Our Mission
At SalesGRID, we are on a mission to help sales teams use generative artificial intelligence to improve the customer’s buying experience. This mission guides us in our daily activities. Our mission keeps us focused on the needs of both the sales team and their customers.
We understand that B2B sales is a complex environment for both sellers and buyers to navigate.
Our guiding objective is to develop a Virtual Teammate that truly helps salespeople be more productive and effective in their roles in ways that help buyers make better informed and more confident decisions
This post details our thinking on four key topics:
1. What is a Virtual Teammate?
2. What solutions are available in the market?
3. How to build a Virtual Teammate?
4. How it works in practice with SalesGRID
1. What is a Virtual Teammate?
Let’s first start with what a virtual teammate is not.
It is NOT about replacing salespeople. In the context of B2B sales, we are some way off the point where an AI chatbot can replace the roles performed by a B2B sales team. Instead, AI can augment these tasks, offering support and providing a good first draft, but not automating the sales role.
Core Capabilities of a Virtual Teammate
A virtual teammate should have the following core capabilities:
Excellent Writing Skills: It should write in the style that aligns with your brand and sales team.
Comprehensive Deal Knowledge: It should know all the content, transcripts, and emails related to a deal.
Product Expertise: It should understand all the use cases and feature benefits of your products, connecting them to customer requirements.
Customer Success Insights: It should have knowledge of customer success stories to help salespeople provide proof points and case studies.
Skills to Assist Sales Teams
A virtual teammate should also possess specific skills to assist sales teams:
Sales Process Knowledge: It should understand the sales process and methodology to help execute a wide range of tasks.
Content Generation: It should help in creating tailored content that resonates with the target audience.
Connecting the Dots: It should aid in connecting product use cases with customer needs, enhancing the salesperson’s ability to offer relevant solutions that are backed by customer proof.
By leveraging these capabilities, a virtual teammate can significantly enhance the productivity and effectiveness of a sales team, making them better equipped to meet their goals and provide exceptional customer experiences.
2. What Tech Solutions are Available in the Market for a Virtual Teammate for the Sales Team?
Current technology offers some elements of a virtual teammate within existing products, particularly in CRM, CMS, and sales engagement platforms. For instance, in the CRM space, vendors integrate AI to enhance email templates and proposal tools, generating responses and augmenting email cadences. Content Management Systems (CMS) leverage AI to function as extensive knowledge bases, allowing users to interact with chatbots for quick answers. Despite these advancements, these solutions often lack two critical aspects: agility in executing tasks across different steps in the sales process and the ability to be trained for specific tasks tailored to a sales team’s unique needs.
3. How To Build the Ultimate Virtual Teammate?
Building the ultimate virtual teammate requires a purposeful information architecture to “onboard” the virtual team mate. Think of AI as like hiring a super-smart, knowledgeable MBA to support your sales team. Despite their intelligence, you still need to provide a structured onboarding process to help them be effective. Here’s a step-by-step approach to building an effective virtual teammate:
- Define the Profile: Start by defining who your virtual teammate is, their role, and their communication style. This foundational step sets the tone for their interactions.
- Establish a Knowledge Base: Ensure your virtual teammate is well-versed in your products, services, customer success stories, and more. This knowledge must be optimized to enhance the AI model’s performance. More on that later
- Incorporate Sales Methodology: Your virtual teammate should understand your ideal customer proifle, buyer personas, and how to sell to them. They should be familiar with your sales process, including all stages and steps necessary for guiding the ideal buyer journey.
- Deal Awareness: Equip your virtual teammate with comprehensive knowledge about ongoing deals. They should understand the intricacies of each deal the sales team is working on. This requires knowledge of all meeting transcripts, email threads, content shared and general company news.
This structured approach goes beyond merely plugging AI into a content library. It involves creating a purposeful framework that enables the AI to understand context and content deeply. For example, the AI should distinguish between your products and competitor products and accurately interpret interactions between salespeople and customers.
By following these steps, you can develop a virtual teammate that is an expert on everything, an assistant on deals, and a coach for your sales team, becoming the ultimate AI companion in your sales process.
SalesGRID’s Information Architecture for the Ultimate Virtual Teammate
SalesGRID’s information architecture is designed to create the ultimate virtual teammate for sales teams. Here’s an expanded explanation of each element, referencing the attached diagram:
a. Profiles
- User Profile: We create a detailed user profile that includes role, language, and tone, ensuring the virtual teammate understands the salesperson’s style and needs.
- Company Profile and Facts: A comprehensive company profile and a set of essential company facts are generated. These ensure that the virtual teammate always has accurate, top-level information about the company, crucial for maintaining consistency and accuracy in communications.
b. Knowledge Base System
- Content Library: This centralized repository contains all buyer engagement and support materials. It is integrated with AI, enabling quick access to relevant information that salespeople need.
- Q&A Table: This table includes all the critical need-to-know information about products and services, capabilities, and more. It ensures the virtual teammate can provide accurate and immediate answers.
- Customer List: The customer list tracks everything about each customer from prospecting through implementation. This thorough tracking helps build comprehensive case studies and provides valuable evidence for future engagements.
C. Sales Methodology
- Buyer Acumen Content: This includes Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas, offering deep insights into the target audience. This information helps tailor the sales approach to meet the specific needs of different customer segments.
- Action Steps: All necessary actions are outlined, described within the context of the sales methodology. These core sales plays guide the virtual teammate on what steps to take to advance deals.
- Hot Prompts: AI-enabled plays that activate the methodology, ensuring all necessary tasks are executed throughout the sales process.
and
- Stages, Objectives, and Exit Criteria: The sales methodology is categorized into stages, detailing the objectives and exit criteria for each stage. This structuring helps the virtual teammate understand the process, provide assessments, and offer coaching tips. The stages and steps in the process are clearly defined to guide the virtual teammate through the sales journey.
Core Capabilities Integration
- Sales Expert and Knowledge Base: Integrated with tools like Google Drive and Salesforce, this component allows the virtual teammate to answer questions and provide expert knowledge on-demand.
- Deal Assistant: This assistant, integrated into Salesforce, captures all deal-related information, including content, transcripts, and emails. It tracks all deal activities, ensuring no detail is overlooked.
- Sales Coach: The sales coach feature plugs into the sales process and methodology, tracking progress and offering guidance on how to proceed with deals. It provides insights and performance-driving prompts to help the sales team achieve their goals.
By structuring the information architecture in this way, SalesGRID ensures that the virtual teammate is well-equipped to assist sales teams comprehensively. This setup allows the virtual teammate to function as an expert on products and services, an assistant on deals, and a coach for sales methodologies and processes, ultimately driving greater productivity and success.
4. How it works in practice with SalesGRID
Watch this video to see how it is done
