Are your AI initiatives driving real business results?

This week, I had an interesting conversation with a customer who shared,

“We’ve infused AI at different layers of our organization. It is in every new product and all our leaders are talking about it, but it isn’t showing up in any business results…what could be the problem?”

As we did a deep-dive together, we discovered 3 areas that were being overlooked or not fully utilized.

I am sharing them with you today, because I want you to convert all this excitement over AI into clearly measurable business outcomes for your customer.

Let’s dive in.

#1 – Utilize Marketing as your Air Cover

Start with marketing.

Let them use this framework to craft their messaging: Industry and Role Use-cases > Potential KPI Impact > Specific business Outcomes.

It’s about creating use cases & scenarios by industry, connecting them to specific industry KPIs and joining the dots to tangible business outcomes.

They should frame and communicate what I call “The Art of the Possible”

Don’t start with AI, start with the scenarios that create value. AI is not a magic wand, it is an enabler to accelerate specific business outcomes.

#2 Focus on your Stakeholder Strategy

Often, salespeople and leaders have conversations about AI with clients, but they don’t gain any traction.

It  is  not  about  specific stakeholder roles, their  seniority  or tenure,  but  what  you  should  be  looking  out  for  is, “Am  I  connecting  to  the  innovators  and  visionaries  within  the  customer’s  ecosystem?”

In uncertain market conditions, most clients want to play it safe.

It is these innovators and the visionaries who  are  looking  out  for  newer  ideas, exploring the limits of what is possible and eager to exploit the future.

Identify such client stakeholders and engage with them to run a series of AI pilots that you can subsequently convert to prototypes.

#3 Invest in the quality of your Customer Conversation

The  third  layer,  and  the  most  important,  is  to focus on the customer conversation.

It  is  mind boggling how many use-cases and opportunities  that  seller organizations  can create around AI,  but  when  it  comes  to customer engagement,  most  of  that  potential value  gets  discounted  at  the  altar  of  the  customer  conversation.

Every customer stakeholder has a different understanding and perspective on AI – you will have to understand what AI means to them, within the context of your customer’s organization, the issues they believe it can solve and the results they believe it can drive.

There is a saying: “Definitions  are  found  in  dictionaries,  but meaning  is  found  within  people”.

Once you have  clarified what truly AI means within their context, then you can focus on the co-creation of what is possible with AI. This can sometimes entail actually sitting down with the customer and showing them real prompts that reveal its true power.

When you demonstrate the power of AI, they see you acting differently, therefore, differentiating yourself from all the other vendors just pushing an AI hallucination.

These 3 areas of leveraging marketing, mapping the right stakeholders and focusing on the quality of the customer conversation will give you and your customer a clear roadmap to bridge the gap between the power and potential of AI to tangible business outcomes for your customer.

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