AI employees in sales: A practical example from gastromatic

How many tools does a modern sales team have open every day? And how many of them really help to have better conversations and win more customers?

This was exactly the topic our CEO and Co-Founder Niclas Barthélemy discussed with Christian Fuchs, Sales Director at gastromatic, in a joint webinar with SDRs of Germany. The session was moderated by Aisha Gaisreiter.

The focus was not on abstract AI visions. Christian gave concrete insights into how the AI employees Carl and Sven support the daily sales work at gastromatic, which manual tasks they take over and why this creates more time for the work in which people play to their real strengths.

The starting point: growth makes manual processes visible

gastromatic offers workforce management for shift-based companies. This includes, among other things, shift planning, time tracking, HR management and payroll. The focus is on gastronomy and hospitality, but the solution is also used in retail and in manufacturing.

As the company grew, sales developed further too. Alongside a strong inbound business, outbound was meant to take on a larger role.

The target customers were fundamentally clearly defined. The challenge was to identify exactly these companies and bring together all relevant information. Data on company size, on the number of employees or on the characteristics of individual hotels and restaurants was fragmented across different sources.

Classic research tools did not deliver the required quality here. The sales team still had to check, complete and transfer information into HubSpot manually.

Carl does not simply research leads. He prepares conversations.

That is why the collaboration between gastromatic and scoreprise.AI began deliberately with a small, clearly defined area of work: lead research.

Carl, the AI employee for the sales area, researches companies based on gastromatic's individual Ideal Customer Profile. In doing so, he does not only look at general company data. He can also check very specific characteristics, for example:

• How many seats does a restaurant have?
• Does a hotel have a conference or wellness focus?
• Are there any special awards or other relevant characteristics?
• Which reference customers are located in the immediate vicinity?
• Which information is suitable as an entry point into the first conversation?

The results are prepared in a structured way and stored in HubSpot. The sales team thus does not simply receive another list, but a prepared context for prospecting.

Christian describes the effect like this:

This lifts the quality of our prospecting to a completely different standard.Christian Fuchs, Sales Director at gastromatic

Carl can also summarize the previous history of a deal. If an opportunity is reopened after a few months, SDRs and Account Executives do not first have to work through old notes, websites and LinkedIn profiles. The relevant information is available in one place and the conversation can be prepared faster.

Several data silos become one usable signal

While Carl mainly supports the area of research and lead management, another AI employee emerged in the joint scoping workshop: Sven.

Sven is being built as a sales trainer and is intended to support the expansion team in particular. For this, he connects information that was previously spread across several systems:

• The internal admin app with usage and existing customer data
• HubSpot as the CRM and central source of information
• Intercom for customer communication and campaigns
• Aircall for telephone interactions
• in the future, Demodesk for the analysis of sales conversations

gastromatic's internal admin app contains important information about existing customers. This includes, for example, usage values, the duration of the customer relationship, previous interactions and indications of customer satisfaction.

For the expansion team, this information is extremely valuable. Evaluating it manually, however, used to cost many hours.

Sven is intended to analyze this data automatically and make concrete potential visible. Instead of merely flagging a customer, the AI employee can provide additional context:

• Which product or upgrade could be relevant?
• Which person should be approached?
• How were the last interactions with the customer?
• Is there a current signal that is suitable as a conversation opener?

If an existing customer clicks on a link within an Intercom campaign, for example, this signal can be combined with the usage data from the admin app and documented in HubSpot. From an isolated interaction, a usable occasion for sales is created.

Fewer distractions instead of fewer people

When it comes to AI in sales, the question quickly arises of whether human jobs are to be replaced. For Christian, the most important benefit lies elsewhere.

The first thing we felt immediately: we had fewer distractions. The focus on the matter itself was a different one.Christian Fuchs, Sales Director at gastromatic

Website research, old notes, data exports, CRM fields and information from different systems are indeed part of daily sales work. But they are not the area in which experienced sales staff create their greatest value.

That is why Christian sums up the goal clearly:

In the end, I want my people to be able to focus on what they are strong at: qualifying and closing our customers. Not on system landscapes and moving data back and forth.

In this model, AI employees do not take over a complete human role. They receive a clearly defined domain and handle the recurring, data-intensive tasks within the actual workflow.

The result is not an anonymous black box. The work of Carl and Sven becomes visible through individually built dashboards. In addition, the teams can access the available information via chat, ask follow-up questions and use the AI employees as sparring partners.

From tool to digital team member

The decisive difference between yet another AI feature and an AI employee lies in the integration.

A single tool usually only knows the data within its own platform. HubSpot, Intercom, Aircall and Demodesk each have their own AI functions, but this information remains separated from one another.

An AI employee, by contrast, is connected to the relevant systems, follows the company-specific rules and prepares information in the way the respective team needs it.

At gastromatic, this approach has grown step by step:

1. Start with a concrete problem.
2. Define a clear area of work.
3. Test the AI employee with real workflows.
4. Gather feedback from the team.
5. Connect systems and additional tasks in a controlled way.
6. Identify new potential together in a scoping workshop.

It is important here not to try to build a single AI employee for everything. Carl and Sven have different specializations. Where it makes sense, they can pass information to one another in the future and work together on a process.

What other sales teams can take away from this

The practical report from gastromatic shows: the best entry into AI rarely begins with the selection of a tool. It begins with an honest look at daily work.

Where is data transferred manually? Which information has to be gathered again before every conversation? Which tasks cost a lot of time even though they follow clear rules? And which systems should actually be communicating with one another?

That is exactly where a meaningful area of use for AI employees emerges.

Christian sums up the strength of the approach like this:

Overall, it is a very helpful solution that can be adapted very individually to your own needs and your own environment.Christian Fuchs, Sales Director at gastromatic

That is the core: it is not the company that has to adapt its processes to yet another standard tool. The AI employee is built to fit the real processes, systems and requirements of the team.

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Which part of your working day would you like to hand over?

Maybe it is lead research. Maybe it is CRM maintenance, campaign evaluation or the preparation of the next customer conversation.

If you would like to find out where an AI employee could develop the greatest leverage in your company, let us sit down together and take a look at your current workflows.