Businesses Investing in AI Solutions Should Also Invest in Training to See Most Benefits

While the recent proliferation of artificial intelligence systems has businesses adopting new technologies to boost sales and productivity, one sales pro says “it's important to not try to do too much too quickly.”

"I went to a conference on AI/ChatGPT in Sales in October, and by the time I went to one in April, everything from October was out of date,” said Nitya Kirat, founder of YOSD Consulting and author of “Winning Virtually — 10 Tiny Habits for Big Virtual Selling Success. “It’s important to step into the arena, but realize the best is still coming,”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is a Large Language Model, which can mimic human writing or speech based on prompts and also help salespeople quickly write more personalized sales pitches. Other AI technologies can help quickly identify and research prospects.

"The current solutions cannot replace top performing salespeople, but can help them be both more efficient and effective, leading to huge productivity gains for companies who take the right approach to adoption and execution,” Kirat said.

However, the AI technologies alone can’t deliver their best results when human operators aren’t trained in how to prompt their best work.

"Companies need to follow up investments in this new technology with investments in training their teams and leadership to make this part of their new way of selling. Garbage in = garbage out. You have to know how to use the technology to deliver high-quality prospect and client interactions," Kirat noted.

"One challenge companies are facing is that there are so many solutions available (seemingly) all of a sudden, and there's pressure to adopt AI and not fall behind,” the author explained. “It’s important to not try to do too much too quickly as it can distract from the task at hand of growing revenue in a tough market."