AI for Sales Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide

Sales prospecting moved out of the manual world a long time ago.

We’re no longer scrolling through Rolodexes or digging into phone books to fuel cold calling campaigns. We’re using automation to make sales workflows more efficient and spend more time on the activities that move the needle.

But there’s a new kid on the block. One that’s even more equipped to help sales teams drive lightning-fast, successful prospecting practices - artificial intelligence.

In this article, we’re exploring the world of AI for sales prospecting. We’ll discuss the various roles and use cases that AI can play in supercharging your prospecting efforts before diving into some thought-provoking questions about what the future has in store.

What is AI’s role in sales prospecting?

Before we get into the practical ways that AI is transforming B2B prospecting, let’s take a step back and discuss what we mean when we talk about AI in a sales context.

What is AI for sales prospecting? 

AI plays a number of important roles in streamlining and improving outbound prospecting. 

You can use it to automate repetitive tasks like lead identification, draft and test outbound campaigns, and offer predictive insights to help you better prioritise high-potential leads and organise your day.

By analysing large datasets (that could take weeks for a human to complete), AI-powered tools can provide helpful insights that allow sales teams to engage more effectively with prospects.

For example:

A B2B sales professional could use AI to automatically score and qualify leads based on intent signals, such as engagement with specific pieces of content or search activity on competitor websites.

Instead of manually researching prospects, the rep receives an AI-generated list of qualified leads with high conversion potential, based on the identified signals.

The AI tool could even provide recommendations for sales activities and messaging to convert each prospect, personalised to their intent.

How does AI support B2B sales efforts? 

What benefits do B2B sales managers see from integrating AI into their prospecting workflows?

Here are the three most commonly reported:

Efficiency

AI automates lead research, manual tasks like data entry, and routine follow-ups. It frees up time for reps to focus on higher-value tasks.

While non-AI automation has taken care of this for sales teams for some time now, AI approaches this from a more strategic, intelligent starting point, sometimes preventing the need to even schedule an automated email.

Better lead generation

AI algorithms can analyse buyer behaviours and intent signals. It can match them against previously observed patterns to surface higher-quality leads that are a strong match for your ideal customer profile.

Strong engagement

Through personalised outreach and intelligent predictions about what kinds of messages and offers will resonate with each prospect, AI helps to increase the chances of engagement.

This can lead to improved conversion rates.

What are the use cases for AI in sales prospecting?

Let’s get to the tactical level now!

In this section, we share four important use cases for artificial intelligence in the context of real-world outbound prospecting.

1. Identifying high-value leads 

Modern AI tools, such as Cognism’s AI Search, can help sales representatives analyse vast datasets and create targeted lists with ease.

With our AI Search functionality, reps experience 74% faster prospecting and identify their total addressable market up to three times faster than before.

How does it work?

Type a simple command into our AI Search bar. Something like:

“Find me accounts that have a headcount of over 500 who use Marketo.”

Then, Cognism will quickly surface a list of promising prospects. No need to scroll through endless filters (though you can totally do that too, if you want!).

You can also use voice to search for potential customers, and with Cognism’s multilingual support, you can prospect in your native tongue.

Want to see it for yourself? Take an interactive tour below 👇

2. Scoring and prioritising leads

Lead scoring has been an essential part of the B2B sales process for a long time now.

However, before the introduction of AI, lead scoring protocols were often built upon arbitrary scoring systems.

It often worked like this:

A sales leader allocated 10 points to prospects who watched a walk-through video, 5 points for attending a webinar, and 2 points for downloading an eBook. 

While there is some logic here (attending a webinar is a larger time investment than downloading an eBook, which is a sign of intent), there was often a lack of hard figures to back up the allocation of points (e.g. why a webinar shows precisely 2.5x more intent than an eBook download).

AI-powered lead scoring solves this problem. It uses predictive analytics to rank potential leads based on their likelihood to convert (this is determined by analysing datasets from won and lost deals to identify patterns and highlight buying signals).

Then, the AI-powered platform provides a single comprehensive score for each prospect. Sales and marketing teams can then set threshold triggers so that leads that pass beyond a score are prioritised for outreach.

And that outreach may even be AI-driven itself! Let’s find out more... 👀

3. Personalising sales outreach 

Crafting cold outreach has always been a bit of a catch-22.

As salespeople, we know personalisation is a best practice, and that personalised email campaigns are more likely to get positive engagement from our prospects. We know this intuitively and from endless studies on the matter.

However, crafting personalised emails is time-consuming and arguably not the best use of a salesperson’s time. The time spent writing highly personalised emails often isn’t worth it compared to typical email response rates.

AI can craft personalised outreach in seconds, however. 

In fact, a good AI sales prospecting tool can draft emails, LinkedIn messages, and sales scripts that are far more personalised than anything a single rep could accomplish.

Cognism’s sales team uses ChatGPT to draft cold outreach messages, cold calling scripts, and competitor battle cards. We also use it to understand why the emails we write work well so we can apply these learnings to future emails.

Here’s an example of a ChatGPT prompt for sales:

“Analyse this email in terms of tone, length, and style with an NLP lens. Give me a breakdown so I can use this example later for the emails I write.”

⚠️ Check out how Cognism uses ChatGPT for personalised outreach.

4. Analysing and optimising sales performance 

Finally, there’s the reporting and analysis side of the equation.

AI can help sales teams monitor and improve their performance by tracking metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates, and analysing them against patterns and trends that contribute to successful conversions.

You can get AI-driven insights into areas such as optimising sales messaging, refining your target audience or understanding the best times to engage,

For example:

An AI-driven tool can continuously test several different messaging ideas, targeting parameters, and outreach timing. It then analyses these different approaches against results to understand what works best.

Then, it can adjust its course based on the results it finds, refining company targeting parameters or changing a cold email’s angle to reflect past, successful customer interactions.

What is the future of AI and sales prospecting?

So, we’ve covered what AI can do for sales prospecting right now.

But what can we expect from this powerful technology over the coming years? And what challenges will we have to overcome along the way?

What are the challenges of using AI for sales prospecting?

AI can do a lot to transform prospecting, but it’s not without its challenges. These include:

• Data quality and integration. AI’s big win is its ability to analyse vast amounts of data. But if that data isn’t accurate, clean, and up-to-date, then AI is limited in its ability to produce effective insights or craft engaging messages.
• Balance AI and the human touch. People like to buy from people. Removing too much human interaction from the sales process can hurt deals, especially if the outreach is perceived as impersonal or robotic.
• Ethical and privacy considerations. Data privacy is always a concern; AI systems that process sales data must comply with regulations like the GDPR and align with current consumer and company considerations around ethics.

How will AI continue to evolve in B2B sales? 

Of course, nobody can predict with 100% certainty what the future holds for AI. Not even the best AI systems can make that prediction!

That said, we can examine current trends and make some predictions about how AI will develop in sales.

Advanced predictive analytics

We can expect AI to become even more adept at this, predicting which leads are likely to convert and when they’re most likely to engage.

As datasets grow and AI continues to learn from its own experimentation, it will be able to offer ever more precise recommendations.

Deeper personalisation 

AI already has the ability to create hyper-personalised outreach, but this will become even more refined in the future. AI will be able to surface deeper insights into buyer behaviour, preferences, and intent.

Developments in natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning will allow AI to generate more human-like messages, making customer interactions feel more authentic and more individually tailored.

Real-time decision making

As AI develops, it will be able to provide sales reps with instantly generated and highly actionable insights. It will allow them to adjust their outreach efforts on the fly based on the most up-to-the-minute data.

What might this look like?

Well, the AI might dynamically recommend new messaging approaches, adjust outreach timing, or even suggest shifts in targeting.

Voice and conversational AI

Voice assistants and conversational AI will become increasingly embedded in the prospecting process.

Reps will be able to speak with AI sales assistants in their language of choice, requesting activities and data-driven insights.

We’re already starting to see AI sales reps emerge for conducting “human-only” tasks like making sales calls. This technology, currently in its infancy, will only continue to become more realistic and widely used.

Smoother automation and integration

AI will continue to automate more complex sales tasks, from pipeline management to forecasting and AI lead generation. As mentioned above, it will likely expand to take care of some tasks that, right now, we think only humans can complete.

CRM platforms, sales engagement tools, and other sales-related software will continue to integrate AI, enabling sales reps to spend less and less time on mundane tasks and more time on the activities that close deals.

AI will even be able to tell reps what those activities are!

Ethical AI and trust-building

Ethics, trust, and privacy are concerns that always exist as AI develops.

As the technology becomes increasingly capable of performing actions that could be seen as invasive or crossing a line, we’ll likely see a growing focus on ethical AI in sales.

Companies will work to ensure that AI systems are transparent in how they use data, comply with regulations, build trust with buyers, and avoid biases in prospect targeting.

How can you stay ahead of AI trends in sales? 

The best way to stay ahead of the competition is to subscribe to content sources at the forefront of AI in sales.

Bookmark the Cognism blog, follow us on LinkedIn or listen to our podcasts for regular insights into how AI is transforming the world of sales.

Embrace AI to supercharge your prospecting 

AI has a lot to offer B2B sales teams.

Today’s tools can drive more efficient prospecting processes, help personalise outreach, and optimise sales performance in ways that are near impossible with human-only practices.

By implementing advanced tools like Cognism’s AI Search, you can maintain a competitive edge, inform more effective sales strategies, and free up time for your sales reps to focus on the critical activities that close revenue.

Click 👇 to see AI Search in action.