In Wiki, Sales Intelligence is defined like this: Sales intelligence (SI) refers to technologies, applications and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of information to help salespeople keep up to date with clients, prospect data, and drive business.

A Google search of sales intelligence makes it clear that numerous companies produce software to collect this data. This software is at its best analyzing and staticizing (yeah, that’s a word!) large amounts of information. For example, it works well if you are a salesperson responsible for analyzing customer behavior on heavily visited sites. When records exceed tens or hundreds of thousands, the only way to really draw conclusions is by having AI work on your SI to bring the highest amount of ROI.

But, there is always a but. What if you are a small business owner that makes 100 sales per month? What if you are a specialty equipment or service seller who makes 15 quotes per week, and lands an average of 3 of them? In these cases, statistical tools are just about useless.

With small data samplings, you are not going to get answers like this: It is the 27^th of the month. You are writing your 16th proposal for the month, and you have received 6 orders already this month from 15 previous quotes. Statistically speaking, you will not get this order. So, does that mean you shouldn’t quote? No, of course you should quote!

I am convinced that specialty products, small businesses, low-volume, high-priced, and some other product and service categories will not be able to effectively utilize ASI (Artificial Sales Intelligence). In the rush to embrace technology, there is the danger of relying too much on that technology alone. Remember the old saying about fire? It is a good assistant when carefully controlled, but a terrible master.

The fact is companies still need good salespeople on the front lines who can think on their feet. Every quote is decided by a person or group of buyers. Knowing that, statistically, you will win every fifth quote is great, but how does that information help you with the customer you are working with now?

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