Unique Research · Interview · October 29, 2024
Guest: Gao Hui, CEO, Yiliang Tech (亿量科技) — AI sales management for high-volume lead businesses. Quote: overseas AI sales-management is hot; China budgets tighten → must manage customers and teams. SMBs once ran mid/small accounts on guanxi; now bosses ask: “Can you monitor whether my people are actually working?” — product-market fit.
Product
Serve firms whose reps convert leads via phone/WeChat on ~¥3–4k base salaries. After purchase, leads die from slow follow-up, weak talk tracks, or CRM non-entry — acute in education, home reno, real estate. Core: when a call/chat ends, AI auto-analyzes and records so managers aren’t stuck waiting for manual CRM. Thousands of customers since LLM product launch May 2023; founder’s 10+ years in SMB CRM / outbound SaaS.
Where AI reshapes the funnel
- Per-customer observability — intent, concerns, churn risk, auto-alerts; OA integration; full customer files without manual upkeep.
- Rep assist + management visibility — see top-rep dialogues; lift weak skills; soft accountability (reps know the system watches).
- Capability lift on four skills: record, analyze, follow-up, talk track — critical when average online/phone sales education is below junior college.
- Management without listening to every recording — intent grades, tags, churn risk pushed to phone/DingTalk.
Human–machine split: machines record/analyze/QA; humans still own negotiation, close, and live room control (zero-latency natural voice replacement not there yet). Full replace already works for QA roles.
Privacy & packaging
Listed-company deployments: enterprise-recorded audio, desensitized; analysis keyed to IDs not identities; disclose third-party analysis in customer agreements. Positioning: complement or embed — full SaaS (CRM + outbound + AI) for SMBs (AI billed; CRM/outbound free) or API pages into existing CRM so habits unchanged → higher renewal. Sell to owners/managers first; don’t fight rep nature by forcing self-policing tools.
Legacy problem AI can fix
Boss–top-rep “hostage” dynamics; reps claim personal ownership of hard-won leads; tools that brand “prevent reps from taking customers” poison culture. AI lets reps handle more accounts accurately without extra logging labor — accuracy claimed near-best-in-class — while giving bosses the customer/people visibility they need. Moat: tens of billions of minutes of real sales audio across ~100 industries; industry-specific extract schemas (education: decision-maker parent, grades, prior courses; reno: new/old home, area, style, family dynamics) via small language models rather than one generic open model.
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