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Increasing the ROI of a capital markets sales team

During the second half of last year, FeedStock has seen a shift in strategy among enterprises to position AI technology and big-data visualisation at the core of their revenue-generating activities.

Prioritising revenue growth over cost reduction

MIT Sloan Management Review’s research report “Winning with AI” acknowledges that 40% of organisations making significant investments in AI do not report business gains from AI. The findings of the report which surveyed more than 2,500 executives and carried out 17 interviews with leading experts identified that the companies that have successfully captured value from their AI activities are those that “prioritize revenue growth over cost reduction”.  This marks a clear shift away from previous attitudes of using AI to drive efficiency gains and cost reductions, towards a new approach that AI can and should be used to boost employee productivity, unite disparate sales functions and drive revenue-generation across the enterprise.

Why this shift in attitude is necessary

In its 2020 AI Predictions, PwC outlines that 90% of the executives surveyed believe that AI offers more opportunities than risks, and nearly half are expecting AI to disrupt either their geographical markets, the sectors in which they operate, or both.  A McKinsey article written by industry experts and advisors from across the business supports this sentiment and introduces the new approach to maximising revenue-generation through AI by saying that “competitors that are ready to move [to a data-driven approach] are empowering their sales team with insights that will translate to the bottom line.”

From FeedStock’s discussions with sales leaders and the findings from our data, we are starting to see the scale of the benefits that data-driven sales can deliver, from prioritizing leads to enhancing existing relationships with clients, by offering the right service at the right time for the right price.

Why automated data capture must form the foundation

In order to benefit from the significant growth to the bottom line that is expected from AI, it is necessary to remove all the potential ways in which human error can enter the system. Not only does this improve the quality of the data, it also significantly reduces the strain on resources and disruption to workflows caused by traditional data collection methods.

The implementation of successful AI technologies must be founded on the principle of removing all manual processes such as CRM data entry and the requirement to log in to email and browser plugins.

Over the course of last year, our automated data capture systems collected

than a market leading CRM system.

The accuracy and impartiality of this data set enables sales leaders and front-office personnel to derive a whole new layer of insights about their clients’ behaviours and preferences, deliver a far superior level of service and out-compete rivals in this highly competitive sales environment.

FeedStock’s five headline statistics

The implementation of AI technology in B2B sales teams has seen the speed of the initiation of first sales increase by 50%, churn reduced by 25%, sales from new accounts rise 10%, and a 2 to 5% return on sales through pricing. The key to seeing this kind of impact from the deployment of AI technologies is to automate the data-capture process and to focus on the revenue-generating opportunities that data visualisation can present.

  1. Only 12.75% of the average B2B sales professional’s outbound emails are read.
  2. An email which is bespoke to the recipient and opened in the first 60 minutes of having been received is 46% more likely to generate a reply.
  3. 8am – 9am GMT and 9am – 10am EST are the time windows in which the most email read/open activity is recorded in the capital markets industry.
  4. The average asset manager reads only 21% of their inbound emails.
  5. An automated data-capture system collects 10 times more email engagement data than a traditional CRM system and saves an average of 14 hours per week per sales professional.

How AI will drive bottom line growth for capital market sales teams this year

These statistics offer a snapshot view into email behaviour across the capital markets industry. Instant data visualisation tools which provide real-time, revenue-generating insights are crucial to increasing the ROI of a sales team and equip front-office sales professionals with the tools they need to outperform in today’s ultra-competitive environment.

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