Maxwell Lu, a former product engineer at Salesforce and head of revenue at a previous start-up, grew frustrated with the task of re-listening to sales calls to take notes and fill data into customer relationship management (CRM) software. Looking for a better way, he decided to build technology that could automatically analyze sales calls – powered by AI – and transfer that information directly to a CRM database.
The tech grew into a business, Pilot AI, which was accepted into Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 batch and recently raised $2.2 million from Twitch co-founder Emmet Shear and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, among others. businesskinda.com previously reported on Pilot AI during Y Combinator’s Summer ’22 batch demo day.
“Large organizations not only produce an incredible number of calls, but also typically have a lot more teams that can touch one account, and so have an even higher demand to unlock this information – and reduce the friction of sharing it,” Lu said. to businesskinda.com in an email interview. “Pilot AI doesn’t just provide suggestions to salespeople, it takes the workload completely off the salespeople and leadership.”
That’s a bold claim. However, Pilot AI analyzes the hype and uses AI to extract information from sales calls, generate notes, and populate CRM fields after the calls have ended. The notes contain a summary, any questions from the salesperson on the line, answers from prospects and next steps. According to Lu, one customer uses Pilot AI to populate 15 different fields in their CRM, replacing a post-call writing process that took reps up to 20 minutes.
If true, that’s precious time saved. According to a questionnaire, on average, sellers spend less than 36% of their time selling products. The study, published in September 2018, shows that the majority of salespeople’s time is spent on sales technology, with sales-related email taking the most time and sales intelligence tools the least.
Other startups are using AI to take the manual work out of sales calls, or at least try to. For example, Winn.ai, which launched out of stealth in September, offers an AI-powered assistant designed to help sales teams track, record, and update CRM entries, much like Pilot AI. Meanwhile, Attention leverages AI technology and natural language processing to populate post-call CRMs and compose follow-up emails.
When asked what sets Pilot AI apart, Lu didn’t argue that the startup’s technology is necessarily different from what’s already out there. But he did claiming that Pilot AI is more streamlined and affordable, pointing to the company’s growing customer base as proof that it’s doing something right.
“Our customers range from organizations with a modest number of salespeople and much larger sales organizations to sales teams in established industry leaders such as Salesforce,” said Lu. “For the cutting edge of AI sales tools, building a product like this requires not only a deep understanding of the technology, but a nuanced understanding of the business problem – our leadership and team bring both to the table.”
Lu wouldn’t share Pilot AI’s revenue — or the exact size of its customer base for that matter. But he claimed the pandemic and the macroeconomic slowdown have been a blessing actually for business, because they have ensured that more sales conversations are ‘digital’.
According to Lu, companies are now investing more in – and researching – AI for sale than before. A 2021 poll by 451 Research found that more than 95% of enterprises considered AI technology important to their digital transformation efforts, particularly with a view to reducing costs, increasing sales and improving the productivity of the staff. A separate one report from McKinsey implies that AI in marketing and sales has increased profits for 79% of companies that have adopted it, thanks to AI’s ability to automate monotonous operations and analyze customer data.
“The broader slowdown in technology has actually drawn the attention of sales leaders to a company like ours, which is focused on increasing the output of their existing team,” Lu said. “Leaders are now looking for solutions like ours because it is much more cost-effective to use AI to double the effectiveness of your existing sales force than to simply hire more salespeople, which was the go-to approach during its heyday. ”
Janice has been with businesskinda for 5 years, writing copy for client websites, blog posts, EDMs and other mediums to engage readers and encourage action. By collaborating with clients, our SEO manager and the wider businesskinda team, Janice seeks to understand an audience before creating memorable, persuasive copy.