Artificial intelligence (AI) is on course to revolutionize the sales and marketing landscape, whether companies are ready for it or not. Large language models like ChatGPT, Character.ai, and Bard are changing how marketing teams execute campaigns. AI is also enabling sales reps to reach more people in highly targeted ways. Are you worried your competition will be capitalizing on these resources before you do? As a CEO, stay ahead of the curve and offer your organization the vision it needs to leverage these innovations.
Understanding AI’s benefits unlocks the potential of these powerful tools to give you an accelerated competitive edge. Doing so will uncover insights and reveal business strategies that will drive greater growth and efficiency. As AI adoption in business continues to grow, your options are to adapt to it or be left behind by competitors who embrace the change.
LLMs are a part, but not all, of AI
The difference between a large language model (“LLM”) and the general term “artificial intelligence” is an important clarification. AI has actually been around for quite some time in various forms. However, recent major advancements have made generative AI tools much more accessible to the average user. LLMs are one of these tools, which generate content based on a user-inserted prompt. OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT brought the user interface of an LLM to the public. This accessibility has exponentially increased the awareness of AI and advanced the industry in significant ways.
Why a CEO should care about AI adoption
As Chief Executive Officer, you have a vision of where your company is going, and what opportunities (or threats) lie ahead. Google CEO Sundar Pichai has stated the impact of AI has the potential to be “more profound than fire or electricity or anything that [humanity has] done in the past.” That’s a bold statement that puts into perspective the opportunity artificial intelligence provides to businesses. Understanding how to pursue these opportunities and the correct approach to adopt AI in your business will lead to optimal pay-off as artificial intelligence continues to innovate.
Although many of these technologies are still early in their development, they have already proven themselves at scale. LLMs have offered the business world a glimpse into the powerful capabilities of these tools. The implications are staggering. Marketers are able to shave off hours of work by leveraging AI in their creative processes. Thanks to the adoption of AI in sales, reps are able to create personalized communication with prospects in a fraction of the time. Even though there is still a large room for improvement with these tools, there is plenty your team can do right now to leverage AI at its current capability. As these tools continue to grow in both form and function, continue to reevaluate your company’s workflows to gain the most optimal version of AI’s benefits to your business.
AI adoption in business may continue to take new forms as new use cases and functionalities are expanded upon, and while we’ve given you a snapshot of the current landscape regarding AI in business, the continued evolution of LLMs and more specific AI tools means that the continued re-evaluation of AI workflows should be a part of your high-level strategy going forward.
You should care about AI because your competitors care about AI
Business is full of examples of organizations not adopting soon enough to new technology, or refusing to adopt at all. We’re not going to analyze a Harvard case study in this article, but all of us could quip off the many examples of the Blockbusters and Kodaks of the world. AI’s benefits in business have the potential to impact business 10-fold compared to the impact of video streaming and digital photography.
The bottom line is this: your competitors, investors, and most industry disruptors are thinking about how to extract value from AI’s benefits in business whether you are or not. If your competitors are leveraging the vast wealth of technology and you aren’t then you will lose out on market share, maximized margins, augmented talent, and innovation. We are barely scratching the surface on how impactful artificial intelligence will be. The reality is you need to educate yourself now before it’s too late for you to catch up.
Where can you realistically gain AI benefits in business today?
We recommend you start looking now at opportunities for AI in Sales, Marketing, HR, and even in Product. Start by gathering brilliant minds in your firm or network to create a fast-moving AI innovation team. Task this team with specific business objectives in order to find provable use cases for adopting AI in your business. As CEO, you should be a part of and lead the charge on this group in order to promulgate your vision for your firm and how AI will help with that. Here are a few suggested marketing and sales AI initiatives that you and your innovation team can begin with:
- Accelerating the process of generating copy for content
- Generating persona-focused email campaigns
- Generating effective prospecting outreach
- Developing effective playbooks and call scripts for your reps
- Making intelligent, data-driven decisions
Accelerate the process of generating copy for content
AI will empower your marketing team’s content creation and curation. The newest AI models enable the crafting of persuasive, high-quality copy in seconds while generating industry-specific, targeted content. With AI-generated content, businesses can stay ahead of industry trends and capture the attention of potential customers. AI-powered content will help you deliver engaging and relevant content to your audience faster. With a well-crafted prompt, your team will be able to target specific buyer personas catered to the buyer journey stage of the type of content you are offering.
Many customer relationship management (CRM) systems are now starting to incorporate AI into their platforms. In HubSpot’s case, they are leveraging AI directly inside their content management system. Marketers and content writers can develop outlines and generate content straight from the blog writing tool. As a CEO, if your teams aren’t using tools like this, then you need to point them in the right direction. Whether it comes through an integrated tool like Hubspot’s, or a more freeform tool like ChatGPT, your Go-to-Market team’s productivity can be significantly improved through this automation. If you’re not sure how strong your team’s performance should be, we’d highly recommend a Go-to-Market Assessment.
Despite AI’s power, critical thinking and savvy creativity from your team is still needed. It would be unwise to throw the first result spat out by an AI model onto your blog site without some deep massaging and TLC. AI’s huge advantage and this point in time is helping accelerate the creative process for your team and limiting writer’s block. With continuous work and exposure, you’ll be surprised by AI’s benefits for your business and processes.
Generating persona-focused email campaigns
Similar to creating copy for a blog article, AI in sales and marketing can be extremely valuable in helping your team create persona-targeted emails. Other tools released by top-of-the-market CRMs and email platforms have AI tools integrated into their technology. These tools can generate content from a prompt to an AI model directly from within your CRM platform.
By leveraging AI-driven messaging in marketing, your firm can improve prospect engagement driving conversions and streamlining interactions. Large language models enable the creation of tailored customer experiences, which can boost customer engagement through hyper-personalization. With targeted messaging and personalized offers, companies can enhance the customer journey and foster brand loyalty.
Generating effective prospecting outreach
Leveraging AI in sales will take some creativity. One client of ours began using AI extensively with their sales and prospecting teams. By linking HubSpot with LinkedIn SalesNavigator, reps had instant access to persona-specific data related to prospects. Reps would visit the prospect’s LinkedIn page and download a PDF of their profile. They would then upload that PDF into an AI model, prompting the tool to draft an email targeted to that person. In a matter of minutes, the rep now had a custom-crafted email specific to that individual that was a few human tweaks away from perfection. Leveraging AI in creative ways like this will help your team maximize the potential AI has to offer.
Developing effective playbooks and call scripts for your reps
As mentioned, AI is adept at generating content. It is the perfect tool to help your GTM leaders generate playbooks and call scripts for your reps. You and your team know how your reps should be talking to customers. Use an AI tool to help you refine how you want your sales reps to communicate with prospects. This method—especially when you have a large sales team—can help you enable your team at scale.
AI’s role in data-driven decision making
Large language models can also help gain insights from data for strategic marketing decisions. Many CRMs have integrated AI tools that help uncover hidden patterns and trends in buyer behavior, which is incredibly useful in the realm of data analytics for RevOps and marketing. These tools when used effectively will help you discover insights sooner. AI platforms can also help you understand your ideal customer profile. This type of exercise will reveal what types of companies have the highest propensity to purchase your products.
Conclusion: Embracing AI
The world of sales and marketing is becoming increasingly AI-driven. Private equity-backed companies must adapt and leverage the power of AI and LLMs. Companies must anticipate AI-driven trends as businesses continue to embrace a waterfall of AI tools if they want to stay ahead. Large language models will play an even more prominent role in helping GTM teams grow. As a CEO, you need to stay informed and adapt to these changes. Businesses that leverage AI will maintain a competitive edge and see vast improvement in their GTM strategies.
Interested in delving deeper into AI’s potential for your business? If you haven’t ventured into AI adoption yet, it’s not too late. Consider coffee with Cortado. Schedule a time to chat with Mitch over a morning cup of Starbucks and kickstart your AI journey.
