Yes, it’s the end of a magnificent year. The cycle of time has reached a point where it will step into another grand year. We looked back at 2018 in our previous article. In this article, we are going to discover the trends in sales industry that are going to make an impact on the revenue of every business owner.

Let’s take this opportunity to greet you a happy new year too! Our work is to help and assist small Businesses in their endeavor to achieve success in a competitive and technologically advanced market. This article will help you with discovering and using the 2019 sales trends in your favor so that you can start planning and filling up your sales pipeline soon.

Without further ado, let’s unearth these trends for you!

Sales trend #1: Strategic approach towards sales enablement

Every sales team requires Sales Enablement with the inclusion of smart sales tools or some occasional training sessions. Sales enablement has seen progress in the past couple of years. Modern business owners are increasingly adopting sales enablement strategies and this trend will certainly continue in the year 2019.

Businesses will be taking a better strategic approach towards sales enablement:

• Strategy and plan that will have clear objectives with defined steps that must be taken.
• Better focus on helping salespeople for developing top skills for becoming better at their job.
• Providing easier way for onboarding new sales people to help them start selling quickly.
• Focus on progressing technology for aiding sales enablement process.

How to take advantage of the sales enablement trend?

In order to stay on top of this trend, take the time to plan out a sales enablement strategy, from helping to onboard new sales people as efficiently as possible to consistent coaching to your existing salespeople.

Sales trend #2: The machine learning and AI in sales

Machine learning and inclusion of AI has started taking place in various industries. Although it will take time to have your personalized Jarvis, like the famous Tony Stark, this technology will disrupt the industry for good. Many industries are experimenting with the AI technology in sales. AI will streamline the sales process and help increase the productivity of your sales people.

• Analyzing the mega data with less time usage can ease up your sales strategies and will provide ample amount of selling time.
• With the ability to crunch numbers and various data own its own, the AI will provide a recommendation to you based on the user’s data.
• Such possibilities will save your selling time, fasten your follow-up process and help your sales team reach out to the right prospect at the right time.

The major advantage of having AI is its ability to access data, crunch the numbers quickly and help with predicting the future trends. AI will simplify the way you look at your sales results.

How will businesses leverage Artificial Intelligence?

With more R&D going into AI, the coming year will be focused on making AI more accessible to the businesses. We can say this for sure, CRM and prospecting tools are going to make this technology available to businesses for the better sales process.

Sales trend #3: Creating an omnichannel experience

With Generation Z rapidly gaining huge buying power in the market, businesses can use AI for providing an omnichannel experience to them. The younger breed of shoppers and buyers would demand a more integrated experience while they are making their favorite purchases. With the technology and their habit of using multiple devices for researching products and services online before making a purchase, AI can successfully deliver a personalized experience on multiple buying channels.

Generation Z is on their way to becoming the biggest generation of consumers by 2020.

Moving towards omnichannel marketing and creating omnichannel experience for Generation Z will have a positive impact on sales. This will also make the general divide between sales and marketing departments go away!

How can businesses create omnichannel experiences from the selling point of view?

For providing an omnichannel shopping experience to your customers, businesses must be capable of

• Identifying the various platforms and channels audience uses.
• Finding ways that will easily integrate technology such as social media into their bricks-and-mortar stores apart from creating their online presence.

Sales trend #4: Targeting generation Z

There was a time when millennials were “new” generation. Marketers and salespeople should keep an eye on them as they are increasing in terms of buying power. However, Generation Z too requires their equal and undivided attention.

Studies show that Generation Z has a slight inclination toward brick-and-mortar stores.

Generation Z comprises of the people who were born between the mid-’90s to the mid-2000s.  Businesses must focus their attention towards the ones who are the older of the Generation Z as they will be gaining more buying power.

Gen Z currently accounts for approximately $29 – $143 billion in direct spending.

The generation Z had different experience than the millennials. They were born in an era that had access to technology and grew up when social media saw its boom with smart devices, online shopping AR/VR and what not.

How will businesses sell to this generation?

Businesses must learn more about generation Z. Researching the way this generation thinks can be easily done by utilizing AI and sales intelligence tools such as CRM. The more you find out how this generation of shoppers makes their purchases, the easier it will be to plan your approach.

Sales trend #5: The customer experience matters the most

We stumbled upon the 2018 Review Trackers Survey. The data we found made us think hard regarding the way consumers check reviews on Google before visiting any online or brick-and-mortar business.

64% of consumers check reviews on Google before visiting a business

This fact made it clear; customer experience will be more focused in the year 2019. As more and more businesses are entering the domain, customers have multiple options to take their business somewhere else.

Customer experience is defined as how customers perceive their interactions with your company. – The Forrester team.

Some more facts and figures for your better understanding

• A 2016 survey revealed that 60% of customers feel that waiting on hold even for just one minute seems too long.
• 92% of consumers read online reviews while looking for a local business.
• A minimum of 10 and 12 positive reviews is needed to make up for one negative review.

These statistics might not affect the bigger fishes; however, a small or medium-size business needs to take note. Creating a positive and happy customer experience will take the center seat while businesses plan their sales strategies for the year 2019.

How will businesses make the most out of this trend?

Providing positive experiences to your customers will provide you with a much better opportunity where you can turn your customers into brand promoters.

Using tools such as the Net Promoter Score® (NPS) will help you calculate the loyalty of your customer’s relationship with your business. Integrate it with your favorite CRM and gain valuable insights into various points of your customers’ journey for providing them the experience they deserve.

Sales trend #6: More knowledgeable sales reps

Global statistics predicted that businesses will be phasing out 1 million sales jobs by the year 2020

Sales organizations will be needing more skilled and knowledgeable sales representatives who will:

• understand customers’ needs,
• analyze data,
• drive trends, and
• put together a creative solution for addressing their pain points.

Globally, customers are looking for salespeople who can understand their unique problems, know the industry, and provide them with valuable and targeted advice.

Creating a sales enablement plan

Apart from the trends we discussed above, businesses must create a sales enablement plan.

Sales enablement is the combination of:

• process,
• content, and
• technology

Such a combination allows sales teams to sell more efficiently and at a greater velocity.

Understanding the sales process and allowing your sales and marketing departments to have a better hand-off will ensure lead get closed efficiently without significant gaps in the process.

Businesses must call meetings with their sales team for building a sales process that is

• well-structured
• manageable
• scalable
• easily predictable

Having such a sales process will help businesses improve their closing rates and increase the ROI significantly. Here are some sales enablement trends for businesses in 2019.

Enablement trend #1: Access to critical content

Sales reps lose up to 26 hours a month searching, editing, and managing content.

Sales content and asset management platforms make it easier for organizing the marketing content and collaterals. There is no end to sales reps’ struggle. The problem derives from the fact that sales reps are storing their content in 3-6 different locations. This number even goes up to 10.

Modern sales enablement software have understood this issue and have been working on creating a centralized hub allows sales reps and their team members to organize and integrate content from a variety of sources seamlessly. This way your sales reps will be able to plan their 312 hours for more selling and better sales productivity.

Enablement trend #2: More learning and coaching of sales reps

Quark software revealed in their survey that Sales Learning and Coaching Platforms is one of “the top two investment priorities for the sales organizations over the next 12 months. As per Gryphon Sales Intelligence:

84% of all sales training is lost after 90 days, majorly due to the lack of information retention among sales personnel. This fact creates the need of refreshing training cycle from time to time.”

For sales teams to reach their full potential, your sales solution, apart from crunching the sales number and customer data, must enable sales managers to train their team effectively.

Enablement trend #3: Using CRM as the true sales enablement tool

Having a CRM software in your sales stack will become more critical in the new year. To make a sales enablement strategy, that is more powerful for your sales process; you need an equally powerful sales enablement tool; CRM is the perfect tool for that.

As a sales enablement SaaS provider for most small and mid-size businesses, we believe that sales reps must create a synchronization with their CRM system. Sales reps must have a system that has all their sales content, their selling methodology and their sales strategies at one single place.

CRM is something more than managing your contacts and crunching your sales numbers. It is a tool that helps you track your sales activities, your outreach campaigns, your sales reps daily tasks and the customers’ journey inside your sales pipeline. It creates the streams that enable your sales team to push the deals as smoothly as possible towards quick closures.

Sales reps must know the in and out of their sales CRM for maximizing their selling time. A smart sales CRM allows sales reps to be –

• prompt with necessary prospect/customer related information.
• an effective customer rep who has real-time access to the relevant content be it the selling scenario, providing a solution, or understanding the customer type.
• resourceful when it comes to taking best actions based on your businesses’ selling methodology.
• available with the prospects and customers via social, phone and email.

The best part is that sales reps can easily get all this information inside one single tool and not require multiple apps for tracking every single piece of information. Sales tools are becoming more intelligent with each passing day and there is no doubt that the new entrants in the CRM industry are focused on converting CRM into a sales reps tool rather than being a finance tool.

Conclusion

For the year 2019, improving sales productivity and the overall sales process, researching, understanding and to staying on top of sales trends is important for businesses. It is also critical for businesses to implement new technologies and better sales tactics.

Having a smart sales intelligence tool allows you to do all these things without missing out on the most important factor that contributes towards your sales revenue. Salesmate sales CRM is an intuitive sales tool that comes with a variety of features that enable sales teams to stay on the same page while staying on top of their sales goals. Salesmate CRM has integrations that allow your sales team to have their own repository where they can create, share and manage their ideas. This is easily done with Google Drive integration. To support the art of selling, Salesmate has intelligent workflows that can be easily coupled with its built-in cloud telephony for better sales results.

Salesmate CRM has been working with small and mid-size businesses for a long time and has been modifying and enhancing its offerings for creating a solution that scales with the growth of its client’s business. If you need to know more about the various features that Salesmate offers, simply get in touch with us.

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