The potential of AI in sales isn’t just for enterprise organizations. With the right approach, small teams can also implement AI into their workflows to save time and grow revenue more efficiently.
Small businesses do need to take a different approach than enterprises, however. Large businesses have the budget to experiment, while small teams need to be more strategic with their spending and time. They need to find ways to implement AI into their workflows that deliver results quickly with minimal disruption.
In this article, we’ll discuss four workflows small businesses can implement now that incorporate automation, AI assistance, and AI agents. These workflows integrate into existing processes, automate tedious tasks to give sales reps time back, and, in many cases, live right in your CRM. Best of all, they deliver return on investment quickly.
The admin burden small teams can’t ignore
Sales representatives spend up to 70% of their time on non-selling work such as admin tasks, according to research from Salesforce, Bain & Company, and McKinsey. For a rep making $75,000 per year, that’s about $52,500 in annual spend on work that doesn’t directly drive sales.
Enterprises may be able to absorb these costs through scale, but small businesses don’t have that ability. For small teams, a few hours of lost time per rep each week could be the difference between hitting quota and missing it.
SMBs also need to roll out changes quickly. When they add something new, it needs to be minimally disruptive and fit into the way people already work.
When large organizations implement AI into their sales systems, they might create custom AI workflows complete with bespoke integrations. These projects can take months to roll out and involve significant changes. While this approach can work well with the right resources, small businesses need pre-built workflows that they can implement quickly.
Small businesses need AI workflows that they can easily integrate into their existing sales processes and with the tools they already use. Rather than completely overhauling sales processes, SMB-friendly workflows automate the most tedious parts and do specific jobs well, like summarizing call transcripts, coaching on sales conversations, or drafting emails. This enables them to fit into existing processes without completely disrupting them, and allows them to produce results quickly.
4 AI-assisted workflows your small sales team can deploy first
Let’s take a look at four AI workflows that are designed for small teams, work fast, and generate measurable ROI within the first quarter.
Workflow 1: AI-powered lead prioritization
For growing small businesses, a common problem is having more leads than time. When reps spend hours doing manual work to determine which leads are the best opportunities to pursue, this exacerbates the issue and leads to cold leads sitting in your queue.
One way that businesses are addressing this bottleneck is AI lead researchers. These tools automatically score lead fit based on your historical closed deals and even feed that information into your CRM, so reps see priority instantly.
For example, Nutshell’s lead researcher agent summarizes lead details and assesses fit, helping reps prioritize who to call first. You simply provide it with information about your business and what matters for your customer fit. It then automatically researches leads and grades them for fit, tailoring its report to what matters to your sales team.
Workflow 2: Automated call capture and AI summarization
Calls are a good use of sales reps’ time, but those calls typically come with lots of note-taking and time spent on admin tasks like logging calls and notes. A rep might have five conversations in a day but spend hours on follow-up admin work that could be spent on other opportunities.
An AI workflow with automatic call capture and note-taking can eliminate much of this manual work. A voice-to-text system can capture the call, automatically generate a summary, pull out action items, and update your CRM—all without manual typing.
In Nutshell, an AI-powered CRM for small businesses, the built-in voice-to-text notetaker turns calls and meetings into summaries, action items, and CRM updates automatically. Reps save hours per week just by not manually summarizing calls.
Workflow 3: AI-assisted email drafting
Email is one of the best tools a salesperson has, and sales reps typically send lots of emails every week. Sending every email manually would be extremely time-consuming, so teams use various tools to make the process more efficient.
One common way that teams speed up this process is by using templates. However, sending the same templated email to every prospect leads to mediocre results since the emails aren’t personalized. You can personalize the templated emails manually, but that is still a large investment of time.
Integrating AI into the email process can dramatically increase efficiency while still allowing for personalization. AI tools can generate personalized email starters and replies with content based on the context found in your CRM. Email sequences can send emails automatically, and reps can always customize emails as needed.
Nutshell’s email reply suggestions, for example, generate personalized response starters for incoming customer emails based on CRM context. The email sequence writer helps draft multi-part campaigns, so reps aren’t manually writing each follow-up.
Workflow 4: AI sales coaching and objection handling
It takes time and coaching from managers to get new sales reps up to speed. This presents challenges for small teams.
Managers are often busy and may even be selling themselves, leaving limited time to listen to calls and provide personalized coaching. Small teams are also less able to afford long ramp-up periods where new sales reps aren’t actively closing deals.
AI sales coaches can help with this by providing reps with personalized tips and feedback based on best practices, company policy, and deal context.
Nutshell, for instance, has a built-in AI-powered sales objection coach, which reps can ask questions to get help responding to objections and preparing for calls.
AI sales coaches can supplement manager training, helping to get new sales reps productive faster.
Tips for implementing AI for a small sales team
Implementing AI for the first time can be challenging for small businesses, as introducing any substantial change can be. Here are a few tips to make the process easier and increase your chances of success.
Build a solid foundation first
Before implementing AI, ensure you’re starting from a solid foundation. Your team should have a repeatable sales process in place, and you should have a reliable system for organizing accurate customer data.
Without these foundational things in place, adding AI won’t be much help and may even amplify any disorganization or faulty data. Once you have a reliable sales process and data, however, you’re able to amplify the right things.
Start small
One common mistake is trying to overhaul your entire sales process with AI tools in one go. This leads to overwhelm and will likely cause your sales system to break and reps to abandon using AI entirely.
Instead, implement one change at a time, focusing on ones that are easy to implement and that will provide value quickly.
This avoids overwhelming your sales team, and starting with quick wins helps your team see the value, so they’re more likely to stick with using the AI tools you introduce.
Provide training and clear guidelines
Even for relatively simple AI tools, clear guidelines and training go a long way in ensuring your sales team makes the most of it.
Leaders should provide guidance that establishes when to use AI tools and where human checks should fit into the process. Instructions that explain how to use the tools, as well as in-person or virtual training, go a long way in helping teams make the most of new AI tools.
Before you start: A readiness check
Are you ready to start implementing AI tools? Here’s a quick list you can use to check your team’s readiness:
Warning signs
If your team is dealing with any of the following challenges, consider working on them before implementing AI:
- Your CRM data is disorganized: AI workflows are only as good as the data they pull from. Ensure you have a good process in place for collecting and organizing lead and customer data before introducing AI.
- You don’t have an established sales process: Without a repeatable sales process, teams struggle to implement AI reliably.
- You lack buy-in: For your AI tool rollout to work, you need the support of your entire team. If your team is resistant, work on showing them the value and start with a small test.
- You don’t use a CRM: If your team doesn’t use a CRM, they’ll likely struggle to implement AI reliably. Get that foundational tool set up before you add in AI. If you plan to switch CRMs in the next six months or so, you may want to wait until that transition is complete before introducing new AI tools.
Signs you’re ready
If the following apply to your sales team, you’re likely ready to start implementing AI into your processes.
- You have solid data: If you have a system in place for storing and organizing customer and lead data and have at least 12 months of historical closed-deal data, you have a solid data foundation for introducing AI.
- Your sales process and CRM are established: If you have a reliable, repeatable sales process in place and your team uses your CRM to run that process, you have the foundational system and tools you need.
- You have buy-in and a project owner: In addition to buy-in from across your team, you also want someone who will own the implementation. This is not a full-time job, but it’s helpful to have someone who will champion the project and take ownership of ensuring its success.
Realistic impact and ROI
Budget and ROI are, of course, important for any small business. Before investing in new AI tools, you’ll need to have an idea of the costs and the potential impact. Costs, impact, and ROI will naturally vary from business to business, but let’s establish some benchmarks.
Small businesses can expect to spend between $2,000 and $8,000 per year on the kinds of capabilities discussed above, depending on the specific tools used and the functionality you need.
The impact of these AI tools comes from increased efficiency and revenue impact.
On the efficiency side, let’s say your AI workflows save you five hours per rep per week, a conservative number considering reps spend as much as 28 hours on admin according to Salesforce’s study. At fully-loaded cost, including salary, benefits, and overhead, that’s about $50 per hour.
The efficiency calculation looks like this:
- 5 hours/week × 5 reps = 25 hours/week
- 25 hours × 52 weeks = 1,300 hours/year
- 1,300 hours × $50/hour = $65,000 in recovered productivity
Just looking at efficiency, your AI tool cost is $2,000 to $8,000, and your productivity gain is $65,000. That’s an 8x to 32x return on time savings alone.
There’s also the revenue impact. Better lead prioritization, improved email and call script personalization, and improved sales rep performance through coaching all contribute to higher close rates.
Getting started with AI workflows
The time savings and increased productivity that AI enables aren’t just available to enterprises. With the right approach, small sales teams can access the benefits, too.
For SMBs, strategically and gradually building AI into sales processes can deliver huge savings over time. It doesn’t require hiring an AI expert or being one yourself. You just need an understanding of your process and where AI can have the most impact. Then, take implementation one step at a time using SMB-friendly tools.
Will Gordon is the Sr. Director of Marketing at Nutshell CRM, where he leads strategic initiatives around lead generation, product marketing, and customer education. With 10+ years of marketing experience and hands-on expertise across 7+ CRM platforms, he brings a rare practical perspective to CRM selection, implementation, and optimization. Before joining Nutshell, Will spent 7.5 years at WebFX managing digital marketing campaigns for hundreds of clients across industries.
