In the rapidly changing playing field of business, sales organizations need to update themselves on the latest strategies, tools, and techniques to pull ahead of the competition. Be complacent and you’ll find yourself playing catch up with your competitors. To be proactive, the key is to stay in sync with innovative sales techniques, tailor them to your teams, and roll them out quickly. As we start the new year, Tenfold brings you this roundup filled with hard-hitting insights and ideas as to what the sales landscape will look like this 2017.

2. In the rapidly changing playing field
of business, sales organizations
need to update themselves on the
latest strategies, tools, and
techniques to pull ahead of the
competition.
Be complacent and you’ll find
yourself playing catch up with your
competitors.
To be proactive, the key is to stay in
sync with innovative sales
techniques, tailor them to your
teams, and roll them out quickly.

3. WHAT’S YOUR TOP SALES PREDICTION FOR 2017?
As we open the year, Tenfold brings you this
roundup filled with hard-hitting insights and
ideas as to what the sales landscape will look
like this 2017.
We asked sales and business leaders:

4. ➔ The concept of Sales Manager Enablement will continue to
blossom, with a focus on hiring, training, coaching and
developing the competencies, activities, methodologies and
practices that help frontline sales managers succeed.
We’ll continue to see growth with technology-enabled virtual
coaching and other sales management enablement tools that
support managers beyond just the coaching part of their role.
➔ Sales Development will continue to grow and evolve into a
function staffed by experienced, highly skilled and trained,
top-performing reps who can elevate the profession and
deliver the quality Top of the Funnel results that our sales
forces so desperately need.
➔ Sales Enablement will continue to evolve as a profession
with a focus on merging talent development, technology,
process, messaging and methodology to better train and
Read more

5. “The profession of sales is being elevated and coming into its
own. Each company depends upon increasing clientele.
Therefore, sales enablement, the new buzz word, will be
examined from every aspect of every department. The end
result will be a comprehensive plan between departments for
open communication to truly enable sales.”
Read more

6. Venture-backed companies are now obsessing over account-
based this and account-based that. Why is this happening?
Well, they’ve discovered it’s not enough to just acquire new
customers and ensure their success with nominal levels of
income.
The customer retention problem will ultimately blow up your
business model. You need “expansion revenue,” as venture
capitalist David Skok call it. You need to go upstream and then
land and expand.
You need messages that are deeply relevant to the decision
makers and influencers with the large accounts you are
targeting – and you need to develop these messages in a
smart, systematic way. You’re challenged to ensure marketing
and selling teams are unified in their efforts to penetrate these
accounts – and grow them to new levels.
Read more

7. Microsoft will move quickly to integrate LinkedIn into its CRM
(Dynamics) and business productivity apps (Word, Excel,
Powerpoint, Outlook,…).
The result will be accelerated adoption of Social Selling
practices including increased social content sharing by
salespeople. This will lead to further blurring of the lines
between Marketing and Sales as they work more closely on
inbound marketing activities for lead generation.”
Read more

8. One prediction for 2017, smart companies will continue to
revisit, refocus, and rescript their sales message.The purpose
is to always put more focus on the prospect’s needs.
Read more

9. “Google gets into the sales space with the acquisition of a
CRM company. Microsoft, Salesforce, Google, Oracle, SAP,
and PE Firms start to roll up sales and marketing companies
aggressively.”
Read more

10. My sense is top performers will continue to take advantage of
social selling platforms by inspiring their ideal customers/
clients through insightful educational content.
There will be a continued focus on building sustainable
relationships using a plethora of technology platforms, smart
devices through multiple methods of communication such as
text, email, voice mail and phone
Read more

11. “More and more of the actual “sale” will occur before the
prospect ever talks to a salesperson–meaning that companies
need to see the marketing side of their business as “sales”
and also would be well served to, in many cases, at least
partially merge the two departments in an effort to eliminate
silos and create greater results.”
Read more

12. I predict that more emphasis will be placed on sales
leadership.
For too many years the pressure has been put on the
salespeople when sales numbers are not being hit. Company
leaders are starting to understand that a sales team is only as
good as its leader and those sales managers are only as good
as the sales leaders that support them. The trend will be
toward providing professional development in the form of
training, coaching, and peer mentoring, to sales management
Read more

13. In 2017 companies will recognize that everyone has a role to
play in ensuring customer success, revenue, and the health of
the organization and will start creating Customer Success
Teams organized by territory.
These new teams will be organized around creating a
successful customer experience. Smart companies will start to
ask, “which job functions in my company are integral to the
customer having a positive experience with us?”
Read more

14. B2B selling becomes even more data-driven.
One of the most striking trends over the past few years has
been the growing application of sales analytics, and I don’t
think that 2017 will be any exception. In fact, I believe the
trend will accelerate. Don’t get me wrong – complex sales will
always benefit from a human touch. Sales people with
emotional intelligence will always outperform their less gifted
colleagues.
Read more

15. “My top sales prediction for 2017 is that salespeople will be
challenged more than ever with being able to differentiate their
product, company and themselves. To effectively differentiate
with buyers, salespeople need a documented sales
differentiation strategy that helps them win more deals at the
prices their company wants. Sales managers yelling for them
to sell the value will not get it done.”
Read more

16. With younger sales teams, better levels of technology, cost
considerations, and increasing “adult learning” awareness and
knowledge, these factors will merge to create online, mobile
and interactive sales and sales management training offerings
that will improve the level of professionalism to the next level.
Much like the increasing power of CRM, these new tools will
provide greater levels of individualized training, when you
need it, where you need, and how you like to learn. A few
sites like ChannelEQ.co and SalesGravy.com are just a few of
the potential winners.”
Read more

17. I believe that most of us recognize the onward, relentless
march of commoditization, which will accelerate in 2017.
Slowly but surely, more and more products, solutions and
services are being commoditized. My definition of a
commodity? If it can be purchased online with a credit card, it
is a commodity. One of the few restrictors is a credit limit.
There is a huge post-commoditization graveyard somewhere
full of petrol pump attendants, insurance agents, mobile phone
salespeople, newspaper sellers, and a whole host of other ex-
salespeople made redundant by the internet – and it is filling
up fast. Careers are dying to get in there!
Change is inevitable. It is the one constant we can rely on – it
cannot be refused or resisted, so we have to accept it and
adapt and thrive. The sales space isn’t dying, it is just re-
shaping itself and we just have to fully embrace it and keep
the shutters of our minds in the “up” position.
Read more

18. I predict that 2017 will see a renewed focus on the importance
of the human element in sales; on the art of selling.
Over the past several years we’ve witnessed an influx of sales
enablement technologies and data-driven processes and
analytics. Many supposed thought leaders have rushed to
proclaim this a “golden age” of sales in which the “science of
selling” has permanently killed off the “art of selling.”
Read more

19. “In 2017 we’ll see every B2B employee become a sales
person. We all pay lip-service to the idea that every employee
should be the face of our product. That’s become more urgent
over time as so much of a customer’s lifetime value is
determined by interactions before and after engagement with
a traditional sales person. That includes exchanges with
SDRs, support, account management, finance, and other
business units.
What’s changed is the rise of automation to help these
employees act like sales people. That can be through
customer experience platforms that help support a customer
journey. And it can be through sales enablement platforms that
can distribute training, sales guidance, and marketing content
to employees based on the prospect’s context.
The result is employees who are equipped to have intelligent
conversations with prospects or to direct them to resources
Read more

20. Thank you!
Want to know how Salesforce is changing in 2017?
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2017
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