Dawood Khan, Commercial Director at Amdaris: “You can’t have AI dine with a client in a nice restaurant”

If there’s one thing that screams through from this interview with Dawood Khan, Commercial Director of Amdaris, it’s that people matter. As he points out in our headline, you can’t share a meal with an AI to build a relationship. “Human bonds maintain and build human relationships,” Dawood added, “and people buy from people.”

Instead, he sees technology – whether AI or otherwise – as playing a supporting role. Indeed, this is what Amdaris does: it helps clients integrate technology to enhance the services they supply to their own customers. We’re only veering away from the phrase “digital transformation” because the term is so over-used that people’s eyes mist over when you utter it.

We suspect Dawood has heard it a lot too, having spent 26 years helping businesses embrace technology. Much has changed since the start of his career, and continues to do so. “If we think back to a decade ago, B2B sales CRMs were mostly just sales forecasting tools,” Dawood told us.

Fast forward to today and “companies can use their CRM platform to not only manage sales processes but also to help really support the ‘relationship’ part of CRM.” He adds that “with developments in artificial intelligence, there’s always the possibility that this will increase further”.

Our thanks to Dawood for such thoughtful answers, which means there’s a huge amount here to digest. Something to savour along with a tasty dinner, perhaps.

Related reading: Five CRM solutions for medium-sized businesses

Can you give an example of a complex problem in sales that you – or your company – have been involved in tackling with technology?

At Amdaris, we have undergone a significant sales transformation in the past 12 to 18 months. This transformation involved hiring data, technology and process experts who can support the merging of new technology that we’ve invested in within our sales processes. For our company – which is a tech-first business – it wasn’t just about choosing the right technology, we also needed to ensure that the technology was onboarded and used in the most optimised way. It had to make the right impact on the right people within the business at the right time.

The reason for this transformation? Ultimately, we want to give our clients and prospects the best possible buying experience. To do this, we need to truly understand their objectives and business challenges. Only then can we tailor the sales process to their specific requirements and needs. The technology we onboarded was specifically chosen to target the buying experience, and it has already made sizable changes to both our business and the sales function.

Technology – merged with the processes we undertake and the assets that we can deploy during those processes – empowers us to do the best possible job for all of our clients. That is our key mission at Amdaris.

In your view, how has the role of CRM software evolved over the last decade or so? What major breakthroughs stand out for you? 

I believe that CRM software, for some businesses, including the one we use at Amdaris, has significantly evolved over the past decade to become a core business system.

If we think back to a decade ago, B2B sales CRMs were mostly just sales forecasting tools. This is opposed to some of the large, complex platforms in B2C that were called CRMs but were much more of the heart of a business.

For B2B, most of the sales processes and planning were still done elsewhere, typically in spreadsheets. This meant that information and data were scattered and didn’t sit solely in the company’s CRM software. On top of this, keeping spreadsheets up to date was a challenge, and there was always the risk that details wouldn’t be logged or key information would be missed.

However, in today’s business and sales landscape, companies can use their CRM platform to not only manage sales processes but also to help really support the “relationship” part of CRM. This is essential and can make a huge difference to the success of a sales team and the wider business. It has certainly been a welcome breakthrough from a sales perspective, and with developments in artificial intelligence, there’s always the possibility that this will increase further.

Recommended reading: How B2B marketplaces can build trust, reputation and credibility

What are some examples of AI being used in sales that stand out to you?

When it comes to artificial intelligence, I think that it has a long way to go to really offer powerful use cases across the business landscape, not just in the sales function.

However, it certainly offers sales professionals productivity benefits in terms of comprehensively capturing essential information – like meeting notes and actions. These are small details, but they hold crucial information that might have been missed if they weren’t captured. By being able to reflect on these notes and details, a salesperson can make more informed and considered decisions. In a nutshell, information is less likely to be missed.

Separately, we need to be mindful (at least for enterprise selling) that we don’t “AI the hell” out of selling. We also should not lose sight of the fact that complex selling must involve human connections. 

An example? You can’t have an artificial intelligence dine with a client or prospect in a nice restaurant. Human bonds maintain and build human relationships – and people buy from people. It’s clear to see that artificial intelligence isn’t replacing these connections anytime soon, but it can have an impact by helping the sales function in other ways. This includes automating repetitive tasks, and other, similar supporting roles.

Thinking of data, can you share some specific examples of it being impactful in driving revenue?

At Amdaris, we are – and have always been – a data-driven business. Many businesses say that, but most just aspire to be so.

We use data in several ways to impact and drive revenue. One of our key strengths is how we predict delivery issues or problems sometimes even before our clients do.  Using data, we’re able to mitigate risk by addressing problems or course-correcting, thereby avoiding negative impacts on our projects.

We invest a lot of time understanding what our clients are happy or unhappy about – again this helps us address problems proactively. We do the same with our employees, analysing the satisfaction of our employees at a granular level to make sure we maintain high levels of people retention, something that we’re very proud of and provide consistency for our clients.

Our clients, rightly so, can be very demanding and they want to understand the value for money that we’re providing. Measuring, in detail, the progress of our projects for our clients allows us to have collaborative relationships with our clients and fosters helpful and transparent discussions.

So, while none of the above seemingly has a direct impact on revenue, the simple fact is that if we keep our clients and our people happy, revenue is only going to increase.

Recommended reading: Overcoming barriers to unlock data value

What is one sales tool you or your team can’t live without? And why is it so important?

The one sales tool I could not live without is our CRM. In Amdaris’ case, we use Salesforce, which we have tightly integrated with our resource planning system. In turn, this is integrated with our account and billing system, alongside our sales cadence and marketing systems.

As a services and people business, it’s crucial to be able to accurately forecast demand for our services. This is important to manage our large talent pool and make sure that we have the right teams and skills available, sometimes at short notice, to meet our obligations to our clients. As a fast-paced business running many different projects with our clients with multiple dependencies and varying levels of complexity, our data is so important and our CRM allows us to manage it effectively.

What advice do you have for those wanting to start a career in sales?

A career in sales can be incredibly rewarding. Of course, it’s hard work and some environments can be pressured, but the benefits of variety, new relationships and winning normally offset the stress!  

There’s plenty of advice that I could give to someone wanting to start a career in sales, but the key is that B2B enterprise sales, in particular, is a marrying of process and creativity. Building trust with clients requires attention to the smallest of details and plenty of thought and reflection. Working with clients and business opportunities, it’s rare for there not to be competition involved and most business isn’t won by a wide mile, or at least you have to assume this. Therefore, all the small things count. After all, business can be won and lost sometimes by a very small margin.

Business opportunities need to be mutually beneficial for the buying organisation and the selling organisation. Good salespeople know how to switch off the hard sell and get to a place where they can work collaboratively with the client. They know how to network to rally their own organisations to pull out the stops to deliver outstanding buying experiences for their clients. 

The salespeople who really succeed understand this. The best salespeople also are never too proud to ask for help, and they put their egos on the shelf.