The Key Challenge in Today’s AI Sales: Demonstrating True Value
In today's fast-paced and ever-evolving AI landscape, sales teams face a unique and pressing challenge: proving the value of their products to potential customers. This hurdle occurs because the complexity, new issues and novelty of AI offerings can make it difficult for potential customers to grasp their worth immediately.
The three major hurdles sales teams have to overcome even before proving the AI offerings’ ROI (return on investment) are:
AI offerings are complex: While AI products offer powerful potential, their technical complexity can alienate non-experts. Sales teams must translate complex features and challenges (like model drift) into clear terms, showing how these solutions address specific needs and deliver value, not just technical jargon. This bridges the gap between cutting-edge technology and practical applications.
AI introduces new concepts and issues: Sales presentations must now address new concerns like bias, data privacy, and ethical considerations in AI, requiring sales teams to stay informed and translate this complex information into clear, relevant terms for their clients.
AI products are novel: The newness of AI startups creates uncertainty for buyers. They seek customer references, case studies, comprehensive use cases, and rapid proof of value, making it challenging to showcase ROI and secure hesitant customers.
To overcome these challenges, sales teams in the AI domain must adopt strategies that go beyond traditional sales approaches. They must excel in educating potential customers, simplifying complex concepts, and effectively demonstrating how these cutting-edge technologies can provide tangible benefits and solve real-world problems.
Above all, sales teams must provide concrete proof of the return on investment their AI offerings deliver.
Here’s how it can be effectively done, and it is always customized for each customer:
Identify Customer Goals or “Buying Motive”: The first step is figure out the why; not the how. Determine what their motivations are for considering this solution and why is it important to their business. It could be important for many reasons, including cost savings, revenue growth, efficiency or productivity improvements, customer satisfaction, or time saved.
Measure the Baseline: Understanding the customer buying motive establishes a framework for how the AI offering can make their motive a reality. This provides an apples-to-apples point of comparison to measure the impact of the AI system.
Quantify Benefits: Translate the outcomes of the AI solution into quantifiable benefits. For instance, if the AI system improves efficiency, calculate the time saved and translate that into cost savings.
Cost-Benefit Analysis: Compare the costs associated with implementing and maintaining the AI solution against the benefits it delivers. Include initial costs, ongoing operational costs, and training or integration costs. Focus not just on these costs, but also highlight how AI unlocks powerful analytics, automation, and new capabilities that deliver wider more comprehensive business benefits and customer value.
When weaving ROI for AI offerings into your sales strategy, keep several critical points in mind:
As a way of demonstrating AI value, call these projects “Proof of Value” (POV) as opposed to “Proof of Concept” (POC). POVs directly exhibit solutions to solving real business challenges and goals. POCs only establish technical viability. POVs align better with value-focused selling.
Clarify any multi-phase upfront expenses instead of providing a blanket estimate. Break out costs by milestone to demonstrate the value delivered at each stage.
A sales presentation aims to persuade potential customers to purchase a product or service by effectively communicating its benefits, demonstrating its value, and addressing any concerns or objections. Mere feature listings no longer suffice – instead, translating capabilities into advantages is essential. This means illustrating exactly how AI offerings tackle real-world challenges, enhance productivity, or boost profits for each customer.