The top 5 tools of the AI revenue revolution

This article comes from Stewart Townsend’s talk, ‘Boosting revenue performance with AI: Real-world strategies and use cases’, at our 2023 Chief Revenue Officer Summit.

Imagine having a tireless virtual assistant, an all-star sales coach, and a predicting analytics whiz all rolled into one.

Sound too good to be true? Well as Chief Revenue Officer at Podcast Hawk, I'm here to tell you this AI-powered revenue dynamo is very real - and it's already transforming outcomes for leading companies worldwide.

In this article, I want to share how AI is boosting revenue performance across the customer lifecycle - from automated lead gen to predictive retention.

When strategically woven into your operations, these AI technologies act like a revenue game-changer - achieving impossible efficiencies, delivering 1:1 engagement at scale, and revealing growth opportunities through data.

Skeptical? I don't blame you. But the real-world results achieved by the AI solutions profiled here will change how you think about driving revenue growth forever.

As an expert in revenue operations, I'm often asked about the top AI tools that can boost performance across the revenue cycle. In this article, I'll highlight some of the most impactful AI solutions and share real-world examples of how leading companies are using them.

My goal is to introduce you to AI technologies that can drive gains in efficiency, personalization, and data-driven insights. When applied creatively, these tools can truly accelerate revenue growth. So let's dive in!

I'll cover these use cases and tools:

Lead generation: Anthropic

One of the first places to leverage AI is top-of-funnel lead generation. A powerful solution in this space is Anthropic.

Anthropic’s AI platform can make outbound calls and have natural conversations to qualify leads based on a script. This automates lead qualification and saves countless hours of manual calling.

The AI can respond appropriately in real time without individually recording messages. Here is an example dialogue:

🤖 AI: "Hi James, I'm calling from Acme Co. I saw you were interested in our new VisionPRO product pre-launch but didn't end up preordering. I wanted to check if you had any other questions I could answer about VisionPRO before the full launch next month?"

👤 Prospect: "Honestly I'm all set, it's just a bit too expensive for me right now."

🤖 AI: "No problem, thanks for the feedback! Before I let you go, could I just ask - what made you decide against preordering when you initially looked at VisionPRO?"

This conversational approach allows Anthropic’s AI to engage prospects, uncover motivations, and pass on promising leads to sales. This is a huge win for top-of-funnel velocity.

Anthropic is representative of a new breed of AI lead gen solutions that act as virtual assistants to qualify leads. Others like Conversica can engage prospects over email and text as well.

The key is finding ways to use AI to scale those high-touch, human conversations at the top of the funnel. This automation helps teams focus their energy on the warmest, most sales-ready leads.

Lead nurturing: Jasper.ai

Further down the funnel, AI excels at lead nurturing through personalized content at scale. One tool purpose-built for this is Jasper.ai.

Jasper.ai is an AI writing platform that can generate a limitless number of personalized emails to nurture and engage prospects.

The AI handles the repetitive work of crafting tailored messages, freeing up human time. It ensures every prospect gets a unique, relevant email.

Jasper.ai can track opens, clicks, and replies to optimize messaging as well. This helps marketing and sales teams scale personalized lead nurturing campaigns that would be impossible manually.

With Jasper.ai, teams can nurture every lead like their most important customer. Prospects get an individualized experience, accelerating conversion to sales. Jasper.ai frees up teams from manual busywork to focus on building relationships.

AI-powered sales coaching: Gong

Within sales conversations themselves, tools like Gong leverage AI to help reps have better dialogues.

Gong records sales calls and analyzes them using AI to surface insights on optimal questioning strategies, objection handling, and more.

Gong then provides real-time coaching to reps based on this aggregate data, nudging them toward proven best practices during live calls.

For example, if a prospect focuses on pricing, Gong could suggest via on-screen tips:

"Try asking more about their usage and needs first before discussing pricing. This will frame your offer around value."

Guidance like this helps reps navigate difficult conversations gracefully. The AI identifies patterns human reps may miss, leading to improved conversion rates over time.

Gong is not the only solution in this space, Chorus.ai also offers similar functionality, recording and analyzing calls to improve rep performance.

This category of AI sales coaching tools levels up seller skills faster than traditional training. Reps get real-time guidance during the most teaching-intensive moments - live sales calls.

RFP response automation: RFP.ai

Responding efficiently and accurately to RFPs is critical for revenue teams. RFP.ai uses AI to dramatically compress response timelines.

RFP.ai auto-populates company, product, and partner information into response templates. This leaves reps free to focus on crafting differentiating content.

The platform also validates responses for completeness and consistency, reducing errors. By accelerating and de-risking RFP responses, teams can improve quality and win rates.

Tools like RFP.ai save massive amounts of tedious manual work assembling responses. The AI handles the busywork while humans focus on high-value areas.

This allows teams to respond to more RFPs without sacrificing quality or overworking staff.

Customer retention: ChurnZero

On the customer retention side, ChurnZero applies AI to identify at-risk accounts for proactive retention.

ChurnZero analyzes usage patterns, engagement metrics, and other data to spotlight customers with high churn risk. This enables account managers to address issues preemptively.

The AI also prescribes specific recommendations for preventing customer loss, such as upsell offers, engagement campaigns, or account management strategies tailored to each customer.

This data-driven approach to retention helps companies keep more customers happy long-term. ChurnZero is achieving 95%+ accuracy in predicting churn with some clients.

ChurnZero is part of a new generation of AI-powered customer success tools. Others like ClientJoy and Churn Buster use predictive analytics to flag at-risk accounts and drive retention.

The major advantage is time - armed with AI, teams can anticipate and solve problems before customers even complain.

The bottom line

The revenue impact of AI tools like Anthropic, Jasper.ai, Gong, RFP.ai, and ChurnZero is game-changing. When woven thoughtfully into operations, AI can drive efficiency, personalization, and intelligence to accelerate growth.

Of course, there are other important AI solutions on the market, and new ones emerging every week. But these examples give a sense of the tangible value AI can unlock across the revenue cycle - from lead gen to retention.

However, some caution is still needed, there are important legal considerations regarding copyright, data privacy, and responsible AI practices that teams should keep in mind. AI is not a silver bullet, but rather an amplifier of human intelligence when applied strategically.

With an informed approach, AI-enhanced revenue operations can become a core competitive advantage. The efficiencies, personalization, and insights it enables are like rocket fuel for growth.

Final thoughts

And that's a wrap! I hope these real-world examples give you a sense of the vast possibilities as AI becomes revenue's new secret weapon.

At Podcast Hawk, we're already seeing serious revenue gains from AI. It's turbocharging lead gen, enabling 1:1 engagement at scale, and giving our team superhuman insights. We're just getting started tapping into these tools as a growth engine.

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