AE Day in the Life: Automated Activity and Contact Capture with Erik King

Hi, I'm Erik King, a Global Strategic Accounts rep at People.ai. With years of experience in enterprise sales as both a leader and an Account Executive, I’ve worked with some of the biggest names in technology, including Salesforce, Sprinklr, Yext, and more.

But I’ve never had the resources I do here at People.ai thanks to my access to complete data and AI-powered insights on every deal. In our Day in the Life series, I'm taking you through an essential (and annoying) seller task: updating the CRM. And how I’m handling it in this new AI-enhanced world.

Manual data entry was once a major drain on my time and resources. Despite the significant time burden there was still incomplete data and missing contacts. Now, with People.ai's Data Foundation my workflows have completely transformed. 

I’m sharing a before-and-after comparison of how I used to update the CRM and how I’m doing it now–with People.ai.

Let's get started!

From Manual Data Entry to Automated Activity Capture

Before People.ai: A Time-Consuming Necessity

My old post-call routine was a familiar one for many sellers. I would spend significant time manually logging activities in the CRM. Then, I would do research on LinkedIn and Google, making sure I added the relevant contacts. 

This process was time-consuming and prone to human error and oversight. For example, I would spend a day going back and forth with a client in an email thread. In the back of my mind, I would be waiting until the end of the day to choose which email to log in–I want to get the finished thread. But something would come up like my kid gets sick, and I forget to log it altogether. Then my sales leaders would Slack me 5 days later asking why there was no engagement on the account... 😑

Missing information is a big challenge for many reasons, but AE turnover is a big one and leads to a lot of lost institutional knowledge. We’ve all been there. You inherit a new account and nothing was logged. The last AE is long gone, along with their institutional knowledge. Now you’re left to spend weeks playing detective. This is becoming a more prevalent problem with so much AE turnover.

Those are just a few examples of why manual data entry cannot be the way forward.

Time: 5-8 hours weekly

With People.ai's Data Foundation: Automated Activity and Contact Capture

With People.ai's Data Foundation, I sometimes forget how much time I used to spend logging activities and adding contacts. I don't log anything anymore. People.ai automatically captures and logs all my activities, from emails to calls to Slacks, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.

Aside from the obvious removal of manual data entry, the biggest benefit for me is being 100% present on customer calls. The customer is no longer staring at the top of my head while I furiously take notes.  Now, I am fully engaged during calls and can pay more attention to managing the call, understanding who is engaged, picking up on non-verbal cues, and adjusting. It helps me be a better seller and partner to our customers. 

The benefits extend beyond individual efficiency and effectiveness. Every Friday, each account's Slack channel gets an automated summary of what happened that week from our genAI product, SalesAI. This automated reporting keeps the entire team aligned without additional effort from the sales reps.

It doesn't end there. Data Foundation lays a… well, a foundation for the rest of your tech stack. It connects all your data across different systems and tools and is the launching pad for truly valuable AI.

Time: Virtually zero. All my sales activities are automatically captured, filtered, enriched, and matched into the CRM

Before and after Data Foundation

🚫 Challenges and frustrations with manual activity and contact capture:

• Many contacts and activities don’t get logged at all.
• AEs are busy managing many customers and internal stakeholders leading to missed information and stories rather than facts.
• The CRM is a system of opinions with biased reporting leading to flawed decision-making and strategy.
• For contact capture, many point solutions just capture the name and email address with no title, company, or context.
• Customer experience suffers with account transitions, forcing AEs and customers into customer interviews so the AE understands how to service the account.
• AEs get put on the spot in meetings when an activity isn’t tracked and have to field many burdensome requests for updates on accounts.

✅ Benefits of automated activity and contact capture:

• Institutional knowledge is automatically retained.
• CRM moves from a system of opinion to a system of record.
• Sellers save hours a week and the burden of tedious work.
• Sellers get accurate account details when inheriting new accounts.
• The entire company has visibility into what’s happening in accounts.
• Shields AEs from being inundated with questions about their accounts and activities.
• Accurate data improves success with other critical sales rituals like account planning, opportunities, and forecasting.
• Customers get a more fluid experience when accounts change hands.

The Impact: More Than Efficiency

People.ai’s Data Foundation has not only saved me hours of busy work but has also improved the quality of my customer interactions, my ability to sell smarter, and the speed at which I can get up-to-date on new accounts.

Next ▶️: check out how I’m doing relationship mapping in this new era of sales.

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