I've been using AI in sales for years.
Now I help run a sales team at an AI company — and you better believe that we use AI tools in our sales motions.
We use enterprise chatbots. We use complex AI agents. We use simple AI scheduling tools.
Everything has its place.
Not only do we walk the walk internally. We've helped hundreds of companies get up and running with their own AI sales processes.
And in this article, I've rounded up some of the easiest, most impactful ways that you can use AI for sales.
1. Schedule meetings
This is the lowest-hanging fruit.
If your sales reps still schedule meetings by hand, it’s time to automate it ASAP.
And if your company’s meetings are already automated, it’s time to make the process more intelligent.
Plenty of AI tools include scheduling features that can link with your team’s existing calendar systems.
These tools can automate the scheduling process: they manage calendar availability, suggest meeting times, and send out personalized invitations.
AI tools can also qualify leads before allowing a prospect to book a meeting – but I’ll touch on that below.
Best tools
- Clara — a virtual scheduling tool that handles the necessary back and forth
- An AI chatbot with a Calendly integration (or another scheduling tool)
Tips and tricks
- Ensure your AI scheduling tool is fully integrated with your team’s calendar systems to avoid double-booking or scheduling conflicts
- Set up personalized meeting templates for different types of client interactions to further streamline bookings
2. Forecast sales
Sales forecasting is crucial for planning and resource allocation, but manual forecasting can often be inaccurate or time-consuming.
AI-powered forecasting tools get rid of the guesswork by analyzing historical sales data, current market conditions, and real-time pipeline information.
These tools generate more accurate sales predictions, so that teams can make data-driven decisions and adjust strategies based on market fluctuations.
AI helps businesses spot patterns and trends early, so they can adapt quickly.
Best tools
- Anaplan — a business planning software that includes sales forecasting
- Clari — offers AI-guided decision-making and sales execution across channels
- Gong.io — One of the more popular sales tools on the internet
- Salesforce Einstein — includes an AI-powered intelligence forecasting feature
Tips and tricks
- Regularly adjust the data to include non-sales metrics (like market trends or customer sentiment)
- Use AI to run different forecast scenarios to prepare for various market conditions
3. Qualify leads
This is one of the core parts of AI lead generation.
Quadrupling your leads is meaningless if they’re low-quality leads. Making your sales team crawl through hundreds of crappy leads is a great waste of money.
If you have enough leads, then the qualifying step is the most crucial one.
And if you’re nervous about offloading your lead qualification to robots, let me offer you an anecdotal antidote: a ton of our clients say that AI lead qualification is even better than a human.
Why? Humans get caught up in the wrong details (look up ‘bikeshedding’). And they’re not as good at pattern recognition.
But AI is precise — and it can get better and better with time.
You can design different flows based on anything: budget, use case, company size, industry, decision-making role, engagement level, specific pain points they mention, etc.
And don’t forget to give your user something in return: an insights report for their industry, the results to their personality assessment, or a video showing them how to 10x their leads.
Best tools
- AI-enhanced CRM of choice (Hubspot, Salesforce, Zendesk, etc.) — most CRMs have an AI extension these days but it doesn't mean they're all good
- Exceed.ai — a tool built specifically for automating conversations with leads
- Conversica — they sell Revenue Digital Assistants: bots to support your marketing and sales team
- LeadCrunch — a lead management and demand generation B2B tool
Tips and tricks
- Create custom scoring models for different segments
4. Score, segment and route leads
If you’re doing AI lead gen, you might as well implement a scoring system. How you want to score leads, that’s all you.
Based on whether a lead is hot, warm, or cold, you can instruct your AI agent to use different follow-up strategies.
Maybe a hot lead means a text message to your Head of Sales telling him to make a phone call, while a cold one gets an automated (but personalized) email.
If you’re segmenting your leads, your AI agent can route the right lead to the right person.
Enterprise deals are routed to your CRO, while your LATAM deals are routed to your Spanish-speaking sales team.
Best tools
- MadKudu— built for PLG businesses. Uses behavioral and firmographic data to score leads
- Clearbit — enriches lead data for segmenting
- Segment by Twilio — great for capturing user data across tools in real time (for routing)
Tips and tricks
- Start by feeding AI tools clean historical CRM data
- Score leads using behavior signals like page visits or product usage
5. Summarize meetings
Manually writing meeting summaries is a task you should already have automated – it eats up valuable time. And humans make mistakes.
AI-driven tools can automatically generate meeting summaries by analyzing conversation transcripts and identifying key action items, decisions, and follow-ups.
These summaries can be integrated into your CRM or other sales systems, keeping your team up-to-date with minimal effort. Sales teams can quickly focus on the next steps instead of getting bogged down in administrative tasks.
Best tools
- Otter.ai — a well-known transcription tool that now comes with AI features
- Fireflies.ai — a lesser-known transcription tools for meeting notes and action items
- AI chatbots — not to be a broken record, but they do it all, baby!
Tips and tricks
- Instead of just condensing the conversation, customize AI-generated summaries to focus on next steps or customer pain points
- Make sure the tool is integrated with your CRM to automatically attach summaries to the correct account records
6. Summarize account information
We have a few internal AI agents that do this for us.
One is used by our Customer Success team. They have a bot that collects all information about client accounts (from help desks, product trackers, Apollo, etc), including key metrics.
Whenever a CS employee needs data on an account, they just ask their AI agent, and it pulls everything they need to know into one neat summary.
It also provides weekly and monthly updates automatically on Slack. It's pretty cool.
Managing accounts effectively requires a lot of data collection and synthesis. So it's ideal to offload to AI.
Best tools
- Clari — the Clari Copilot can help you with this
- Gong.io — the famous 'revenue intelligence' platform can do this too
- AI chatbots, like ChatGPT or a bespoke AI agent (just like the one we use everyday)
Tips and tricks
- Automate the generation of account health scores to easily identify at-risk accounts
- Set up AI to flag key account updates like renewals or major contract changes
- Set automated triggers within your CRM to generate an account summary at critical stages (e.g., before a renewal or quarterly business review) so sales reps are always prepared with the latest info
- Use AI to highlight specific action items, like open customer support tickets or contract renewal dates, directly in the summary to prioritize outreach efforts
- Personalize the summary format based on account complexity
7. Outbound
This is another sales function that we automate as much as possible.
Outbound prospecting can be a time-consuming process, but AI can make it more efficient and personalized.
AI-powered tools can automate outreach by analyzing prospect data to craft targeted messages that resonate with each individual.
By analyzing prospect data — like industry, engagement history, and interests — AI tools can craft personalized messages that resonate with each individual.
It also automates outreach at the optimal time, ensuring your team connects with prospects when they’re most likely to engage.
Marcus Chan, the President and Founder of Venli Consulting Group, sums it up perfectly: "AI gives guidance that’s so personal and precise, we’re always presenting the most relevant solutions — no pushing required.”
For example: Our personalized outbound bot looks up a prospect's company size and industry, and generates a unique message to email them.
Best tools
- Outreach.io — a 'sales execution platform' for revenue teams
- Salesloft — a 'revenue orchestration platform'
- AI-driven CRM systems with outbound automation capabilities (we've been over these)
- AI chatbots (as always)
Tips and tricks
- Detect the optimal time for outreach by tracking each prospect’s unique engagement patterns and behaviors
- Analyze competitor movements to tailor outreach that highlights your advantage in real time
- Set up AI-driven A/B tests to experiment with different message styles and outreach times, then use real-time insights to optimize future campaigns based on what works best
8. Build business cases
Building a business case that resonates with potential clients requires gathering relevant data and showing clear ROI.
AI can analyze the prospect's specific pain points and market positioning to provide tailored insights that strengthen your proposal.
Whether it’s running financial models or analyzing competitors, AI ensures your proposals are grounded in data, not guesswork.
This allows your sales team to craft personalized, compelling pitches that resonate with a prospect’s goals, making it clear why your solution is the right fit.
Best tools
- Clay — our preferred data enrichment tool
- Crayon — a competitive intelligence tools that specializes in strong business cases
- ChatGPT or a bespoke AI chatbot
Tips and tricks
- Incorporate case studies or benchmarks from similar customers into your AI-driven business case for added credibility
- Use AI to model different financial scenarios (e.g., reduced time to value, cost savings) and let the prospect choose the scenario that resonates most with their business goals
- Tailor your AI insights to align with specific prospect KPIs
9. Conduct competitor analysis
Our AI agent for competitive analysis? We very creatively call it the 'Competitive Intelligence Bot'.
Our Product Marketing team uses it to get up-to-date scans and analyses of our core competitors. We just ask it what Company X is up to, it crawls their website for new features, pricing changes, integrations, partnerships, and content marketing strategy.
It does this automatically every week, so it can build up a long-term storage of competitor intelligence.
AI tools can monitor competitors’ activities – like pricing adjustments, marketing campaigns, and customer reviews – in real time.
These insights allow our team to adapt strategies without a ton of tedious research, whether it’s adjusting pricing, revising product offerings, or identifying gaps in the market that competitors aren’t addressing.
Best tools
- Crayon — mentioned above, a competitive intelligence tool
- Klue — a competitive enablement tool that allows similar functions
- Botpress — not to toot our own horn, but this is what we used
Tips and tricks
- Set up AI tools to monitor not just direct competitors, but also emerging companies or market shifts that could disrupt your space in the near future
- Use competitive insights to create data-driven counter-strategies, like preemptive offers or feature releases
- Establish a regular review cadence for competitor data
10. Optimize pricing
AI is intelligence. It's not just for automating simple tasks.
Pricing decisions can have a significant impact on revenue, but keeping prices competitive while maximizing profits can be tricky.
AI-driven dynamic pricing models adjust prices in real-time based on market demand, competitor pricing, and customer behavior.
This ensures pricing remains competitive while optimizing revenue.
With the help of machine learning, AI also helps predict future pricing trends, allowing companies to proactively adjust their strategies to meet market shifts.
Best tools
- PROS — a price optimization and management software (they really have everything these days)
- Zilliant — a tool specialized in pricing and sales optimization
- Custom AI model — if you don't want a specific tool for it, chatbots and AI agents can do this pretty easily
Tips and tricks
- Use AI to test different pricing strategies across segments and channels
- Continuously monitor client feedback to ensure that dynamic pricing doesn’t harm customer satisfaction
11. Analyze customer sentiment
Understanding how customers feel about your brand is critical to improving sales performance. And there are plenty of AI tools that analyze customer reviews, social media posts, and other feedback to determine their sentiment.
These types of insights can be used to tweak messaging, improve customer interactions, or address product issues.
AI tools that use NLP are perfectly suited for these kinds of tasks, since they need to comb through large amounts of plain text. (And what human wants to spend their time like that?)
Best tools
- Qualtrics Social Connect — a tool that organizes conversations into one place (think Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.)
- AI agent — natural language processing at its finest: processing unstructured conversations into structured data
- MonkeyLearn — a machine learning platform for text analysis, getting data from raw text
Tips and tricks
- Segment sentiment analysis by different customer personas or market segments
- Set up AI to alert sales and support teams when negative sentiment spikes, allowing for immediate intervention to prevent churn
- Combine sentiment data with purchase behavior insights to identify potential upsell opportunities when sentiment is high
12. Generate leads
Harvard Business Review found that AI for lead generation can increase leads by 50% and decrease related-costs by 60%.
Two types of companies employ AI lead generation: companies with too many leads and companies with too few leads.
If you have too few leads, you’re gonna want your AI lead generation system to focus on finding leads and then contacting leads.
If you have too many leads, you’ll want AI lead generation to focus on qualifying leads and contacting leads.
AI lead generation is a multi-headed dragon. There are endless ways to use AI for lead generation – and using it to build lead lists is a no-brainer.
Generating high-quality leads is vital to sales success, and AI makes the process faster and more accurate. By analyzing data from various sources – like social media, website visits, and email interactions – AI tools can identify and prioritize leads most likely to convert.
And since a high-quality AI tool will be linked to your CRM (and take care of outbounding), your sales team can automate nearly 100% of their sales funnel.
Best tools
- Clearbit by HubSpot — a feature of HubSpot that allows users to enrich contact data
- AI agent or chatbot — we use AI agents for lead generation, and so do a lot of our clients and partners
Tips and tricks
- Have AI analyze customer profiles across multiple channels to find patterns in lead behavior
- Use AI to automate A/B testing of different lead generation strategies
- Ensure your AI tool integrates with marketing automation platforms to track lead interactions across campaigns and touchpoints
13. Predict churn
Predicting churn manually is nearly impossible. But AI tools can give an intelligent prediction model.
They can analyze customer behavior patterns to detect early signs of dissatisfaction or decreased engagement. And by identifying these risk factors early, sales teams can proactively implement retention strategies to prevent churn before it happens – like offering personalized discounts or targeted outreach.
Best tools
- ChurnZero — allows you to see how customers use your product, assess their health + likelihood to renew, and personalize CX
- GainSight — a Customer Success platform built tounify the post-sales customer journey
- AI-driven churn prediction features within your CRM — again, most will include a little something these days
- Custom AI model — if you want an all-in-one option
Tips and tricks
- Flag early warning signs of churn, such as decreased engagement or long response times, and have predefined workflows for addressing these issues before they escalate
- Develop targeted retention campaigns based on specific customer behaviors, such as offering discounts to customers who haven’t engaged in a set period
- Track which retention strategies are most successful for different customer segments, and continuously optimize based on AI recommendations
14. Monitor social media activity
Buying signals don’t just happen on company websites. Social media can be a goldmine of customer insights and buying signals, but keeping up with the activity is daunting.
Luckily, AI-powered tools can keep a pulse on social media, tracking mentions of your brand, products, and even competitors.
By analyzing customer sentiment and spotting potential buying signals, AI helps your sales team jump in at just the right time. This allows your sales team to engage with prospects at the right moment and tailor messaging to align with social conversations.
Best tools
- Hootsuite Insights — provides rich data visualization to segment mentions by categories, such as demographics, emotion, and sentiment.
- Sprout Social — the classic up-and-coming social media management tool
- Brandwatch — provides the tools to search social networks and the internet to find the right audience, opportunities to act on, and problems to avoid
Tips and tricks
- Set AI tools to track mentions of competitors as well, identifying opportunities to intercept potential customers when they express dissatisfaction with a competitor
- Train an AI system to prioritize social mentions tied to buying intent – like product inquiries or complaints about competitors
15. Analyze customer behavior
Sales teams know that understanding customer behavior is key to refining an AI-driven sales strategy. With AI tools, it's not just about tracking what customers do – it's about uncovering patterns in real time, like how they move through your site or engage with specific products.
These insights help sales teams go beyond generic pitches, allowing them to connect with the right customers at the right moment.
Best tools
- Spark AI from Mixpanel — Mixpanel feature that turns natural language queries into actionable reports
- Amplitude AI — a real-time data analytics software for both web and mobile, used to analyze visitors' data behavior
Tips and tricks
- Use AI to track not just what customers are doing, but when they’re doing it
- Continuously feed AI new data from various touchpoints (website, mobile app, social media) to refine behavior models
16. Provide personalized product information
Providing personalized product recommendations by forecasting consumer behavior is one of the key applications of AI in business.
AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can deliver personalized product information and recommendations to customers in real-time, helping them make informed purchasing decisions.
They can recommend additional products or services to customers based on their purchase history and behavior, increasing the average transaction value.
Personalization is key to increasing conversions, and AI can do it with the best of them. By analyzing customer behavior, purchase history, and preferences, AI-powered systems can deliver real-time, personalized product suggestions.
Personalized conversational AI not only improves the customer experience but also boosts the likelihood of upsells and cross-sells, increasing overall revenue.
Best tools
- Botpress, or another AI chatbot or AI agent platform
Tips and tricks
- Use dynamic content to automatically adjust product recommendations based on real-time behavior, such as browsing habits or abandoned carts
- Set up AI to cross-reference customer profiles with inventory data, ensuring that product recommendations are not only personalized but also available
- A/B test different approaches to personalized product information to see which results in the most conversions
- Check out Botpress Academy to learn the basics of building a chatbot or AI agent
Deploy an AI Agent Next Month
Ready to use AI tools to put your business ahead?
Whether it’s qualifying leads, streamlining outreach, or personalizing customer interactions, the best time to automate your sales funnel was yesterday.
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