Is manual prospecting still worth the investment?
Sales prospecting is undeniably one of the most important sales activities for various companies, and will remain a staple for many years to come.
The essence of sales prospecting may remain the same, but the process requires a massive transformation.
This transformation institutes the use of AI.
According to Salesforce’s 2024 study, company AI prospecting obtained a higher lead-to-meeting conversion rate of 35% compared to manual prospecting.
Although manual prospecting is foundational to the development of AI prospecting, using it continuously may be detrimental to your entire sales workforce or business.
There are now tons of sales prospecting tools available, such as AnyBiz, that performs the same tasks of manual prospecting but at a higher level.
But is AI really worth it? Would it veer away from actual human connection and personalization? And besides automation what else can it supply?
These are just some of the questions we’ve encountered upon developing our technology, and for this article, we will explore these questions and compare the undeniable advantages of both AI and manual prospecting and their potential disadvantages.
So, whether you’re a sales leader, revenue operations manager, or business owner evaluating tech investments, this post will help you understand how AI can fit into your sales strategy and whether it’s time to embrace this new approach.
What is Prospecting, and Why Does It Matter?
Prospecting refers to the process of finding, identifying, and engaging potential leads with the goal of filling your sales pipeline, which can be performed via cold calling, email outreach or even social media connection.
It involves a lead qualification process that evaluates the potential of a prospect to purchase your product, or subscribe to your service.
The quality of your leads has a direct impact on your ability to convert your prospects into actual paying customers. Prospecting, therefore, is essential in sales strategy. It can make or break your overall sales process, and without proper strategy, implementation and prospecting you may not achieve your sales and revenue goals.
Manual Prospecting vs. AI-Powered Prospecting: A Side-by-Side Comparison
The rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolutionized prospecting strategies and developed it by a lot.
But how exactly?
AI enables more scalable, sustainable and profitable prospecting strategies depending on the AI sales tool that you select. It can perform most of the heavy lifting in your sales process.
But how exactly does it generate ROI?
Here is the breakdown of the costs, investment and quality of manual prospecting and AI powered tools.
1. Cost
Manual Prospecting
Whether you are performing cold calls, writing emails, or engaging on LinkedIn you need to allocate a large chunk of your time to perform these tasks. Since your sales team are extremely busy juggling through multiple outreach tasks, they may inevitably neglect their actual responsibility — generating sales.
Although it secures personalization, human touch and the innate requirement of your prospects to get in touch with actual human beings it is still time-intensive that may lead to higher personnel costs.
AI-Powered Prospecting
AI sales tools, such as AnyBiz’s AI sales agent and its automated outreach capabilities, are instrumental contributing to your sales team, especially with the amount of time they spend on prospecting.
The best AI tools can seamlessly handle your outreach campaigns with precision and automation.
But would it lose personalization and sound too robotic?
This is an initial concern for many first time users of AI sales agents, and we understand that AI has established a reputation of being too robotic since it strictly follows a script — no thanks to generic chatbots.
However, sales tools such as AnyBiz, was founded under the belief of AI’s immense potential in completely transforming the sales process.
It can send personalized emails and effective follow-up sequences, process automated calls, and even engage prospects on LinkedIn and other social media platforms.
Automating these processes can help you reduce labor costs and allow your sales teams to focus their efforts and attention on other activities that will generate a more meaningful value.
Cost Comparison:
- Manual Prospecting: May have higher costs due to the amount of time spent on research, outreaching and follow-ups
- AI Prospecting: Lower cost as it automates repetitive tasks, allowing sales teams to focus on higher-value activities.
2. Time Investment
Manual Prospecting:
Researching, writing personalized emails, engaging and calling prospects, even managing follow-ups are extremely time consuming, and that is not even the end of it.
But this is the reality of manual prospecting, and realistically it is extremely slow and are prone to errors, inconsistencies and sometimes untimeliness.
In a research conducted by Salesforce, sales representatives spends less than 30% of their time actually selling, which is detrimental to their quotas and generating ROI.
AI-Powered Prospecting:
Meanwhile, AI tools are capable of handling these tasks more efficiently due to its automation capabilities, which can save you and your sales team a large portion of your time.
Whether they are sending personalized emails, automating follow-up, or even qualifying leads, AI sales tools can continuously engage with hundreds and thousands of prospects.
One fine example is AnyBiz and its multichannel attribution capabilities and a prospect database that contains over 400 million personas that can outreach to up to 8,000 leads monthly through email, LinkedIn, and AI-powered cold calls. In contrast to manual prospecting that may take a significant amount of time and effort.
Time Comparison:
- Manual Prospecting: Slower sales cycle due to the amount of time it will take to research, outreach and follow-up.
- AI Prospecting: Can reduce time spent on outreach and provides automation for faster lead engagement and qualification.
3. Lead Quality
Manual Prospecting:
The most inefficient part of manual prospecting is the usage of the “spray and pray” strategy that relies not on precise information or data; but with intuition and guesswork.
If this sounds scary, then it probably is since it mainly relies on chance rather than actual statistical evaluation and analysis.
Sales rep does not possess the ability to provide accurate data or predictive analytics to qualify leads effectively, which renders the use of AI tools. And although personalization — a unique advantage of human intelligence and manual prospecting — is critical for improving lead quality the overall process is undoubtedly limited and inconsistent.
AI-Powered Prospecting:
AI tools like AnyBiz utilize its segmentation that can qualify and find high intent leads. By classifying their behavior, engagement level and characteristics AnyBiz’s AI agent will segment your prospect allowing a targeted communication providing you a better, faster and more effective way of closing deals faster.
AI systems can also continuously learn from past interactions and refine their lead qualification criteria, improving the overall lead quality over time.
Lead Quality Comparison:
- Manual Prospecting: Inconsistent since it relies mainly on intuition; although it can still be effective if done with effective research and review of historical data.
AI Prospecting: Utilize intent signals and predictive analytics that can help identify the chances of leads converting or purchasing your product.
4. Response Rates
Manual Prospecting:
May yield ideal response from prospects, but since outreaching requires contacting a large group of prospects the response rate may deplete. Although personalization can improve response rates, the sheer volume of outreach and varying levels of engagement make it difficult to consistently achieve high conversion rates.
AI-Powered Prospecting:
AI tools, such as AnyBiz, are shown to improve your response rate. Its automation coupled by hyper-personalization can scale your outreach efforts and get in touch with thousands of potential clients and prospects. AnyBiz allows you to customize messages by type (email introduction, follow-up, LinkedIn outreach) and tailor communication based on where the prospect is in the sales journey.
AI tools have been shown to increase email open rates by as much as 30% and reply rates by 25-40%, thanks to their ability to deliver timely and relevant messages.
Response Rate Comparison:
- Manual Prospecting: Typically results in low response rates due to generic outreach and inconsistent timing.
- AI Prospecting: AI tools increase response rates by sending hyper-personalized outreach at the optimal time, improving engagement.
5. Conversion Outcomes
Manual Prospecting:
Although human interaction can help generate sales and improve conversion rates, the problem of manual prospecting lies in its slow pace and lack of real-time optimization. It can be extremely difficult to be consistent in outreach, especially with a growing pipeline, which can result in missed opportunities or delayed follow-ups.
AI-Powered Prospecting:
Identifying high-intent leads in real-time can help the sales team move prospects through the pipeline at a rapid phase. It can track engagement, automate outreach and shorten sales cycles which will transform your conversion rates.
AI sales tools such AnyBiz, also enables an adjustable outreach strategy thanks to its personalization capabilities and can engage with prospects in real-time based on its intent signals.
Conversion Rate Comparison:
- Manual Prospecting: Slower, often inconsistent, and subject to human limitations.
- AI Prospecting: AI tools increase conversions by automating outreach and optimizing strategies based on real-time data and intent signals.
When Manual Prospecting Still Plays a Role
Although the advantages of AI are numerous, it doesn’t mean that manual prospecting is no longer useful.
Manual prospecting is still important in Account-Based Marketing (ABM) strategies.
In ABM, sales teams target high-value accounts with a highly personalized approach, this will require meticulous attention and research and involve longer sales cycles.
Hybrid Approach: Combining AI with Manual Outreach
AI will not replace humans.
Us humans have the creativity, the critical thinking, human connection and empathy that AI tools may lack despite having the most advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), and Large Language Models (LLM).
A hybrid approach is perhaps the most effective, and useful strategy to implement in your sales strategy.
You can take advantage of the immense power of AI for its automation and lead qualification, while assigning your sales team to focus their attention on high-value accounts that may require a stronger push and engagement.
This combination allows sales teams to scale outreach without losing the personal touch that is essential for closing high-ticket deals.
Conclusion: Is It Time to Switch to AI Prospecting?
Here at AnyBiz, we are in the business of transforming your overall sales cycle. Hence, we’ve developed the most advanced AI sales agent that can handle most of your prospecting and even brand awareness strategies.
Before its proliferation, AI was believed to be a novelty in sales. A tool that is effective in automating some process but may not have direct contribution to your conversion, engagement and development rate.
AnyBiz offers immense features that will allow you to maximize the potential of your sales process, which can replace the overall traditional way you process your sales.
Check it out by booking a demonstration meeting today or try out our product: trial starts at 0.99 USD!
