SAM.ai is an AI-powered CRM that mines your existing connections, and helps you discover warm introductions to your colleagues’ contacts.
Sales and marketing technology platforms are prime candidates for artificial intelligence that can expand your professional network. While the digital marketing model is easy to remember — content, community, and commerce — it is also famously difficult to implement. Hence, the AI opportunity.
“Traditional customer relationship management (CRM) solutions rely on you to do all the work,” said Raz Choudhury, founder and CEO of SAM.ai. “You’re typing, you’re clicking and you’re telling your CRM what to do in baby steps. No matter how often you do this, you have to do the same thing all over again.”
In fact, as Choudhury pointed out in his recent Publio Podcast interview, relationships within your network, or community, are the key ingredient to grow your company. “Building trust, offering value is what helps you propel growth.”
You already have a close-knit network among your contacts in LinkedIn, your inbox, and other applications. SAM.ai’s super connector uses artificial intelligence to look through them and invite them to engage in private, secure presentations and networking events .
“This is not a social network,” Choudhury emphasized. “This is a private network of your inner circle of people who can provide warm introductions to their contacts.”
Artificial Intelligence Pivots Virtual Events
Conferences, trade shows and sponsored events are any company’s bread and butter lead generators. With COVID-induced lockdowns in 2020, the events went virtual. SAM.ai used their innovative CRM with event marketing and “super connector” algorithms to invite people to their highly targeted, “can’t miss” round table events. The algorithm generated new leads and identified warm introductions after the events.
A seamless event registration process was key to success. Conventional virtual events require multi-part forms, and users must remember add the event to their calendars. It’s not difficult, but the process has plenty of room for improvement.
“We made it super simple for executives,” Choudhury said. “When you’re invited to an event, you don’t have to do anything other than make one click, which is to accept the invitation.” Super connector already has the name, the email address and fills the calendar. One click, and it’s all there.
“This is the Holy Grail of getting thought leaders onto a roundtable with fellow members in their industry, or similar positions in other organizations,” Choudhury noted.
AI-Generated Introductions Get Results
The artificial intelligence-generated roundtable model worked so well during the pandemic that the SAM.ai team turned it into a product and offered it to their top customers. A few clients tested the solutions with parallel campaigns: traditional lead generation, and a SAM.ai roundtable. SAM.ai’s email campaign had zero ad spend — just the software and AI-generated email list. The results were similar to the traditional campaign that spent thousands of dollars.
A year and a half of running the super connector solution for their clients, as well as for themselves, Choudhury’s team discovered a simple truth: “If you have a long sales cycle and you have some thought leadership material, target the C-suite,” Choudhury told Publio CEO Keith Reynolds on the podcast. “This is one of the best bets you can make in 2022.”
“In a sense,” Reynolds observed, “artificial intelligence turned the roundtable community into content. Entrepreneurs and sales leaders create a community around their clients and engage them at a high level. The process is simple: Educate them. Earn their trust, then allow them to network with new peers.
Said Choudhury, “this creates the type of value that lasts a lot longer than any ad.”
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