The pandemic has proven to be a colossal disruptor of our routines and greatly influenced consumer behavior and attitude. It also taught sales teams to exhibit more creativity and take customer experience as a highly valuable element for the company. Technology systems such as sales software and especially personalizing the selling experience have become more relevant than ever before.
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Latest Tech Highlights and Trends in Sales Management
Nowadays, sales in the market initiate with the idea and are implemented via several channels to reach the target audience. Sales software and tech trends beckon to utilizing the latest technology to capitalize on personalized selling to immensely engaged customers. In addition, sales need to stay in touch with the field of marketing to present the most ideal schemes. And this isn’t the whole thing, but rather the tip of the iceberg.
Sales Automation:
Sales automation today is one of the leading software trends regarding its source. Digital tools and AI allow companies to simplify and augment the sales pipeline. In reality, these platforms can help by automating more than 30% of the tasks in sales. The areas of sales where the potential for automation is the highest are configuration, quotation and pricing, sales strategy & planning, post-sales tasks, structural support, and order management.
Conversational Customer Experience:
This is another post-pandemic sales trend you need to attend. A recent study done on the subject indicated that video communication is much more fruitful compared to voice communication; however, 25% less fruitful in the case of in-person meetings. Live chat is emerging as a great tool to carry forward sales processes in the presence of highly transmissible variants of COVID. You must strive to deliver highly personalized experiences.
Data-driven Selling:
Companies leverage analytics engines to track and quantify any kind of data to reflect the performance and conditions of an operation and monitor sales. Companies also use sales software related to leads, revenue, and conversions. Enterprises that unify creativity, analytics, and purpose boost their revenue growth by about 2.7 percent as opposed to businesses that do not. By making data-driven decisions, business leaders experience around a 2 to 5% increase in sales. Furthermore, 72% of companies have revealed that analytics have supported them substantially in curating effective and efficient sales plans.
Including Sales Videos:
When it comes to online engagement, videos have become trendier compared to photos; thus, it is perfectly sensible for them to be included in any marketing and sales strategy. The trends study of sales software revealed that, on average, a person spends about 100 minutes watching videos daily. Thus, 52% of marketers prefer leveraging and capitalizing more on videos than Facebook images.
Improve Forecast with Artificial Intelligence:
Using AI in sales was a rising trend in the year 2019, and now, it has transformed into a necessity, as pandemics compelled us to switch our work to virtual platforms. AI helps sales teams draw, consolidate, and analyze data which can then be applied in different ways, from performance analysis to forecasting. In 2020, around 54% of the sales team deployed AI, which accounts for an increase of about 155% in the last two years. As per a recent study, AI gives an increase of more than 50%, lowers costs by 40 to 60%, and reduces call times by about 60 to 70%. In addition, AI-driven forecasting can minimize errors by 30 to 50% in the supply chain networks and bring about a drop of about 65% in sales due to discrepancies and inventory runs while reducing the warehousing costs by around 10 to 40%.
Competition is the driver of innovation. The field of sales is about to witness a dramatic change in how we perform business, and it is down to you whether your enterprise will be at the centre and font of the executing latest strategies and deploying the new tech. You don’t need to embrace all the trends out there, as there are countless choices. You can opt for tech and trends that help you enjoy the gains of being an unrivaled business.
Immense tech-related trends are intended to further the digitalization and automation of sales. However, what unifies the two extremes is the umbrella theme of customer-centrism in sales trends 2022. The customer, their needs, and their wishes remain the chief focus for the salesperson today, more than ever.
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