AE Day in the Life: Automated Data Capture and Relationship Mapping with Erik King

Manual Data Entry: A Time-Consuming Necessity (old way)

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.

❌ 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.

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.

✅ Benefits of automated activity and contact capture:

• Living, breathing documents that the entire account team can access.
• Relationship Maps are robust and full of valuable information.
• AEs and renewals teams can expand accounts more easily by understanding their org structures.
• Proactively surface all new contacts that have been interacted with on the account and prompt you to add them to the Relationship Map.
• Increases the usefulness of stakeholder mapping by visualizing complex org structures, adding influence and relationship lines, and easily understanding the last time each person was engaged.
• Customers are more forthcoming with Relationship Maps open in front of them.

Unused Org Charts and Powerpoint Puzzle (old way)

Creating and maintaining relationship maps was another manual, time-intensive task. I used to do all of this in PowerPoint, usually for a QBR. Then it would never be looked at again.

Due to the manual nature of updating the deck and having to go into another tool, the org charts quickly became outdated.

Another reason my org charts weren’t used throughout the life of an account was they weren’t easily accessible to my account team.

❌ Challenges and frustrations with traditional org charts and relationship mapping:

• Highly manual and time-consuming
• Done for QBRs then not used again.
• Lack of access and visibility across the organization.
• When a new rep inherits accounts, they have to start from zero.
• Loss of institutional knowledge when someone leaves.

Relationship Maps: Real-Time, Collaborative Stakeholder and Influence Mapping

People.ai's Relationship Maps has changed how I understand and manage customer relationships. Nobody on my account team has to ask for anything because it's right there in the CRM on each account.

The ease of use is remarkable. Today I had a call with 10 new people. Our contact capture automatically creates the contacts and then I just grab them and add them to the account's Relationship Map. I can include lines of influence, positive and negative relationships with other stakeholders, and see their last engagement. This is true stakeholder and influence mapping that is fast and actually valuable.

The real-time updates and team visibility have made relationship mapping an ongoing, collaborative process rather than a periodic, isolated task. The information is invaluable to the entire account team: solution engineers, sales leaders, and CSM.

✅ Benefits of People.ai’s Relationship Maps:

• 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.

  • Bonus tip: "With an account's Relationship Map open in front of them, I like to make assumptions to get answers. I might ask, 'Mark, here you are, and you report to the CRO Jane,' and the customer will validate that or correct it and usually add some additional context." – Erik