Know about the sales enablement trends that will rock in 2019

1. 10 SALES ENABLEMENT
TRENDS TO LOOK
OUT FOR IN 2019
©Denave2018

2. As we lay our eyes on 2019, it is time we take a stock of how the year
went by, what are next ‘big-ticket’ disruptions we can be expecting and
how further do we envisage the digital transformation fabric
encompassing our lives.
During this time, surfing through reports, expert columns, predictions
from industry gurus and much more, often take up a significant chunk
of time which no decision-maker or serious industry professional
agrees to trade off with any other activity. And it’s rightfully correct as
well. Having a view – how much so ever precise or assumption-based it
may be, always adds up to the preparedness level.
Also, one biggest factor to be kept in mind while reading and assessing
these trends is that change is the only constant you’ll ever find – be it in
your life or in your business strategy. Hence, being open and aware of
the vast realm of possibilities in this technology-driven yet so-human
world of sales, is the key to spear ahead from the rest.
NEW YEAR – NEW POSSIBILITIES
©Denave2018

3. In the last few years, we have seen a momentum which has changed
the face of sales – quite much in its entirety, leaving just the basics
behind. The evolution has been positive, and the new-found sales-tech
domain has indeed altered the dynamics of this erstwhile traditional
territory.
The dawn of customer-focused selling, data-driven strategies, socially-
backed decisions, tech-brought intelligence etc. have resulted in the
birth of a new type of selling. This revamp called for renewed sales
enablement measures also and thus, here we are – staring at the
looming 2019 and getting ready to plunge into another year with better
customer relationships, increased revenues, expanded territories,
upskilled sales force and much more.
Remember, evolution is a continuous process and thence, the scope of
emerging market inclinations or industry leanings is vast, however, it is
better to keep a lookout for some of the expected trends and brush up
the readiness before we knock into 2019.
GETTING READY
©Denave2018

4. Technology is constantly evolving, and its pace of transformation will be proportional to
the impact which we will see in the sales domain that is now starting to depend heavily
on tech – be it the leverage of analytics, AI, machine learning etc. to zero-down on the
right and the most relevant data.
Automation is another segment which will see a boom not just from the field force
perspective but from the point of view of complete management hierarchy. The key
would lie in the word ‘specialization’. Moving away from generic applications, sales tech
and especially automation will be more about creating expert tech services. Thus,
lessening the pressure on sales reps for closing deals and helping with quicker closures
and newer in-roads.
Sales Tech and Automation to
Get A Massive Boost
Trend Alert 1
©Denave2018

5. While this duo is already disrupting the status quo when it comes to lead generation. This
is going to get revolutionised further with the time taken to acquire the ‘next new
customer’ being further lessened by using extraction business rules and database
management. Intelligent bots culling out contactable database with multiple validations
and checkpoints is not a far-flung fantasy but a soon to be trending affair in the world of
sales.
With bots such as contact finder bot, email finder bot or other specialised ones which can
be employed to map out the verticals and sub-verticals to an organisation based on the
names and locations etc., database management will become increasingly accurate and
apt. Such effective lead generation through intelligent automated web scraping and its
cleansing will soon become a sought-after science.
Intelligent DB Management and Machine
Learning Will Be the Magical Combo
Trend Alert 2
©Denave2018

6. Staying ahead of the curve is becoming a necessity for salespeople and the growing
intelligence in the traditional CRM space is helping them to do just that. Significant
overhauls can be expected in the direction of simplification and innovation in the CRM
domain which is projected to be worth $81.9 billion by 2025. 1
With intelligence, integration and automation becoming a norm, standardised procedure of
lead qualification as per BANT criteria will see major improvisations. Voice recognition
integration will also become a seamless element and will assist in the process based upon
the tonality, content and sentiment of the conversation. Such precise sieving will ensure
better opportunity management and lesser time wastage at both seller and prospect’s
end. Real-time identification of deviations in the conversation or process will also allow for
quicker quality analysis and training needs fulfilment.
Intelligent CRM to Become A Norm
Trend Alert 3
©Denave2018

7. While the industry is still somewhat divided on accepting the advent of technology,
especially AI, automation, machine learning, RPA etc. as an industry boon or doom for
workforce, the foresighted ones do understand that apt leverage of these technologies is
actually a saviour for the workforce. Industry-wide surveys validate this point as 76% of
teams 2 already using AI have increased their staff levels over the past three years. It is all
about amalgamating the tech intelligence with human touch and creating an unmatchable
value-add. Increased AI integration in sales processes will make salespeople get a better
hold of their sales quotas with useful insights all throughout the sales course and become
more productive.
Tasks such as lead qualification and prospecting, automation of iterative tasks etc. would
see an upswing with AI and we may also witness deal closures being managed solely by AI
engines. Research suggests that by 2020, majority of commercial interactions will involve a
virtual agent 3. Sales leaders expect their adoption of AI to grow by 155% by 2020 4, further
validating the expected exponential growth of AI in sales. Being the next frontier in digital
intelligence, AI will witness augmented adoption within sales teams as it will also facilitate
strengthened trust between sellers and buyers owing the transparent logic-based
decisions and actions. Ultimate word – AI will lead to an increase in resourceful and above-
average sales headcount instead of lessening the number.
AI Will Automate, Not Replace
Trend Alert 4
©Denave2018

8. While sales had branched beyond content much earlier but that doesn’t undermine the
critical position it still holds. It’s further true in the case of B2B since research suggests that
60% buyers are preferring not to interact with a sales rep as the primary source of
information; 68% are preferring to research on their own, online; and 62% say they can now
develop selection criteria or finalize a vendor list — based solely on the available digital
content. 5 Another study shows that 9 out of 10 B2B buyers 6 claim that online content has a
moderate to major effect on their purchasing decisions and similar will be the situation for
B2C as well.
In such a scenario, sellers will be seen vying with one another for becoming a relevant part
of the trending conversations ahead of time and create personalised experiences for their
buyers. Keeping a safe distance from that ‘pitch -y’ feel to the content, which may seem
like a hard-sell, consultative and precise content will see growth. With a clear focus on
content strategy and how the same is put in front of customers, B2B sales players will lead
the way to an efficient and optimized digital sales motion.
Content Will Continue to Be the King
Trend Alert 5
©Denave2018

9. As per Forrester, the total global public cloud market will be approx. $178B in 2018, up
from $146B in 2017, and will continue to grow at a 22% compound annual growth rate
(CAGR). 7 Another research report states that global cloud services market is expected to
reach $555B by 2020. 8
Extrapolating from the current revenue and adoption growth, it is quite an optimistic
picture that is in front of salespeople. The adoption will grow by manifolds – at a pace
which will surpass its own record. On the home front too, cloud leverage and adoption will
further make sales output faster by providing actionable information at the right time to the
sales person. This will lessen the reaction time by making the information access faster.
The value of time being equated to that of data in the realm of sales, this is going to be
huge disruptor.
Cloud Adoption to Surpass
All Prediction
Trend Alert 6
©Denave2018

10. Revenues for big data and business analytics solutions are forecasted to reach $260 billion
in 2022. 9 The gigantic figure itself indicates the trajectory that we are on and how things
will shape up in the coming year as well. With predictive and prescriptive analytics being
further strengthened by developmental strides in cognitive analytics, leveraging
semantics, artificial intelligence, deep learning and machine learning, the road ahead is
bright in terms of precise insight extraction from data.
As per reports, by 2020, 25% of organizations using a sales performance management
(SPM) solution will also leverage advanced analytics for optimizing their sales
compensation plans. 10
Domain and language agnostic analytics will pave the way for insights-as-a-service model
to become more widely adopted. End-to-end cloud analytics will also see a momentum
with another expected breakthrough being the expansion of input nodes for analytics
engine going beyond five human senses. With narrative representation getting refined
further, 2019 will also see a lot more emphasis on building visually appealing information
centers on sales-tech platforms to enable better customer conversion.
Analytics Will Be the Biggest Sales Catalyst
Trend Alert 7
©Denave2018

11. Global image recognition market is expected to reach $43.57 billion by 2022 and $77.69
billion by 2025 while speech and voice recognition market is expected to reach $18.30
billion by 2023, at a CAGR of 19.8% between 2017 and 2023. 11,12 & 13
Digital transformation and AI proliferation will leverage the progress made in speech
recognition to improve the deployment of sales tools by replacing input mechanism
through speech. Speech to text progression in vernacular or local languages is being
practiced by many but is still lacking the expected adoption pace and trailing behind
English speech conversion. This scene is set for transformation in the coming year. Image
recognition will also get augmented inclusion in the realm of advanced analytics, for
example – it will be extensively leveraged in the space of merchandising analytics for
compliance management, making the process more transparent and real-time.
With the focus on analytics and market insights, the need to capture more last mile data is
going up by the day, and speech to text/ image recognition evolution will become the
primary drivers of such data capture. The same will be leveraged by the sales industry and
thus, reduce the ongoing struggle between deployment and effective usage.
Speech & Image Recognition Will
Revamp Reporting
Trend Alert 8
©Denave2018

12. How much so ever loyal the customer base be, single channel outreach will fade away into
oblivion sooner than later. Numbers also signal affirmation to this with 84% of C-Level
executives using social media to make purchasing choices. 14 The buzz in sales can be
understood from the global trend wave which predicts that by 2019, there will be around
2.77 billion social media users around the globe, up from 2.46 billion in 2017. 15
The thumb rule stays as is - being present where your prospect is expected to find you and
in the increasingly social world – those platforms are numerous. The trend will be to put
together riveting content and outreach strategy when it comes to omni-channel presence
and especially social selling. The paradigm of selling has got its axis shifted and the brands
have realised it in a major way. Therefore, 2019 will see organisations spending a lot more
in the social selling space, going far and beyond the regular social media marketing and
advertising. Seamlessly integrated multi-channel platforms will become a norm as a
disintegrated and hushed-up job in that segment will brush you sideways that very
moment, in the race to gaining customers.
Omni-Channel Sales Strategy and
Social Selling to Become Mainstream
Trend Alert 9
©Denave2018

13. Research suggests, in case of a non-aligned environment between sales and marketing
teams, there's a 4% decrease in company revenue, however, if the teams work in
collaboration then many companies experience a 20% increase in their sales. 16 Misaligned
metrics, unrelated technologies, separate knowledge bases, and fragmented goals have
spelled doom for both marketing and sales as well as for the organizations they serve,
since long enough. The need which has been identified since quite some time now is to
integrate, consolidate and collaborate. We will witness the complete actualisation of this
realisation in the coming year.
2019 will see sales and marketing more intertwined than ever before, not just because of
shared revenue goals, but because the new-age customers demand it. Since buyers today
expect a fluid experience, any interruption or inconsistency in the process encompassing
marketing to sales journey, will have a negative impact on the buyer’s trust and
confidence. As it is, the increased and may be even, mandated integration of both teams
into one common entity – will allow for better content leverage, clearer view of customer’s
needs and a seamless and shorter sales funnel.
Sales & Marketing to Emerge as an
Integrated Superpower
Trend Alert 10
©Denave2018

14. There is always an element of supposition attached to predicting the trends, however, a quick glance through the past and an analysis of the present situation gives quite a
near-about idea of what the future holds. With technology making major strides inside the world of sales, elements which were perceived as hoop-la earlier, are causing
significant transformations today. Hence, no possibility can be ruled out.
In the time when humans have even cracked the code of verifying a quantum computer, we can only see some variations in the speed at which these trends will overtake the
present-day sales enablement space – without entertaining any doubt that whether these are hype or mere distant probabilities.
While it’s important to strengthen the current anchors, it always pays to be prepared for the expected wave!
THE GEAR-UP MODE
©Denave2018

15. Sources:
• https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-customer-relationship-management-crm-market
• https://www.salesforce.com/form/conf/2016-state-of-sales.jsp
• https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-predicts-2017-marketers-expect-the-unexpected/
• https://c1.sfdcstatic.com/content/dam/web/en_us/www/documents/reports/sales/state-of-sales-3rd-ed.pdf
• https://go.forrester.com/blogs/the-ways-and-means-of-b2b-buyer-journey-maps-were-going-deep-at-forresters-b2b-forum/
• https://www.cmocouncil.org/thought-leadership/reports/btob-content-impacts-customer-thinking--buying-decisions
• https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2017/11/07/forresters-10-cloud-computing-predictions-for-2018/#f3997854ae18
• https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/press-release/global-cloud-services-market-is-expected-to-reach-555-billion-globally-by-2020.html
• https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS44215218
• https://www.gartner.com/ngw/globalassets/en/information-technology/documents/insights/100-data-and-analytics-predictions.pdf
• https://www.reuters.com/brandfeatures/venture-capital/article?id=5680
• https://www.grandviewresearch.com/press-release/global-image-recognition-market
• https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/PressReleases/speech-voice-recognition.asp
• https://www.superoffice.com/blog/social-selling-statistics/
• https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/
• https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/integrated-sales-and-marketing-5-reasons-why-integration-is-valuable
©Denave2018

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©Denave2018