Major Technological Trends Impacting Sales

Technological advances in sales and marketing must work together to understand who they are targeting and the buyer's journey.

FREMONT, CA: Micro-market plans rely heavily on analytics, so salespeople on the ground must use the information effectively. The front-line reports help marketers optimize their products to outperform organizations, and datasets are integrated to produce more accurate sales opportunities. They split big markets into smaller pieces where potential prospects, new consumer segments, or microsegments can be analyzed. This disaggregation shows that a broad-brush approach wastes resources in low-growth areas.

Investing in growth

Top-performing sales organizations can quickly translate macro trends into top-line effects, and forward-looking sales plans create a first-mover advantage in uncontested markets. Best sales executives conduct trend research and plan formal parts of sales strategy. They're ready to capitalize on rapid environmental changes. Many sales executives plan annually for investment in new growth possibilities. Fast-growing companies and organizations expend their sales budget on one-year-out initiatives.

Big data and analytics value capture

Today's sales forces have more data but extracting relevant insights from it isn't easy. Good sales leaders make better decisions, find sales and deal prospects, and enhance sales growth tactics. Today's significant change is from historical data analysis to predictive data. Sales teams employ advanced analytics to identify the best prospects and reduce risk. Sales analytics have tremendous potential.

Outsourcing sales

Outsourcing parts (or all) of the sales value chain is a trend while researching sales growth. Third-party providers can now run a company's end-to-end sales process thanks to automation. Demand generation, customer acquisition, and fulfillment are essential. These firms understand target categories, leverage big data to locate leads, market to different segments with different offers and platforms, and match salespeople to specific customers based on conversion likelihood. Sales switch to a model where payment depends on new customers, not service.

Social selling

An effective sales organization must try everything to understand the customer. Sellers must know who the consumer, buyers, decision-makers, influencers, and budget owners are and their views of the company. Much of that may be gathered from what individuals share online in numerous ways: expressing ideas, asking for help, and general chats.

Marketing collaboration

Marketing and sales may appear intimately intertwined, but their relationship may be imbalanced in large firms. B2B sales trump B2C marketing. Sales and marketing analysis of organizations with both functions achieve above-market growth and profitability. The two functions often work in silos, with different viewpoints on which clients to pursue.