This is Part 1 of a recap of Building (and Actually Using) an AI Sales Coach That Closes Deals with award-winning CEO of B Squared Media, Brooke Sellas and CEO and founder of Human Brands Win, Lindsay Tjepkema.

Marketers are being asked to drive revenue. But most marketers have never been trained to sell. Furthermore, many marketers have an aversion to selling.

According to Gartner, salespeople—including marketers—who use AI to help their sales initiatives are 3.7 times more likely to meet their quotas.

Marketers have been largely focused on using AI to do more with content. But the smartest marketers are applying it to sales and lead generation efforts like customer journey mapping and ideal customer profile (ICP) configuration.

AI can make a big difference as a revenue-driving partner. It can help you with:

• Objection handling: Marketing often hears objections before sales when getting people into the funnel, and AI can help identify and overcome objections
• Discovery prep: Marketing is responsible for handing marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) off to sales, or sometimes even helping identify sales-qualified leads (SQLs); you can use AI to understand who you're talking to during the sales process
• Proposal language: AI can help you clarify your product/solution packages, terms and conditions, etc.
• Follow-up sequences: AI can help you see both the minutia of each email need as well as a 30,000 foot view of how the entire campaign should work

Building Your Sales Bot

Choose Your Platform

You can use any platform to build your sales bot. It may depend on your comfort with the tool, what you have access to within your company, or some other criteria. The only requirement to build a custom bot will be to use the paid version of your platform, so there will be an associated cost.

Using ChatGPT as an example, here's how to get started.

• Log into ChatGPT and click on Explore GPTs. Custom GPTs are bots that have a specific job, such as building your sales bot to help with sales.
• Click Create. This gets you started; it's that easy.
• Now you need to prepare your bot for its sales role. Go into the create section, and here you can enter something along the lines of "Make a creative" or "Make a sales bot."
• Click into Configure. This is where you'll get into the nitty gritty of creating your bot.
• Name your bot and give it a description. Use a fun name that makes it feel like you're talking with a friend.
• For instructions, answer these five questions.
• Who is your bot? Give it a name, give it a role, and make sure it has some sort of personality.
• Who does your bot serve? Who is your ICP? Who do you not love to work with? The more specific you can get, the better your outputs will be.
• What is your bot's job? Give specific sales tasks it should handle (especially if it's tasks you hate—tell it that).
• How should your bot sound? You want your bot to sound like you, especially in a sales situation—your tone, your phrases, your energy.
• What should your bot never do? Make sure you include your boundaries, your guardrails, and things you never want it to do.
• The tool will come up with conversation starters on its own.
• In the knowledge section, upload any relevant files you have: sales playbooks, past proposals, pricing or spec sheets, etc. You might want to create a source of truth document that includes anything marketing and sales related that helps your bot understand you that you can easily keep updated.
• Recommended model is subjective, so choose what works best for you—the latest model is likely best if you're just getting started and don't have a specific model preference.

You can come back to edit your bot at any time—including your instructions and documentation to make sure those stay up-to-date.

Foundational Documents to Create a Custom Sales Bot

You don't need to have all of these documents before you create your sales bot, but they are foundational to build a well-rounded custom bot.

• Sales playbook: your sales processes, strategies, best practices
• Product/service offers and packages: the details of what you're selling
• ICP: who you're selling to, and who you don't want to work with
• Sales scripts or templates: how you engage with your prospects
• Financial minimums: the minimum amount you're willing to work for
• Boundary language: phrases you want to flag that you won't do (e.g., contract terms that are too long for your schedule, using a discount to close a deal)
• Motivation anchor: why you do this work

If you don't already have these documents, you can use your bot to help you build them. Use the following sample prompt to get started.