Evil startup idea gleaned from paper: Use AI/ML to scour a sales prospect's online persona (social media) and build a 'vulnerability profile' and generate targeted, personalized cold-emails (or even phone calls eventually). Also identifies 'levers' for a particular person that can be used to influence a buying decision.
May even pre-qualify leads for you and tell you when not to waste your time :)
I mean, a good sales person already does a lot of this, but it's time-consuming. Imagine if you could automate this process.
It's not an idea. You are already 5 years too late.
You don't need to scour online personas. Companies such as Acxiom and FullContact are just two of many which house identities of 10s of millions of individuals.
Then all that's needed to do is plug into twitters firehose and facebooks stream and voila. Real-time data based on what they are thinking/doing online.
Oh and connect to an RTB stream and get real-time where they are clicking. With enough data, you could forecast where they are going next.
Finally, have AI compose the content in the sales funnel to secure that conversion.
I can guarantee you, this is actively being worked on as I type.
Within 5 years, the entire marketing aspect will be mostly automated.
Cambridge Analytica already did this for the past U.S. election. It had an app that told canvassers which doors were worth knocking on and what sort of dialogue to use depending on things like the person's estimated neuroticism and other traits. It'll only get more sophisticated.
May even pre-qualify leads for you and tell you when not to waste your time :)
I mean, a good sales person already does a lot of this, but it's time-consuming. Imagine if you could automate this process.