Your Sales AI Literacy
There's a journey of perhaps a majority. Marvel at the first wave of chat with an AI bot. Until about (so research of the time reported) half-dozen questions in, when you asked it about something of which you had unique, special knowledge. Which revealed the AI knew nothing.
If you persevered, on top of such vital gaps, you found hallucination. Compounding distrust in the new bot.
As I write, it's been forty months since ChatGPT spread like no wildfire before around the globe. Things AI have moved on.
Maybe a friend has shown you something niche that gives you an occasional neat edge. Perhaps a colleague has automated an irritating admin type task which now ceases to cause you gyp. Or - and this is the troublesome area - you've been mandated to show your Sales dept higher-ups that you're giving 'AI' a go to help you sell.
This latter driver is very much from the train-has-left-the-station thinking. AI is here, it is not going away, best to be on board or be left behind.
Whether you feel it's a flash-in-the-pan fad or will be soon seamlessly subsumed into our daily selling fabric anyway. Or calmly counter that we can relax and not carried away with the seismic pronouncements of those selling the tech in whose interest we slavishly bow should we echo their alerts. You sense to not act is to fall behind.
Last year, the British government 'AI Opportunities Action Plan' envisaged making AI "mainline into the veins" of the nation. Quite the choice of metaphor.
I have for a while heard from salespeople how AI has made landing onto their non-quota objectives. The names for such have evolved over the years. From KSOs of key sales objectives as set apart from the progress marker numbers of KPIs. To the HR infection of PDPs; personal development plans (or goals).
The thrust being, 'how are you using AI to help you sell?' Which, let's not forget, can then form part of any appraisal system. Same can be said for being asked this very question, when either going for promotion or new Sales job elsewhere.
On this latter point, should you be interviewing prospective candidates, it's become a must-ask. Consider carefully what it ought unearth.
In whatever way you may use AI right now, it's not enough to merely say how, but illuminate its precise impact.
Ultimately the metric surely leads to more sales coming your company's way.
Choose among the fabled '10x' productivity uplift, slashed sales cycle time, and competitor lock-out for instance.
I just did a project to look at patterns (and holes) in a certain data set. When showing how I used AI to uncover this, people bit my arm of to show them how they could do similar themselves. With my niche authority, that is something sales leaders pay for.
It might just be enough to state a prompt you use every now and then. But better to cite a framework you're following.
They're pretty thin on the ground though. Which is no bad thing, as it means you can craft your own. Bosses love that kind of adaptive approach.
One such groundwork is from the American Dept of Labor [sic]. You can dig beneath each of their five headings;
Understand AI principles
Explore AI uses
Direct AI effectively
Evaluate AI outputs
Use AI responsibly
In light of this, I asked a bot (obvs, here being Gemini) for a summary of AI Literacy guidelines out there. Here's its combined five 'pillars':
- Technical Understanding: Knowing how AI and data models work (e.g., machine learning, sensors).
- Critical Evaluation: Assessing the accuracy, reliability, and limitations of AI outputs.
- Ethical Awareness: Understanding bias, privacy, security, and human-in-the-loop requirements.
- Practical Application: Using AI tools effectively for problem-solving or content creation.
- Social Impact: Recognising AI's influence on jobs, environment, and human agency.
We can readily remix these for our selling gains. A pair of sample pointers. No.3's ethics I'd expand to include such as avoiding the uncanny valley and ensuring your sales 'aura' shines. No.5's social angle should be Sales slanted, promoting how our selling environment is improved and more wins flow.
Produce your own and you're well on the way to future-proofing yourself and better exceeding your numbers.