Before starting my career in marketing, I worked in business development. I had some of the best times and work experiences during those years. But, oof, I don‘t need to tell you how challenging life in sales can be. For every exhilarating win — yay, you closed a deal — there’s an all too humbling loss ... Boo, you were ghosted by a prospect you thought for sure would convert.
Whether you win or lose, it doesn't stop the sales targets from rolling in each month.
Long and skinny? You need a healthy pipeline of leads to meet those targets. And when there are a million things to do, it might be time to enlist tech to help you carry the burden. That‘s why I’ve contacted some sales pros and AI experts to learn how they or their clients use AI for sales lead generation.
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Table of Contents
- How to Use AI for Sales Lead Generation
- AI for Sales Lead Generation: It Doesn't Have to Be Complicated
How to Use AI for Sales Lead Generation
From drafting cold outreach emails to discovering ideal prospects through fair-use data collection, here's how to use AI to help you generate leads.
1. Draft cold outreach emails.
Let's face it: There‘s a lot of spam out there. (Understatement of the year, right?) Because of that, cold outreach has a bad reputation. But don’t be fooled! According to HubSpot’s 2024 State of Sales Report, 23% of sales pros find cold emailing the best way to reach prospects. Further, 21% cite cold email as their most successful lead-gen method.
I can also attest to that. When I was in business development, I had a ton of success with cold outreach emails. It's no wonder, then, that many folks turn to tools like HubSpot AI to streamline their cold outreach processes. For a start, these AI sales tools can help you quickly draft and personalize prospecting emails.
I recently tested HubSpot's AI Email Copy Generator for another article. Even as an AI skeptic, I was impressed. The fact that the tool made me think about my offer's key selling points when I tested it was a big win.
Pro tip: Specificity is key if you want your cold outreach emails to convert. Instead of making generalized points, get specific about your offer. Think about what would genuinely help the folks you're targeting with your outreach.
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2. Create self-service resources.
Want to generate more inbound leads? It's simple, (kinda) … The trick is to think like your prospects. In the context of using AI in sales, this means helping customers do their own research before interacting with a sales rep from your organization. You only need to look at recent data to see why that's important.
HubSpot's 2024 B2B buyer survey finds that 81% of B2B professionals are likelier to buy a B2B product from vendors offering self-service tools. Further, 57% of B2B buyers purchased a tool in the last year without a single meeting with the vendor's sales team. Meanwhile, 65% of B2B buyers say they prefer to do most or all of their research entirely independently.
But what do self-service resources look like in practice? According to 75% of B2B buyers, independent research means gathering information through self-service tools like chatbots. Blog posts from third parties, industry-specific data, case studies, and customer stories also have the biggest influence on B2B buyer decision-making.
Pro tip: AI tools like HubSpot's Content Assistant can help you create self-service resources like blog posts and case studies. Here’s a friendly word of warning, though: Yes, autopilot can be great. However, the human touch is still very much needed in the content creation process. With that in mind, always keep a human in the editorial loop.
3. Re-target churned customers.
ChartMogul's 2022 SaaS Growth Report finds, “The top quartile of SaaS companies reactivate close to a quarter of their lost customers.” Sometimes, winning back old customers is easier than winning over new prospects unfamiliar with your products or services. So, having some form of reactivation campaign can help you re-acquire these new-old leads at a lower cost.
Here's how Freelance Growth Manager Boris Malinov uses AI to re-target churned customers. "For one of my clients, we used Fireflies AI notes to summarize the exit interviews with customers that have churned,“ says Malinov. ”We noticed that ~40% of the churned customers struggled with defining their Ideal Client Persona (ICP), which led to unsuccessful marketing campaigns."
The team prepared a two-week LinkedIn content campaign based on the exit interview information. According to Malinov, the campaign focused on:
- The importance of ICPs.
- A how-to guide for finding your ICP.
- How to use AI to help you with defining your ICP.
- Showcase success studies from our previous, related clients.
Malinov adds, "We knew that all of our churned clients were our first-degree connections on LinkedIn, and we interacted with them — so the chance of them seeing our content was high. We are still gathering the results from the campaign, but so far, it has led to:
1) “Booked a meeting with one churned customer for a new contract.
2) “Restarted conversations to discuss old campaigns and how we potentially can achieve better results in the future with clearer ICP."
4. Find prospects by extracting review data.
HubSpot's 2024 Sales Trends Report highlights that 42% of B2B sales pros find researching a prospect's company to determine its challenges and opportunities is the most effective way to close a sale.
I recently spoke to Joe Fletcher, a Marketing Consultant at Scaled, who uses Google shopping product reviews, Trustpilot, and Google reviews, in general, to identify prospects for cold outreach. Fletcher then uses AI to discover their challenges.
"Utilizing Clay, I scraped 1,000 SaaS businesses Google/Trustpilot reviews and then highlighted companies with more than 20+ reviews who had an average review score of below 4," says Fletcher.
“I then reached out to them utilizing Clay again by creating a cold email which would scrape their LinkedIn company bio so I could craft a relevant message about their SaaS and then inject a couple of the poor reviews into the copy.”
According to Fletcher, his goal was to work with these companies to fix the reviews. To achieve this, they could look at updating their product offering, pricing, etc. He also wanted to help them reach out to current customers to increase their positive reviews.
5. Find prospects by ads library URLs.
Aside from using AI to uncover prospects‘ challenges, Joe Fletcher has also used AI to identify their opportunities. In this case, companies that aren’t running Facebook ads, but their current competitors are. To do this, he extracted data from thousands of Facebook pages using Clay.
Here's a play-by-play of the whole process from Fletcher: “In Clay, you can do this by scraping their [a prospect] specific ads library URL, and if it returned 0, I knew no ads were running. But then I would find 5/10 of their competitors who were running ads.”
He continues, “Then I would upload a video into Pitchlane showcasing half of the competitors, the ads they were running, and what landing pages the ads were leading to. The Pitchlane video would allow me to basically talk to the potential client directly whilst showcasing the ads their competitors were running in the background.”
Aside from Clay's AI involvement, Pitchlane's AI platform allowed Fletcher to “create cold outreach videos at scale.”
6. Turn evergreen content into interactive lead-generation tools.
Earlier, I discussed how important it is to give prospects enough self-service resources to research your products and services independently. In case you missed it, here's a quick stat recap: 65% of B2B buyers say they prefer to do most or all of their research independently, according to HubSpot's 2024 B2B buyer survey.
Part of empowering a prospect's independent research starts with your website content. Think blog posts answering top-of-funnel queries, sharing industry-specific data, and highlighting case studies or customer stories.
To take it a step further — aka help convert those cold leads to warm ones — Tom Winter, Chief Growth Officer (CGO) and Co-founder at SEOwind, suggests turning your evergreen content into interactive lead gen tools.
“If you already have evergreen content on your website that answers specific user needs and consistently attracts organic traffic, AI can elevate it to the next level by making it interactive,” says Winter. “A great way to do this is by upgrading content that answers ‘how-to’ questions, which are often highly valuable to your audience.”
He adds, “By integrating a custom-built GPT (or similar AI model) into these pages, the AI can guide users through the exact processes described in your content or even perform the task for them. This turns your evergreen posts into interactive tools, where the AI acts as a personal assistant. Instead of just providing a written guide, the AI helps users actively navigate the task step-by-step, offering real-time responses to their questions.”
Winter explains that this level of interaction not only enhances the user experience but also keeps potential leads more engaged. Further, “It creates a more personalized journey, increasing the likelihood of converting visitors into leads or customers.”
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- How Sales Teams are Using AI
- Giving Time Back to Sales Reps
- Keeping Up with AI Trends
- And More!
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7. Analyze lead source data.
HubSpot's 2023 State of AI in Sales Report found that 73% of sales pros agree AI can help them pull insights from data they otherwise wouldn't find. It’s no surprise, then, that the second most popular use case for AI in sales was offering data-driven insights. One place you can access these hidden gems is your lead source data.
According to Dexter Chu, Head of Marketing at data enablement platform Secoda, growth teams can use AI tools “to analyze lead source data without writing a single line of code.” More specifically, you can use Secoda's AI chat interface.
“By simply asking questions in natural language, they [growth teams] can access insights on which lead sources are performing best, identify trends, and understand how different channels contribute to conversions,” says Chu.
By following this no-code approach, you can explore and visualize data, making it easy to spot opportunities for optimization — even if you lack technical expertise. He adds, “With instant responses, growth teams can quickly adjust marketing strategies, focus on high-performing sources, and ultimately enhance lead acquisition and revenue growth.”
8. Summarize sales calls.
According to HubSpot's 2023 State of AI in Sales Report, sales pros save around two hours and 15 minutes daily using AI to automate manual tasks. Nearly 80% also agree that AI can help them spend more time on the most critical aspects of their role.
Using AI to summarize sales calls is one way to claw back your or your sales reps’ time. Plus, when done well, you can take this one step further and use the tech to help you create custom sales strategies. Michael Walker, the CMO at SmythOS, tells us more.
“At SmythOS, we've taken AI-driven sales processes to the next level with our Deal Pilot agent, seamlessly integrated with HubSpot CRM,” says Walker. Walker explains that after every sales call, the Deal Pilot agent delivers a detailed summary, follow-up recommendations, and — most critically — a step-by-step custom closing strategy for each prospect.
He adds, “What makes this so powerful is that it doesn't just rely on the call transcript; Deal Pilot combines the insights from those conversations with rich data from HubSpot, giving our sales reps a clear roadmap on what needs to be done to close the deal. The recommendations are hyper-targeted, offering the most likely path to success based on previous interactions and HubSpot activity.”
By integrating AI in this way, the sales team at SmythOS has been able to maximize every opportunity. Further, no lead is overlooked, and they can automate follow-up tasks like sending emails. The result? “With its direct integration with HubSpot, Deal Pilot has become an indispensable tool in accelerating our sales pipeline and boosting our closing rates,” says Walker.
9. Organize internal sales collateral.
Aside from automating tasks, streamlining your sales documentation is another way to save your sales pros time ... Time that they can reapply to generate, nurture, and close leads. To achieve this, Dexter Chu recommends using AI-empowered tools.
In the context of Secoda, sales teams can “efficiently search their internal repository of sales collateral, streamlining access to key documents and resources.” The tool also offers AI-powered search functionality. That allows team members to “quickly locate presentations, case studies, pitch decks, and other essential sales materials by simply typing relevant keywords or phrases.”
He adds, “This reduces the time spent digging through folders and outdated files, ensuring they always have the most up-to-date content at their fingertips.”
10. Coach your sales team.
After training salespeople only, Wilson Learning data shows a 43% increase in performance — with performance measured in sales revenue. When you add manager coaching into the mix, sales performance (revenue) increases by 24% to 67% overall. But it can be tricky to fit sales and manager coaching into schedules when you're already spinning multiple plates.
You‘ve got to close leads, you’ve got to do outreach, and don‘t forget about nurturing existing customers so they don’t churn. And that‘s just the tip of the iceberg. That’s why I love Tom Golubovich's use case for AI sales lead generation. Golubovich is the Head of Marketing at Ninja Transfers.
“I can relate to all the hype around AI in sales, but our team has found little benefit in most use cases,” says Golubovich. “AI-powered lead generation could take over, but at this point, it's much less transformative than we imagined. Even AI-generated templates need more tweaking than they're worth in the end.”
He adds, "One use case we're loving is AI-powered sales coaching. Conversational intelligence platforms can analyze sales calls and give real, valuable feedback to our team that helps us close more sales.
“We‘ve even found some luck with Lavender, which does real-time, AI-driven email coaching. AI isn’t the best solution to every lead generation challenge, but it has its place in helping us improve and scale processes to become an even stronger sales team."
AI for Sales Lead Generation: It Doesn't Have to Be Complicated
Some of my favorite use cases for using AI to generate leads are more like simple time savers than massively complex multi-agent systems. (To clarify, I mean simple for the end user, not necessarily simple for the people creating the agents or tools. Props to you, folks!)
As someone who has created sales documentation for others, I love how Secoda can help you organize your internal collateral and make it easy to find. Sometimes, no matter how well you file documentation, sales reps may struggle to locate it, especially if they're out and about in meetings rather than at their desk.
I also love the idea of using an AI notetaker or agent to summarize prospect meetings. For context, I‘ve always been a scrupulous notetaker. But I worry this can appear like my mind is elsewhere. So, I can imagine this is an incredible way to stay truly present when talking to prospects — without worrying you’ve missed something from the meeting.
That said, this isn‘t about me. It’s about you. And I sincerely hope you've found something in this article that helps you improve your sales process — even in a small way!
Free Report: Smarter Selling with AI
New data and insights from 600+ sales pros on how they’re using AI and the results they’ve seen.
- How Sales Teams are Using AI
- Giving Time Back to Sales Reps
- Keeping Up with AI Trends
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
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