RR#113 - Sales calls + AI: A match made in revenue heaven

The AI revolution is upon us.

And if you aren't leveraging it in your business, you'll get left behind.

But most business owners are underutilizing AI in their business.

They're so focused on trying to write social media posts with AI that they're overlooking dozens of other ways to improve productivity and generate revenue.

This week, I'm going to share how you can use AI to easily and quickly help you use sales calls to learn about your ideal clients, build sales and objection handling playbooks, and ultimately, help you sell better—and sell more.

Sales Calls For Research & Development

If you aren't recording your sales calls, this is a reason to start.

Find sales calls with your 10 best customers or clients.

Drop those calls into a tool like Descript, which not only creates a transcription for you but also allows you to edit the entire audio & video file using nothing but the text in that transcription. So, if you can copy and paste text, you can edit video files.

Get to the "meat" of the call by trimming out anything that isn't essential, like exchanging pleasantries, getting to know each other, and getting payment information.

Compile all those transcriptions into one document, separating each call with a simple "Call 1," "Call 2," and so on.

Now, load that single file into the AI tool of your choice with a prompt like the one below, replacing the highlighted parts with your information:

We are a B2B sales and sales management consulting business.

A perfect client for us tends to be a US-based MSP or IT business with revenue between $1M and $10M in revenue.

We help them create and improve their sales processes and playbooks, build and optimize sales teams, and create a scalable sales organization based on processes and systems.

Below are the transcriptions of 10 sales calls from clients we consider to be a perfect fit for us. These are the types of clients we get the best—and fastest—results with.

Please analyze these sales calls as a high performing 20 year sales & marketing veteran in our industry. Look for patterns in how they describe their problems and pains, challenges they are facing, concerns they have about buying from us, and any other relevant insights that may help us better understand our ideal clients and customers.

Please share any patterns and insights you see based on this analysis that may help us understand our ideal client more and improve our sales and marketing messaging, positioning, and results.

You can obviously change the prompt to be more specific with what you are looking for, but done properly, you'll get feedback from this analysis that may help with your messaging.

*Pro Tip: If the transcription is too long for the AI tool you’re using, use this GPT Prompt Splitter to make it work.

Build a Sales Playbook

Next, if the sales calls were run well, you can use them to build the outline of a sales playbook that you can use for training and coaching. Do that by following up with a prompt like this:

The process and scripting in these sales calls generally reflect the best practices of our sales team.

Please review all of these sales calls carefully, through the lens of a 20 year sales management veteran in our industry, and create a sales playbook we can use for sales coaching and training.

The playbook should include a process that you’ve extracted by reviewing these calls and identifying consistent patterns in how the calls were run. The objective is to create a repeatable process we can train everyone to use and get optimal results from.

Please include key sections, like (but most certainly not limited to) introduction, discovery, closing, and objection handling. And include the core scripting, questions, presentation material, and other information that is consistently used across these calls.

Use your sales management & industry knowledge and experience to fill in any gaps with the playbook you can’t directly extract from the calls themselves.

Depending on how consistently the calls you put in were run, this will get you a playbook that is 50-75% complete.

You may need to fine-tune the framework and scripting, but you should have the foundation for a playbook based on calls from your best clients.

Build an Objection Handling Playbook

One of the most challenging parts of a sales call is handling objections properly.

And the best way to prepare for this part of the call is by having an objection handling playbook to review and practice with.

You can create one by following up the conversation in your AI tool with the prompt like the one below to get one started for you:

Based on your analysis of these calls and your 20 years of high performance sales management in the consulting industry,where you’ve listened to thousands of sales calls, identify the 5 most common sales objections we can expect on future sales calls.

Please also create 2 rebuttals for each of these objections we can include in our sales playbook. The rebuttals should be empathetic and include a question. They should not be combative, confrontational, or make the prospect defensive. And they should leverage all the sales training, books, and practices you’ve learned in 20 years, specifically those practices taught by Alex Hormozi, Jordan Belfort, and Zig Ziglar.

After swapping out your industry and favorite sales trainers, you should get a sense of what the most common objections are going to be and have the beginnings of an objection handling playbook you can use to role play and prepare for objections you know you and your sales team are going to face.

Again, you may need to polish the messaging a bit, but AI will have done a lot of the heavy lifting for you here.

Create Scripting & Content to Proactively Handle Objections

You’ve now got a playbook for handling objections when they come up on calls.

But the best time to address objections with prospects is before they ever come up.

You can use AI to help you do that two ways: 1) in your marketing, and 2) in the scripting of your sales call.

Address Objections Proactively in Your Your Marketing

To get ahead of objections in your marketing, use a prompt like this:

Based on your analysis of the sales calls and the objection handling playbook, please provide 10 unique ideas for social media posts we can create and publish that allow us to proactively address these objections.

The goal of social media post would be to address the core issue in the prospect’s mind with a piece of content that, if read, would lead the prospect to no longer have the objection.

You do not need to write the full post. I would only like the angle or idea for now.

Please use this as an example for the strategy (but not the content unless it’s relevant to our ideal clients and objection handling playbook): https://www.rayjgreen.com/blog/stop-spinning-your-wheels

In this post, the author uses this piece of content and the metaphor of getting their car stuck in the sand to address the objection of, “I need to get some clients before I invest in learning how to build a client acquisition system.”

Please provide 10 creative ways we can do the same with our top objections.

This should give you a few ideas you can use to create content to handle objections before they even come up.

You can share this content with prospects after they've scheduled a call and before it takes place, as part of a strategic booking funnel.

Address Objections Proactively in Your Sales Playbook

You can then look for ways to proactively address objections by making some strategic changes to your sales playbook.

For example, try loading up your sales and objection playbooks along with a prompt like this:

Please review the attached sales and objection handling playbooks, again through the lens of an exceptional sales manager and sales strategist with 20 years of experience. Carefully consider how we can proactively address these objections earlier in the sales call before they come up.

For example, in discovery questions we could ask prospects what makes this an issue they need to address right now, and not 6 months from now in order to address the objection of “just not the right time right now.” Please provide 10-15 creative and unique ways we can do this with the objections in the attached playbook.

This will likely give you a few clever ways to get the information you need to handle the objection later, or eliminate them entirely with a well-designed sales structure.

Making This Work For You

You'll need to adjust these prompts to make them work for you and your sales process.

But what I hope I've at least started to show here is the possibility of using AI and some creativity to take your sales process (and results) to the next level.

Think about the opportunities with sales training, call coaching, and analysis of sales reports and trends.

I'm personally using AI to amplify and accelerate the sales process work we're doing in my own business and with consulting clients.

It certainly doesn't replace expertise, because you still need to know what a good output looks like and how to fill in the gaps.

But what used to take days or even weeks to do can now be something I do in a few highly focused hours.

I'd love to hear how you're leveraging AI in your process. Just leave a comment below.