Every year, Lenovo sales teams help millions of customers do business better across 180 markets. Sellers work with customers all over the world, helping them design innovative solutions to solve their business challenges.
For customers with complex challenges, the sales cycle can take a long time, as Lenovo responds to evolving requirements during the process. In some cases, this work involves multiple different languages, geographies and time zones.
Lenovo wanted to better understand and address customer objectives from the earliest point in the sales cycle. With gen AI technology maturing rapidly, the company saw a perfect opportunity to build a new set of custom tools that would empower its global teams to respond faster and more accurately to RFPs.
Bringing generative AI innovation to sales teams
Inside Lenovo, the Digital Workplace Solutions (DWS) group helps businesses maximize productivity and optimize costs with as-a-service solutions for devices, support services, cyber resiliency and more. Because a growing number of enterprises are seeking to switch from in-house delivery to managed services, DWS takes part in numerous large-scale RFP exercises every year.
Abdul Hakim, Executive Director – Digital Workplace Solutions at Lenovo, says: “We saw DWS as the ideal testbed for an AI-powered approach. Advances in generative AI mean that it is now possible to automate tasks that were previously the exclusive domain of human workers. We wanted to harness that cutting-edge technology to help sales teams in DWS to work more effectively than ever.”
Streamlining complex sales cycles
Lenovo aimed to address several key challenges facing DWS. These included the requirement for in-depth training across a large and complex solution portfolio, rapid adaptation to emerging customer requirements, and dynamic responses to RFPs. The objective was to use gen AI technology to help streamline these process steps—from providing hyper-personalized sales training and coaching to summarizing lengthy RFP documentation.
To bring its vision to life, Lenovo partnered with another AI pioneer: Letter AI. A startup in the field of intelligent automation and part of the Lenovo AI Innovators platform, this company was the ideal fit to help Lenovo move quickly from prototype to production.
Hakim confirms: “We wanted to move forward with a minimum viable product in weeks, not months. By leveraging the Letter AI platform, we realized that we could start building the business logic for our new solutions almost immediately.”
Building compelling presentations rapidly
Building on the Letter AI platform, Lenovo rapidly developed a set of custom, gen-AI powered solutions tailored to requirements of the DWS team. Named the DWS Revenue Enablement Platform, the solutions are designed to streamline key processes throughout the sales cycle—and, ultimately, to accelerate revenue generation.
The DWS Revenue Enablement Platform comprises solutions designed for each stage of a sales engagement. At the beginning of the cycle, the platform offers a content management and personalization solution to help sellers develop pitches and presentations that highlight the value of DWS services.
“Our teams can find existing content assets and customize them in real time,” says Hakim. “The solution can even translate these materials on demand, allowing us to pursue opportunities practically anywhere in the world.”
Honing pitches with an AI-powered coach
During most sales cycles, the DWS team is called on to give a virtual or in-person presentation to the prospective customer. These presentations can be a make-or-break moment for a deal, which means it’s vital that teams are as prepared as they can be before they pitch.
To help sellers perfect their pitches, the DWS Revenue Enablement Platform includes the DWS AI Co-Pilot: an intelligent, hyper-realistic AI coach that gives sellers instant feedback on their presentations. The solution is even capable of taking on the persona of the customer and asking relevant questions based on the seller’s presentation.
Hakim comments: “We built a hyper-realistic AI coach that allows our sales teams to put their pitches to the test, ten times faster than before. At the end of the session, the solution provides feedback on what went well and areas for improvement.”
Summarizing lengthy RFPs in seconds
At DWS, prospective customers share RFP documentation that can run into the hundreds of pages. From this information, sales teams need to uncover the challenges and opportunities that each organization is facing, and build tailored responses that address their specific requirements.
In the past, reviewing RFP documentation was a manual and time-consuming process. However, thanks to the DWS Revenue Enablement Platform, that’s all changing. Using gen AI, teams can now rapidly digest huge volumes of content, zero in on the crucial information, and respond to customers rapidly. In fact, the DWS Revenue Enablement Platform saves each sales team member more than 10 hours a week.
“Our teams can use the DWS Revenue Enablement Platform to get information about any aspect of the DWS portfolio in real time,” continues Hakim. “That’s a game-changer during customer conversations, because sellers can provide tailored answers to even the most complex questions up to 90% faster.”
Supporting billion-dollar revenue opportunities
Even prospective customers are using the DWS Revenue Enablement Platform to streamline the RFP process. The platform offers bespoke micro-sites—named AI sales rooms—that help accelerate communication between Lenovo and the customer. In their own personal AI sales room, customers can use a built-in AI chatbot to ask questions about Lenovo solutions and receive answers in real time.
One seller noted of the AI sales rooms: “The client was very impressed by the micro-site—it completely changed the energy of our conversation.”
So far, the solution has supported around $1B in total contract value, 20% of which are closed deals. Building on the strong success of the gen AI solutions for the DWS team, Lenovo is now expanding the Revenue Enablement Platform to the entire Lenovo Solutions & Services Group (SSG)—bringing the benefits of automation to hundreds of employees and potential customers.