives to create leads and update a deal’s status without manual work.
The tool’s connections with other tools allow reps to record new Calendly events as contact activities in Pipedrive.
The integration automatically converts Typeform entries into new deals. Facebook ad leads appear directly in the CRM as new contacts.
Price: starts at free and offers different rates, starting at $29.99 per month (depending on the number of tasks per month).
The benefits of a great AI sales automation tool
Top AI sales automation tools enhance multiple areas of the sales process, from lead scoring to deal closure. Here are five ways these tools improve sales team performance.
1. Boosting sales
AI sales automation helps sales reps at every touchpoint through the sales process, from lead generation to closing deals.
Most tools include lead-scoring functionality. The AI technology uses behavior patterns and qualified leads data to rate a prospect’s likelihood to buy.
For example, the software analyzes the sentiment of a prospect’s email interactions with sales to assess how positive they are about a deal.
This allows sales reps to prioritize their time and focus on deals with the greatest potential.
In Pipedrive, the AI Sales Assistant’s “Better opportunity” feature alerts reps to deals they may have overlooked.
The software highlights deals that have a higher chance of success than the one a rep is currently working on. It does this by matching open sales opportunities to the attributes of past-won deals (shown below).
AI sales automation helps users progress sales conversations with features like follow-up email templates and email creation tools.
Pipedrive’s AI email writer generates suggested email wording based on sales reps’ prompts.
The tool uses AI-powered language matching to maintain each sales rep’s unique writing style and tone. This ensures consistent, personalized communication with prospects while saving time on email composition.
2. Improving customer engagement
The best AI-powered tools for sales teams strengthen customer relationships. They do this by helping reps deliver personalized, consistent sales engagement.
AI-powered chatbots automate certain types of customer interactions. They can respond to inbound queries and assist with onboarding, for example.
The most sophisticated tools allow users to build custom chatbots. Sales leaders can use these to respond to queries using the company’s tone of voice.
AI-powered chatbots can also direct inquiries to the most relevant sales representatives.
The technology minimizes distraction for sales reps by fielding early inquiries and common FAQs from leads and customers.
Providing speedy answers to questions and connecting customers with the right person at the right time also creates a positive customer experience.
3. Saving time and increasing productivity
The best AI sales automation tools save time and boost productivity across various sales activities.
In the past, sales reps would update their CRM manually after every interaction with a prospect. Today, AI sales automation updates these records automatically, allowing sales reps to move on to their next sales call immediately.
Reps previously spent hours reviewing win rates, deal values and other performance metrics to determine which prospects needed immediate follow-up. AI sales software solves this problem by delivering tailored prompts about which opportunities reps should pursue.
Pipedrive’s AI email summarizer condenses long email threads into key points. The tool assesses the sentiment of emails with prospects and evaluates their readiness to buy.
This saves sales reps time they’d otherwise spend reviewing lengthy or historical email discussions. They can also choose which discussions to prioritize.
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4. Reducing errors
AI minimizes human error in sales tasks like email writing, calculations and data analysis by generating precise outputs.
Written text is free of spelling, typos or punctuation errors, and calculations are accurate. AI can also evaluate data with greater accuracy – and speed – than a human can.
Using these AI tools helps sales professionals make a good impression with outreach strategies. Outbound emails are free of errors that could damage credibility or create friction in the sales process.
After analyzing the data, sales reps can be confident in AI’s recommendations and insights.
5. Offering clarity and insight
AI sales automation analyzes sales data to provide actionable insights and predictive analytics, helping sales leaders make confident, data-driven decisions about their pipeline.
Pipedrive’s Sales Assistant predicts each deal’s probability of closing successfully. The AI analyzes deal duration patterns and alerts sales reps when deals exceed typical time frames.
It also identifies high-probability opportunities worth pursuing and tracks team performance metrics to highlight areas for improvement.
Sales leaders use win probability predictions to monitor sales performance and identify which deals need attention.
The Sales Assistant also helps leaders manage their sales teams more effectively by tracking team performance metrics, including lost rates. Sales managers can spot coaching opportunities and optimize their team’s revenue growth efforts.
How to make the most of sales automation AI
AI sales automation has the potential to deliver a great deal of value to any sales function.
To experience all the software’s benefits, follow these best practices.
Invest the time to set the software up correctly
When you use a new AI sales automation tool, set it up to support your business or sales function by:
Identifying the most beneficial automations for your sales team
Following the instructions in the provider’s knowledge base to set them up correctly
Importing the required sales or customer data from other products where possible and entering any other data manually
Remember, getting your setup right from the start will save you from time-consuming work in the future.
Test the automations – then trust the software to do its job
If you’re new to AI automation, you might feel nervous about relying on technology to handle sales tasks and interact with customer data.
This is natural – Pipedrive’s report on the state of AI in business found that many companies are hesitant to adopt the technology.
Try the software out with a small group of colleagues to ease your mind. Then, set up the automation you plan to use and monitor the output over a short period.
When you’re confident the software works as it should, you can trust it to do its job.
Help team members understand how to use the software
When using AI sales automation with a sales team, ensure every rep understands how to use it.
Give your salespeople access to the product’s knowledge base and any other on-demand training material.
Some larger software providers will deliver live training to new users as part of their service. Alternatively, you could provide face-to-face or online training of your own.
Ask team members for their feedback on the software. Find out what value they’re getting from the tool and whether they’re experiencing any challenges.
Now that you know how to use AI sales automation to improve daily operations and decision-making, let’s explore how it can enhance your overall sales strategy.
Accurate and up-to-date sales data is vital for strategic planning, for example. Many AI sales automation tools, like Pipedrive, provide an at-a-glance view of that data.
They include interactive dashboards, charts and graphs to help strategic planners visualize sales KPIs.
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Final thoughts
Sales teams face a common challenge: deciding which deals need immediate attention and which can wait. AI sales automation solves this by analyzing sales data and showing teams where to focus their efforts.
Pipedrive’s AI Sales Assistant looks at your deals and tells you which ones will likely close. It sends alerts when deals have been inactive too long and shows which sales activities are getting the best results. Sales leaders can see how their teams are performing, while sales reps know which deals need their attention each day.
This clear guidance helps teams better plan how to spend their time and which opportunities to pursue.
Try Pipedrive free for 14 days to see how AI can help your sales team succeed.
