Sales – The word don’t go well with many of us. It has the tendency to pull our attention towards a lot of never ending hard work to attain a certain amount of desired result. Not sure how many of us would agree on this but every single job is somehow related to sells. We are either getting paid because someone is selling products made by us or we are selling some products made by someone else. Believe us or not but sales are as important as the air we breathe. And with every passing year, it has been becoming more progressive.
What’s in store for sells in 2018? Videos replacing text in mails, increased focus on sales training, the rise of micro influencer, messages replacing calls – there are many things to look forward. Let’s find out.
1. Automation, AI, and Machine Learning
Advancements such as email intelligence will make sales process more efficient. Big data is slowly changing the way business decisions were made earlier. There are advanced machine learning training that works on success outcome data and can help train sales development representatives(SDRs). Their conversations can be recorded, translated, transcribed and presented to their managers. With so much new technology merging into sales, it will be possible to figure out metric-centric selling to analyze each sales based role and turn focus into more customer centric approaches . Bosch have sensors embedded in their washers and dyers. And they can actually alert the service centre when some application is not functioning.
2. Rise of subject matter experts
Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) are changing the way business and consumers used to interact with each other. Modern customers don’t communicate through traditional mediums of communication when social media revolutions are in full swing. These days consumers check your social media pages first and then goes to your website. And if you don’t know your pages inside out, chances are you losing a big number of your prospective customers. SMEs, such as digital marketing specialists, can help you with deep insights and value selling. They are worth hiring and they can provide you a deep understanding of the solution landscape.
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
Most of businesses have started taking more customer centric approach in selling their products. The concept of CRM aims at gaining long-term oriented customers and it’s hugely technology driven. The primary focus of CRM is on customers rather than products. For example, bonus points, collective numbers and cash back options.
4. Videos replacing texts on mails
Video prospecting emails have been used in the B2C communication for a while now but marketers never used them in a terribly targeted manner. AI is helping B2C sellers to send video-based sales emails to get through hard-to-reach decision makers working in SME and business houses. Marketers using videos to split-test among a vast list of subscribers or landing page visitors.
5. More focus on micro-influencers
After a few targeted aggressive selling from top influencers, advertisers have started to niche down and find more customer centric approaches to get products in front of consumer’s eyes. Big influencers are always concerned about who and what they recommend since they don’t want to turn off any of their followers. Thus, they leave the doors opened for micro-influencers to enter.
It is still early to predict the upcoming future since technology is ever progressing. But whatever it will be, staying updated with new updates and trends should be the main focus for every organization to drive sales. Using traditional methods would be a failure if you don’t implement AI and machine learning in analysis. With social media platforms introducing new features such as live video streaming, and video carousel ads, the competition will become more intense.