by Jim Lundy
We are in the era of shifting from chatbots to real assistants—clearly evident yesterday at Google I/O 19. However, this week in sales, sales engagement platform (SEP) provider Bigtincan launched Genie, a sales assistant that puts the rest of the market on notice—including Salesforce, which has promised to ship Einstein Voice this summer.
The Race to Launch the First Real Digital Assistant for Sales
In sales, the race to automate and provide assistance to sales teams has been going on for several years. Only in 2019 have we started to see real movement that goes beyond unintelligent chatbots. Salesforce made great fanfare at Dreamforce 2018 where it unveiled Einstein Voice. The issue was availability and where it will run (only for Salesforce Enterprise Edition and Higher).
Bigtincan Genie Sales Assistant in action.
Bigtincan Genie Will Challenge the Sales Enablement Market
Bigtincan’s move essentially put the entire sales enablement market, which includes CRM players, on notice. Genie can answer questions, help a sales rep find the right content for an upcoming call or meeting and improve overall sales productivity. Genie can also help deliver training, so it has the added value of being one of the first learning assistants (note, Salesforce Trailhead doesn’t do this).
Bigtincan and Salesforce Race to Sales Assistants
While Salesforce announced Einstein Voice last fall, Bigtincan’s announcement came this week. While Einstein Voice has been in a beta, both offerings are planned for the second half of this year with Bigtincan promising a release this summer.
Bigtincan Genie vs Salesforce Einstein Voice.
Sales Assistants—Pilot Now and Prepare for 2020 Adoption
Chatbots are shifting to intelligent assistants and Aragon is predicting that by 2021 sales assistants will be a common occurrence. The opportunity for productivity, even if it is 20 minutes a day, is a game changer. We suggest that enterprises do a pilot of sales assistants in 2019 with deployment in 2020.
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