AI or commercial operation? What comes first to sell more on Father's Day

Father's Day will be the first big opportunity of the second half of the year for thousands of retailers to put their sales strategies to the test. While the search for artificial intelligence solutions to automate service, prospecting and customer relationships grows, a question is gaining ground among business owners: is it worth investing in AI before structuring the commercial operation? For experts, the answer is less about the choice of tool and more about the maturity of the business.

Hugo Silveira, entrepreneur, growth strategist and co-founder of HRZ Group, a holding company specialized in business growth, commercial acceleration and increased revenue, states that many companies still start digital transformation in the wrong place. 

According to him, artificial intelligence enhances what already exists within the operation. “Businesspeople normally ask which artificial intelligence they should buy. The correct question is whether the company already has clear processes, defined indicators and an organized operation. If the operation is unstructured, AI accelerates errors. When there is a method, monitoring and management, it multiplies productivity”, he reveals.

The advancement of technology helps explain this movement. According to the AI ​​Index Report 2025, from Stanford University, global private investment in artificial intelligence reached US$ 252 billion in 2024, an increase of 26% compared to the previous year. A McKinsey survey published in 2025 shows that 78% of organizations around the world already use artificial intelligence in at least one area of ​​the business, consolidating technology as a priority in corporate strategies.

In practice, artificial intelligence is already able to respond to a customer's first contact, qualify leads, automatically record information in the CRM, distribute opportunities between salespeople, carry out follow-ups and monitor open proposals. These activities reduce the time spent on operational tasks and allow the sales team to focus their efforts on negotiation, customer relations and closing sales.

João Vinas, engineer, specialist in CRM, commercial automation and artificial intelligence applied to sales and partner at Grupo HRZ, explains that the starting point should be the design of the process that will be automated. “Before placing an AI agent to assist, the company needs to know what should happen with each customer after the first contact. Who receives this lead? How soon? What information needs to be collected? When does the salesperson arrive? How many contact attempts will be made? The technology can execute this logic at scale, but first this logic needs to exist”, he states. 

HubSpot's State of AI in Sales 2025 report confirms this trend by showing that the applications most used by sales teams are related to automating administrative tasks, producing emails, researching customers and updating business records. The productivity gain, however, directly depends on the quality of the operation.

For Silveira, there is a right time to implement artificial intelligence. Companies that do not yet have an organized customer base, are unaware of their indicators or do not monitor the performance of the commercial funnel will be unlikely to be able to extract value from technology. ”The mistake is believing that artificial intelligence will organize a disorganized company. It depends on the quality of the information it receives and the processes it encounters. If these processes do not exist, the return tends to be much lower than expected.”.

According to the expert, some signs indicate that the company still needs to structure the operation before investing in automation:

• does not use a CRM consistently;
• does not have a well-defined commercial funnel;
• delay in responding to customers;
• does not track the sales conversion rate;
• don't know which channels generate the most revenue;
• does not maintain a history of customer relationships.

Vinas adds that the company does not need to wait for perfect operations to start using artificial intelligence. The decisive point is being able to measure what happened before implementation to compare performance afterwards. “If the entrepreneur does not know today how long it takes to respond to a lead, how many contacts become opportunities and how many opportunities end in sales, he will also not be able to prove that AI improved the result. Automating without having a baseline turns investment in technology into a gamble”, he explains. 

When these foundations are already established, artificial intelligence begins to act as a growth accelerator. More important than implementing new tools is monitoring indicators capable of showing whether the investment is really producing a return.

Among the main parameters that must be monitored are:

• reduction in average customer response time;
• increased conversion rate;
• growth in the number of follow-ups carried out;
• reduction of lost opportunities;
• increased productivity per salesperson;
• average ticket growth;
• increase in the repurchase rate;
• evolution of revenue without a proportional increase in the team.

“The success of artificial intelligence should not be measured by the number of automations implemented, but by the impact it generates on productivity and revenue. If the indicators remain the same after implementation, the problem is probably not in the tool, but in the management of the operation”, says Hugo.

The experience of the HRZ Group reinforces this understanding. The company integrates CRM, commercial automation, intelligent agents and predictability methodologies for retail, e-commerce, clinics and service companies, always associating technology with the structuring of commercial operations. The holding has already accelerated more than 250 operations across the country and brings together cases such as R$764 thousand in sales in 24 hours in a network of physical stores and R$1.9 million invoiced in just 48 hours through an e-commerce operation.

For companies that intend to take advantage of Father's Day, Silveira states that there is still time to use artificial intelligence strategically, as long as preparation starts with organizing the operation. “Anyone who implements a tool a few days before the campaign is unlikely to have consistent results. The best return happens when the CRM, sales funnel, service and indicators are already structured. Artificial intelligence accelerates efficient operations, but does not replace management”, he concludes.