How to Use Natural Language Processing(NLP) to Identify Your Prospects

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Jan 10 2017

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Natural Language Processing (NLP) is quite simple, and yet quite complex at the same time. Essentially, it is exactly what it sounds like- the processing of natural human language.

While we humans have no problem understanding each other, machines are not always able to decipher our communication accurately. For instance, we can detect the mood and intention of a speaker easily, and likewise, reading between the lines is also rarely a problem. However, computers can only get the literal meaning of verbal or written communication. Say, someone sends you an email that contains a sarcastic comment, the machine will translate it to its literal meaning, rather than its actual meaning. This is a big problem. However, NLP is changing it all.

With NLP technology computers can easily imitate a human level of understanding. Data scientists and linguists are actively working on improving technology, but even today it is decent enough to be used in businesses. In fact, several companies have started using NLP along with big data and IoT to simplify the process of lead generation.

How to Identify your Prospect

Understanding what your customers need is one of the most important aspects of every business, and NLP hits the nail on the head. It can collect valuable insights from all your prospects and then further narrow down the list for you so that the only those leads are remaining who are likely to close. NLP helps to understand the behavior and response of prospects on a personal level and is thus much more powerful than any other lead generation system companies were using so far.

Here are four major ways how NLP can help with identifying quality leads:

  1. Social Media: Social media has become the most popular platform for interaction in today’s digital world. There are tons of data points across every single social media platform. By tapping into these you can learn a lot about your existing leads who are yet to be qualified, and even those who have the potential for the same. An NLP based platform can find out about your company’s performance on social media in a detailed manner. It will be able to understand what others are saying, by reading through their posts. It will sense the tone of the tweets, and give you an idea of whether your performance and reception are negative or positive.
  2. Insights From Search Engines: Search engines have become more powerful than ever. They serve as the most powerful resources for data collection. By analyzing the trending keywords and performance of other specific keywords associated with your company you can learn about what your customers feel about your organization.
  3. Phone Calls: Despite the ease and popularity of instant messages and emails, phone calls are still existent, mainly because they are essential. An NLP platform can transcribe your phone conversations and then analyze for trends and patterns. You can also identify your best performing sales reps easily, and see what they are doing differently than others.
  4. CRM: By merely giving an NLP system access to your CRM database you can be benefitted greatly. It will analyze every data point, and depending on what kind of lead qualification criteria you have set it at, will create a quality lead list for you.

Here are some of the major advantages of NLP for leads identification:

  • Improved Site Search
  • Real-time Information Analysis
  • Trends Identification from Social Media and Search Engines
  • Easy Identification of the hottest leads

Sales Automation for prospect identification

Sales Automation allows you to take your leads generation model to the next level, by implementing machine learning. In a world where marketing is becoming more and more automated and artificial, it brings a breath of fresh air by promoting H2H (Human to Human) marketing. Here are some of the salient feature of NLP technology:

  • Job and News Parsing: News sources and Job portals have tremendous potential for prospects identification. However, not many effective systems have been developed so far that could tap into them. However, this will change shortly, with the help of NLP technology. job and news parsing tools can find leads through these unconventional mediums and give your company an edge over other competitors.
  • Sentiment analysis: NLP takes voice and text reading to another level through sentiment analysis. Words said can have varying meanings, which are subjective to an individual. General text-processing algorithms are incapable of deciphering the actual meaning of a text or voice sample. However, NLP can detect the mood of the speaker/writer, and determine whether they are angry, happy, sad, etc. By understanding the sentiments of your prospects you can easily filter quality leads from others, and save time.
  • Tone analysis: Just like sentiment analysis, tone analysis helps an NLP system in understanding the general opinion a prospect may have regarding your products or services. Using it with the communication channels can be quite useful in finding the leads that qualify, and will close eventually. There is no point in pursuing a lead whose general tone suggests they are not interested in your profile. NLP can help to identify such prospects easily, and thus save the time of your sales reps.

With the Sales Automation platform, you get to learn about your prospects on a much closer level, which is why creating a personal connection becomes super easy and super simple. However, the use of Natural Language Processing and machine learning technology means that you don’t have to spend hours collecting data on your leads, for the system will do it for you. Once you have learned about your leads you can approach them far more confidently and tactfully. Establishing a connection with them becomes natural this way, and they are also more likely to close. You can also use the provided data to qualify leads easily, and focus on the low hanging fruits. Needless to say, with sales automation you can say goodbye to archaic spray-and-pray marketing campaigns and embrace a more focused model, which is highly effective and time-saving.

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