Alex Terry, CEO of Conversica, is an accomplished and award-winning Internet business veteran with a strong track record of driving results and growth. Conversica, an award-winning SaaS software company, was recently named 2017 Best in Biz Enterprise Product of the Year in the sales software category. This award recognizes how Conversica’s AI-powered sales assistant is revolutionizing how businesses connect with their prospects and customers at scale.
Conversica has built a conversational AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform, deployed as sales assistants. Alex says that their AI-powered sales assistants “become part of their customers’ sales and marketing teams.”
The AI-powered sales assistant is a virtual employee with a name, title, email address and phone number. It automatically contacts and engages prospects using natural language conversation until the prospect turns into a customer, or opts out.
The AI-powered sales assistants are multi-lingual and used by over 1,000 companies. More than 300 million messages have been sent through the Conversica platform.
AI is Changing the Way B2B Companies Market their Brand
Some of the earliest marketing tools were spreadsheets with the ability to create formulas. We’ve since entered a new era with AI-based tools – but Alex says we’re still in the early days and compares present-day AI tools to the Internet in 1997. Conversational AI can now interact with customers across their entire lifecycle.
New algorithms are available and faster and cheaper computing power is making AI more accessible. Conversational AI allows for advanced micro-targeting and mass personalization. Having one-to-one conversations with millions of people could never be done manually, but with AI, it’s completed with well-crafted execution and at scale.
Common Objections to Conversational AI
Alex says almost everyone starts out as a skeptic about Conversica’s AI-powered sales assistant, but their minds are changed when they see the results.
Conversica has contacted over 40 million leads, and over 30% of them have gotten into a conversation with the sales assistant. That’s an impressive engagement rate.
Alex also points out that this application of AI is not displacing salespeople. On the contrary, the increase in qualified leads is creating a need for more people on sales teams to follow up on qualified leads.
A research project with Salesforce revealed that no companies were reducing the number of salespeople after introducing Conversica, though it does change how salespeople are spending their time. Instead of a salesperson spending 80% of their time chasing deals, they’re spending 80% of their time focused on closing deals.
The Future of AI-Powered Marketing
Looking to the future, Alex says conversational AI assistants will continue to become smarter and easier to use. We’re at such an early stage, and it will only get better. Conversica is constantly training their virtual sales assistants for improved capabilities. Alex predicts that AI-powered assistants will become a fact of life in the coming years.
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