B2B sales staff spend a substantial amount of their working hours researching where potential customers are planning to open new locations, if there are any changes in management and who has said what about strategic plans or investment decisions. Sales experts focus on these and similar topics because they use them to find points of reference – potential customers will be more likely to be open to discussion if they are contacted in a more personal way. This knowledge is the foundation for success in sales, but every individual sales representative has to invest a lot of time in seeking out this information.
Searching was yesterday: Now the leads find you
An AI that seeks out new potential customers
How things used to be
Then AI came along
adesso developed an AI-based lead engine using technology from Microsoft for the corporate client sales area of a major German bank. The system uses external data sources such as websites, social media content, search engines and paid company databases. The system automatically searches through every source connected to it, guided by search queries or terms that point towards potential sales opportunities. The application uses automated text analysis tools to clean up the results by removing irrelevant hits and duplicates.
Every member of sales staff has their own dashboard on which the system displays all the relevant hits along with background information. They then evaluate each individual sales stimulus. This feedback makes sure that the quality of the results continually improves.
The situation today
The system enables staff to find potential customers faster and in a more systematic way. Sales staff can invest more time in making and maintaining contact thanks to the automatically prepared lead information.
In the first few weeks of using the Microsoft-based lead engine, our customer’s staff found huge numbers of potential customers that they otherwise wouldn’t have, or at least would have only found a lot later. The system gives the sales department an advantage and helps to make working hours more profitable.
Bernhard Rawein, Senior Platform Manager BI, adesso SE
For which companies is the approach suitable?
Any company with a B2B sales structure
For which decision makers is the approach interesting?
All managers involved in marketing
Backgrounds for the technically interested
Azure logic apps for search processes and text analyses, Cognitive services and Azure machine learning for filtering results, Evaluation with Microsoft Power BI
Do you have any questions?
Artificial intelligence is not a replacement for human discussion
Are you wondering what possibilities AI can open up in your company? Would you like to learn more about its applications and the technology? We cannot give you a pack full of stock responses, but we can share with you our specialist knowledge, our curiosity about your company and our passion for technology.
We would be delighted to talk to you.