Using AI to empower your small business

Have you ever had to dig through your CRM to find specific data you need, and it took what felt like forever? Or better yet, how long have you spent trying to search for a certain document in your file storage system? A specific spreadsheet? Revenue reports? The list goes on and on. We spend so much of our day just searching for specific information rather than getting things done. For a moment, just think about how much time you’ve spent scrolling past information to find specific data you’re looking for.

[quote style=”boxed”] Inc. did a study on how much time we waste at work, and noted that “when [they] evaluated the work habits of business owners and their key executives, [they] discovered that time-wasting, low-value and no-value activities accounted for more than 30% of their workweeks.” It’s a scary thought for many of us to consider how much time we’ve wasted on these low-value activities that could’ve been spent growing business. The question we should be asking ourselves is why haven’t we found a solution to eliminating the time spent on low-value activities?[/quote]

As a business, you should be focused on growth, but in order to actually do that, you need to have efficient software that takes care of redundant processes. First, many sales teams and small businesses use CRM (customer relationship management) software to help keep track of customers, leads, and help close more deals.

Luckily, thanks to modern technology advancements, AI (artificial intelligence) has become a great tool to help small businesses increase efficiency in their CRM and other business tools. AI can help you streamline your business’ processes in various ways, but one of the best ways small businesses can use AI is with sales assistance. So often, business owners spend far too much time searching for specific information in their CRM or they have trouble keeping track of their customers and leads with no efficient way of organizing things.

With an AI assistant (like Zoho’s Zia) to make sales predictions and offer solutions, business owners can sell more and focus on growth. Zia is a part of Zoho CRM, and she helps you optimize your CRM by analyzing data and tasks to predict the outcome of sales activities.