At any one time, my active client list is made up of businesses and organisations of all shapes and sizes, different industry sectors and all with different business needs.

Two are genuine enterprise scale – neither of which use AI much as part of their business development process.

One of the SMEs is all over data like a rash, recently employing a data analyst and openly using AI for any kind of help they can get.

Another is yet to fully integrate a CRM system but has been growing their business at a decent rate over the last 3 years and is happy enough with that level of progress.

I am in discussions with others about the benefit of hiring a dedicated Sales Development Rep (SDR) or outsourcing the function entirely.

In order to make that work, they will need to invest in a good data sourcing engine, and elevate their LinkedIn subscription to include Sales Navigator.

Each one of these businesses has different titles for their salespeople, variously: regional sales manager, national sales manager, business development manager, sales consultant, territory manager, head of sales…

Each one of these businesses also has a very individual relationship with the concept of ‘marketing’ – old school (website, events, radio), new school (95% of everything goes online), never been to school (no rules and happy to try anything).

What binds each of these organisations is that they are all striving to grow sales revenue, improve market share, or similar.

According to a mix of research sources*, 66% of small businesses now use AI in some form, up from 55% a year ago.

Of those companies using AI, 70% report increased revenue and 83% report meaningful monthly time savings — typically 11 to 40 hours recovered.

There should be no ambiguity or indeed secrecy surrounding these facts – the challenge for SMEs is knowing exactly where to jump in and how to fully commit.

If you’re a business and you’re having second thoughts, here’s what I see as the bare essentials to start with – these three things carry almost zero risk and near-immediate payback:

Recording and summarising every sales call.

A tool sits on the call, transcribes it, and writes the follow-up email for you. This in itself targets the two biggest sales failure points for small businesses — reps not writing anything down, and no follow-up happening within 24 hours.

Fathom’s free plan gives unlimited recording, transcription, and automated summaries with no credit-card catch. It joins the call, writes the summary and action items, and can draft the follow-up email. This is the single lowest-risk, highest-payoff AI tool for any business that has sales conversations.

Using a chat AI (ChatGPT or Claude) to draft outreach, follow-ups and proposals.

Not everyone enjoys writing sales content, and not everyone is able to write it well. Either of these tools is great for sales emails, follow-up sequences, proposal first drafts, objection-handling scripts, and call prep (“here’s what I know about this prospect, help me plan the call”).

Claude tends to be preferred for longer, more nuanced writing and holding context across a full proposal; ChatGPT has a slight edge on breadth of integrations and voice/image input. For a small business, either is genuinely free enough to start today with no commitment. (I prefer Claude for everything.)

A free CRM with built-in AI, even a basic one, so leads stop dying in someone’s inbox.

The AI’s job here is nagging: “this lead hasn’t been followed up in 4 days.” Hard to go past HubSpot: it includes contact and deal-pipeline tracking, email open-tracking, an AI email writer, and “Breeze” — an AI assistant that can research a company, prep call notes, and summarise CRM records before a call. This is the natural next step once a business has more than a handful of leads to track and stops trusting a spreadsheet.

AI for sales in small businesses

Once the basics are bedded in, here’s what you can look to next:

Seamless.AI — contact data discovery, verified emails/phones, buyer-intent and job-change signals. Best for higher-volume outbound teams (£100/month per user).

Clay — an AI research/enrichment “workbench” that builds highly personalised outreach at scale. Powerful but has a real learning curve; more suited to a business with someone dedicated to running it (roughly £80/month).

Nimble — a lighter-weight CRM-plus-prospecting tool that lives inside Gmail, Outlook or LinkedIn. Pitched directly at founder-led sales teams without a dedicated CRM admin (roughly £20/month per user).

The likes of Gong and Brevian take it all to another level: full conversation intelligence with deal-risk scoring and coaching insights.

Coaching insights.

The stuff that I do.

Actually, only part of the stuff that I do, but for now I’m confident enough to say that human-centric coaching has a place alongside any AI coaching / sales enablement tools.

For now.

Thanks for reading.

If you’re reading this far, be aware that AI is having an impact on the Irish water table but not to the same detrimental extent as Moy Park / Pilgrim.

41% of the drinking water for people living in the north of Ireland comes from Lough Neagh.

And Lough Neagh is being poisoned daily.

*Sources: research compiled from Lilach Bullock, Thryv, and CO— by the US Chamber of Commerce (2026).