The rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots, like ChatGPT, has caused a ripple effect across every organization in the world. ChatGPT reached 100 million users two months after its launch.
Suddenly, the question on everyone’s mind was: “Is this going to replace my job?” - but with the AI’s limitations quickly making themselves known, the question changed.
Now, it’s: “Can I use ChatGPT to be more effective in my role?”
If you’re in sales enablement, the answer is a resounding yes. Using ChatGPT and conversational AI as part of your sales enablement strategy is a surefire way to increase your effectiveness and efficiency.
In this article, we’ll take a brief look at what ChatGPT is (and some disclaimers), before diving into how you can use it in sales, including:
- Writing sales emails
- Sales content
- Competitive intelligence
- Social selling and thought leadership
- Coaching your sales team
- Summarizing call recordings
- A quick summary
If you want even more on ChatGPT for sales, SEC Ambassador Thomas Cheriyan spoke in-depth at our New York Summit about the applications in this article - not to mention, Thomas’ Cooking with ChatGPT smash-hit webinar was hosted on May 3 and you can catch the replay for free.
Let’s get started. 👇
What is ChatGPT?
"Imagine ChatGPT as a highly intelligent digital assistant that can understand your questions or prompts and provide meaningful responses.
"It learns from a massive dataset containing various texts, like websites, books, and articles, and uses that knowledge to generate relevant and coherent answers.”
You might notice I've highlighted the previous lines of text - that’s because I asked ChatGPT to describe itself in understandable terms. Less than 10 seconds later, I received an answer and used it above.
It’s an incredibly useful AI tool, and its ability to generate text has been used as a starting point for blog posts like this, and even to write code for software developers.
It’s important to note that ChatGPT does have limitations - it has little understanding of events that happened after 2021, and can occasionally produce incorrect information, which is why it’s vital to fine tune and confirm anything it produces.
The more detailed you are with your prompt, the higher the quality of the answer you’ll receive.
However, the use of ChatGPT in sales has a lot of potential, so let’s get into some of the ways it can enhance aspects of your sales process.
Using ChatGPT for sales emails
Writing sales emails can be difficult. Whether it’s the subject line or the body copy, it can be difficult to create something that will resonate with your target audience or persona.
Not only that, but it’s time-consuming, especially for people who are more naturally inclined to be sellers, talking to prospects and closing deals rather than sitting at a desk drafting emails about a product or service.
How can ChatGPT help?
At the very least, it can give you a starting point, some inspiration to build from - saving you 30 minutes of staring at a blank screen trying to come up with the best way to phrase the email.
In a best case scenario, it can write an almost-perfect email in seconds.
The key is in the prompts you feed to ChatGPT’s machine learning language model. If you ask: “Help me write a sales email aimed at CFOs”, you’re unlikely to get anything worthwhile. The prompt is too vague.
Compare that with one of Thomas’ example prompts from his presentation in New York:
“I need help writing an email in 200 words or less. I'm an account executive at Salesforce. I'll be sending this email to CFOs in the manufacturing sector in New York, who are not currently doing business with us. My goal is to have them respond back to me with the intent of scheduling a time for a discovery or demo call. Please also include a compelling subject line.”
The level of detail in that prompt will allow ChatGPT to generate a much more accurate, targeted email.
If you’re not happy with it, you can ask the AI to iterate:
- “Can you shorten the email and make it more compelling?”
- “Rewrite the email but make it more casual, conversational, and fun.”
By doing this, you’ll end up with four or five email templates, from which you can pick and choose the best parts. And the best part is it’ll probably take you half as long compared to writing them from scratch.
That means more time to generate leads, and more time to sell thanks to ChatGPT.
Sales Enablement Collective
Using ChatGPT for sales content
Sales enablement professionals are often responsible for the arduous task of creating content - our Sales Enablement Landscape Report found that close to half of respondents (38.7%) were involved in the creation process.
How can ChatGPT help here?
If you’ve ever suffered from writer’s block when trying to write a script for a training video, or a one-pager for sales reps on whatever piece of training you’ve been trying to reinforce, then ChatGPT is here to help.
Here’s a very basic example, just for the purpose of this article:
Prompt: “Write a script for a one minute sales training video, teaching sales development representatives the basics of the MEDDIC methodology.”
ChatGPT’s response:
Title: MEDDIC Methodology Basics for Sales Development Representatives
[INTRO: Exciting upbeat music and visuals of a team of sales representatives]
Narrator: "Welcome, future sales champions! Today, we'll introduce you to the powerful MEDDIC methodology. In just one minute, you'll learn the basics to help you qualify leads and close deals more effectively."
[Scene 1: Animated visuals of the MEDDIC acronym, with each letter highlighted as it's explained]
Narrator: "MEDDIC stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion. Let's break it down."
[Scene 2: Metrics]
Narrator: "Metrics - Understand the quantifiable results your solution can deliver. Show your prospects the potential return on investment."
[Scene 3: Economic Buyer]
Narrator: "Economic Buyer - Identify the person with the purchasing authority. Ensure they recognize the value of your solution."
[Scene 4: Decision Criteria]
Narrator: "Decision Criteria - Learn what factors your prospect uses to evaluate solutions. Align your offering with their priorities."
[Scene 5: Decision Process]
Narrator: "Decision Process - Determine the steps your prospect takes to finalize a decision. Adapt your sales process accordingly."
[Scene 6: Identify Pain]
Narrator: "Identify Pain - Uncover your prospect's pain points. Highlight how your solution can address their challenges."
[Scene 7: Champion]
Narrator: "Champion - Find a strong internal advocate within the prospect's organization. They'll help you navigate roadblocks and influence decision-makers."
[OUTRO: Exciting music, with visuals of sales representatives celebrating a closed deal]
Narrator: "And there you have it! With the MEDDIC methodology, you're ready to conquer the sales world. Apply these principles, and watch your success skyrocket!"
[End screen: Company logo and contact information]
It’s certainly not perfect (and neither was our example prompt), but immediately you can see the advantage of working from this script rather than a blank page - you have a springboard for your work.
You could refine this further, through the iterative prompts we explained earlier. Ask the AI to make the script more formal, more concise, more fun, longer, or shorter.
The possibilities are almost endless - and more importantly they’re much more time-efficient than writing four or five script versions yourself.
ChatGPT doesn’t have to have any influence on the end product, either. You can use it just to generate ideas.
Prompts such as: “Give me five creative ideas for sales training sessions that will be fun and keep reps engaged” will return five answers in a matter of seconds.
Even if you don’t use one of ChatGPT’s ideas, it might act as a spark of inspiration.
Using ChatGPT for competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence is key - your sales reps need to know how you match up to your competitors.
More importantly, they need to put themselves in a prospect’s shoes, in order to truly understand why a prospect would (or wouldn’t) choose a competitor over your product or service.
This requires one of two things - experience in the role, and hearing from prospects why they’re choosing competitors. Or, it requires time spent researching across your own sales content, the competitor’s websites, and more.
However, as Thomas demonstrated in New York, you can expedite this process by using the correct prompts in ChatGPT.
Here’s his example, looking at two popular CRM tools:
“How would you convince a CFO that they should consider buying Salesforce versus Zoho, even though Salesforce is more expensive?”
Thomas notes that this prompt includes a specific persona, a specific tool pitted against another, and focuses on the specific element of price. This is all part of the fine-tuning process - the more detail you include, the better.
Here’s what ChatGPT answers with when we put in that prompt:
When presenting the case for Salesforce to a CFO, focus on the long-term value, scalability, and customization capabilities that can outweigh the initial cost difference compared to Zoho.
Consider these points to build a persuasive argument:
- Comprehensive Feature Set: Highlight Salesforce's extensive range of features and tools that cater to various business functions like sales, marketing, and customer support. Emphasize the platform's ability to provide a unified solution for the entire organization, streamlining processes and improving efficiency.
- Scalability: Explain that Salesforce is designed to grow alongside the company. As the organization expands and evolves, Salesforce can be easily scaled up to accommodate increasing demands, making it a long-term solution that can save resources in the future.
- Customization and Integration: Point out that Salesforce offers extensive customization options and a vast ecosystem of third-party applications through the AppExchange. This allows the company to tailor the platform to their specific needs, creating a seamless experience that enhances productivity.
- Advanced Analytics and Reporting: Stress the importance of Salesforce's robust analytics and reporting capabilities, which can provide valuable insights into business performance, customer behavior, and sales trends. These insights can drive better decision-making and contribute to the company's overall success.
- Customer Success and Support: Mention Salesforce's strong reputation for providing top-notch customer support and success resources, including a dedicated account manager, extensive documentation, and a large community of users. This ensures that the company will have access to the guidance and assistance needed to maximize their investment.
- Proven Track Record: Share case studies and testimonials of other organizations that have successfully adopted Salesforce and experienced significant improvements in their sales processes, customer relationships, and overall business performance. These real-world examples can help the CFO visualize the potential benefits for their own company.
By emphasizing these points, you can make a compelling case for Salesforce as a strategic investment that delivers long-term value and supports the company's growth, even if it comes with a higher initial price tag than Zoho.
That’s a great starting point for any new rep, and it becomes much quicker to supplement this initial overview with additional information, than provide it all from scratch.
As with all these prompts, ChatGPT isn’t perfect so don’t just put what it generates out into the world blindly. Use it as a tool to assist with and expedite these tasks.
Using ChatGPT for social selling and thought leadership
Social selling (ie. building relationships with prospects, usually through social media) is a growing part of a modern sales rep’s role. In addition to that, more and more sales reps are being encouraged to engage on LinkedIn, sharing insights and pieces of thought leadership.
This might not come naturally to some reps, or perhaps they’re keen to share on social media but aren’t quite sure where to start.
ChatGPT can help formulate a message to a prospect, a reply to a LinkedIn post shared by a prospect, or create the first draft of their own post.
As an example, here’s a prompt we used, along with ChatGPT’s reply:
Prompt: “Write a short, 50 word comment replying to a LinkedIn post about Thomas Cheryian's webinar on using ChatGPT in sales. Be sure to express your eagerness to attend.”
ChatGPT’s response:
“Thomas Cheryian's webinar on leveraging ChatGPT in sales sounds incredibly exciting! I'm eager to attend and discover innovative ways to enhance our sales process and drive results. Looking forward to gaining valuable insights from an industry expert. Count me in!”
Not bad, but it’s a little robotic. Our next prompt said: “Be more casual, and make the reply shorter.”
ChatGPT’s reply:
“Can't wait for Thomas Cheryian's ChatGPT in sales webinar! Super excited to learn new techniques and amp up our sales game. See you there! 🚀”
With just a few short sentences, the AI was able to create an organic reply to a hypothetical LinkedIn post.
For someone who isn’t fluent in social media jargon, or who’s nervous about putting their foot in their mouth - this is a great tool to help take that first step!
Using ChatGPT to coach your sales team
So far, these examples have largely involved ChatGPT creating text, to save you and your sales team time. But what about its conversational abilities? Can ChatGPT be used to help prepare reps for conversations with prospects?
As Thomas demonstrated in New York, the AI can be the perfect role-play buddy, helping a rep practice particularly tricky scenarios.
In his example, Thomas sets up an ‘unwinnable’ scenario, involving a CFO who will not budge or show interest in a discovery or demo call. We learn more from our failures than from our victories, so seeing how reps handle a conversation with a prospect who will never book another call can be enlightening.
Here’s the example prompt from Thomas:
“I am an enterprise sales rep at Salesforce trying to sell their core CRM platform. You are the CFO of Delta Airlines. You're currently using a CRM solution from Oracle. I will cold call you and try to convince you why you should take a discovery or demo meeting with me. You should be as hot as possible and essentially be uninterested in learning more about Salesforce and try to give as many objections as possible. Are you ready to go?”
From there, you can observe your reps as they try to maneuver through this impossible scenario, as it’ll test their skill sets.
It’s not a replacement for traditional training, or even for live roleplays with peers, but it’s an excellent way to supplement a rep’s learning and practice.
Using ChatGPT to summarize call recordings
Not only can ChatGPT create text and have realistic conversation, it can also analyze the text you provide it with.
Nowadays, most sales calls are recorded. But it can be a hassle to go through them and find salient information, or to find action points from the conversation.
If you feed your transcript to ChatGPT, you can ask it to summarize the conversation into bullet points, list out the action points, or write a follow up email based on the contents of the transcript.
Or, as Thomas pointed out during his presentation, you can use the AI to apply a framework and analyze the conversation based on that.
He suggests using prompts like: “Can you recap what the action items were from the meeting and help me write up an email to send back to the prospect with next steps?” or “From this call transcript, what did we get from the MEDDIC framework, and what's missing?”.
In reality, anything can be analyzed and summarized, even particularly long sales content that you’d like to shorten down into concise pieces.
This is another big time-saver if you’re using it right.
Wrapping up
As you can see, there are a multitude of ways to use ChatGPT for sales. Odds are that your teams are using it already - so make this fantastic technology an integral part of your sales enablement tech stack by formalizing how it’s used in your organization.
In short, here’s a brief rundown of use cases for ChatGPT in sales enablement:
- Writing targeted sales emails
- Eliminating writer’s block when creating sales content
- Speeding up the competitive intelligence process
- Helping reps engage in social selling and thought leadership
- Creating specific role-play scenarios for your team
- Summarizing call recordings and highlighting key moments within
Want to learn more about using ChatGPT in sales enablement?
SEC Ambassador Thomas Cheriyan hosted his Cooking with ChatGPT webinar on May 3 and dove into impactful ChatGPT prompts you can use in your organization - catch the free replay here!
Still not enough? Our 6,000+ strong Slack community has its own dedicated ChatGPT channel where you can chat with Thomas and other ChatGPT enthusiasts in the sales enablement space.
