As another exciting year of sales and sales innovation winds down, it’s time to start thinking about the future. Which tech and processes we’ll be carrying forward, those we
won’t, and what game-changing trends and apps we have to watch.
But this year, in a way, is different from all the others. Yes, we have new tools – like predictive analytics
platforms, which provide more insight into the directions and tactics to grow our businesses.
We’ve also experienced the beginnings of a massive shift in priorities for businesses that
will change everything about how we sell next year.
I’m talking about real, true customer obsession.
With the rise of AI and our ability to hyper-personalize and target
customers all the way through the funnel, more traditional business processes - lead gen, for example - are starting to fall by the wayside in favor of customer experience and account-based marketing
initiatives. As more businesses buy into this model, this is the disruptive reality we’ll be facing in 2016.
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Here are three of the top disruptions we’ll have to work with in 2016:
The Funnel Will Be Flipped by Account-Based Marketing
2016 is the year we’ll start talking about the funnel in a way that we never have before. Instead of filling
it with hoards of MQLs --- most which are entirely uninterested in our product and just want a piece of premium content or a webinar -- and employing BDR teams to weed them out and set meetings for
the tiny group of SQLs remaining, we’ll take a hard look at our current customers.
Why? Because we’re going to start targeting other customers that look exactly like them one at
a time.
The essence of account-based marketing is targeting a specific business, along with a specific set of decision-makers with buying power, and delivering ads, outreach and content to
connect the dots between their business and your product/service.
AI Will Take Networking to the Next Level
Though not traditionally thought of as a sales driver, networking
offers huge options for sales, segment exercises, lead gen and CRM data quality. Reps with better networks sell better because they’re better connected with people.
This will be the year
that AI-driven apps rise to meet them. So many processes in networking -- keeping contacts updated, remembering to follow up, knowing who you should reach out to -- are pieces of info that are easily
glossed over when you have a headful of client and an end-of-quarter date rapidly approaching.
AI changes all that. With apps and algorithms that read call frequency, signals sent through
social and email, and common topics from previous conversations, this will be the year address books update themselves, CRMs learn who you should reach out to and what you should say to them. Business
card scanners can self-categorize, sort and send new connections to the CRM.
Predictive Analytics Will Bring Us All Into New Markets
It’s easy to think we know whom we
should be selling to: CRMs go to sales, marketing automation to marketers, social listening tools to our social teams, etc. But as we’ve begun to dig into our customer data, those lines have
become blurred.
Even if a tool was built with an audience in mind, there’s always a secondary audience, even a few tertiary ones. The Internet is a big place, and it’s next to
impossible to find the data we need.
Or, rather, it was until the rise of predictive analytics. Fueled by Big Data and driven by machine learning, these platforms leverage enormous amounts of
information to estimate future actions of current audiences and customers as well, as opportunities that will rise in new markets.
These tools exist to understand the landscape you operate in,
and work to help your sales reps bring your product (or versions of it) to every available market with relative ease.
Inevitably, we’ll see many more disruptive forces explode in the early
months of 2016, but I bet
allbe about creating better customer experiences, more personalized sales and marketing processes, and refined, personalized targeting strategies.