Artificial intelligence and advanced data analytics are revolutionising sales processes, enabling companies to drive efficiency, boost productivity, and improve conversion rates.

With a plethora of AI tools introduced over the past two years, businesses are adopting these technologies at varying paces to streamline repetitive tasks, optimise customer targeting, and extract actionable insights. From automating post-call actions to predictive lead scoring, the focus has been on saving time and enhancing effectiveness.

Data & AI can have transformative potential for sales, with targeted leads enhancing sales conversion and efficiency.

Ada Pham, Assistant Director - Commercial, Value Acceleration

Whether through prioritising high-potential leads, uncovering cross-selling opportunities, optimising pricing or refining sales strategies with granular insights, Inflexion is supporting its portfolio to adopt certain data-driven and AI tools to boost their sales effectiveness.

Studies show that sales representatives spend only around 10% of their time on client-facing activities, with the rest consumed by administrative work, meeting preparation, and other non-revenue-generating tasks. By integrating AI into workflows, businesses can streamline these processes and free up people to spend more meaningful time building relationships with clients and prospects and coaching team. One such example is Gong, a conversational intelligence platform used by a few Inflexion portfolio companies to undercover why we win or lose and utilise the insights to coach sales reps on the specific challenges they may have such as handling objections or qualifying correctly.

Inflexion is working closely with a number of portfolio companies to transform their commercial and sales strategies with data and AI.

Lead scoring for targeted sales efforts

Marlowe’s Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) division provides software and tech-enabled services for managing business risks and compliance for SMEs and large enterprises. The business was carved out of Marlowe plc in 2024 by Inflexion.

With an impressive customer base exceeding 60,000, GRC faced challenges in efficiently targeting high-potential prospects. GRC was integrating data from various sources – such as company size, sector, geography, engagement metrics (for example webinar attendance), and even sales rep attributes – to predict the likelihood of lead conversion. A simple yet key finding emerged: prospects who submitted a mobile number via online forms demonstrated a higher probability of conversion, likely reflecting a sense of urgency and intent.

This insight empowered GRC’s sales team to focus on high-probability leads, significantly boosting conversion rates. Additionally, new AI models are being developed to identify the "next best offer targets" for cross-selling opportunities, optimise sales rep assignments based on individual strengths, and adjust working patterns to align with optimal times for client engagement.

Integrating AI into our sales processes is saving us time and creating more meaningful interactions with clients.

Rory Jackson, GRC

Gaining share of wallet through analytics

CNX Therapeutics is a European pharmaceutical company dedicated to the supply of essential medicines, and was carved out of its listed US parent in 2021 by Inflexion. The business had struggled with limited visibility into product-level sales and hospital purchasing patterns, and so Inflexion supported CNX in establishing a customer intelligence dashboard using Power BI.

This has transformed the way the company interacts with its clients: by tracking purchasing frequency, predicting stock shortages, and triggering alerts for sales and customer success teams, the dashboard has become an invaluable tool for sales teams. It even identifies adjacent products hospitals might require but are not yet purchasing from CNX, creating cross-selling opportunities.

By proactively assisting hospitals with restocking and offering relevant products, CNX increased client purchasing frequency and drove a significant uplift in cross-sales. This data-driven approach has not only improved client retention, but also enabled the company to deepen relationships with key accounts.

AI makes digesting large amounts of information possible in an intuitive way, helping you find insights and trends that would have otherwise likely remained hidden.

Jeremy Devaney, Vice President of Commercial Operations, CNX Pharmaceuticals

"We’ve been able to see what hospitals are buying and how many, with the software highlighting trends or irregularities from visibility and granularity you’d not had previously,” explains Jeremy.

“We have seen again and again that moving to a data-driven methodology results in a step change in across the entire sales funnel. Once the data fundamentals are in place, AI can move you from ‘measuring’ performance to ‘driving’ performance by providing granular, actionable insights,” conclude Jan Beitner, Director of Data & AI at Inflexion.

All Inflexion portfolio companies, regardless of size or ownership stake, have full access to our dedicated value acceleration resources covering commercial strategy, digital enhancement (including data, AI, technology, cybersecurity and digital marketing), international expansion, M&A, ESG, and talent management.