The Future of Selling Smart

The workplace is changing; sales reps have more complex needs, want more personalized and frequent interactions, while also demanding more independence.  Companies can’t survive the future of work with yesterday’s practices.

Here are 14 stats on the Future of Sales that Sales Leaders should be thinking about in 2018.

Team Collaboration platforms are here to stay

• 9 million weekly Slack users & growing (Slack)
• 77% of the Fortune 100 companies use Slack (Venture Beat)
• 60% of sales professionals say that collaborative selling has increased productivity by more than 25%, and more than half (52%) say it has done the same for increasing pipeline. (Salesforce)
• 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures. (Salesforce)

Sales Productivity & Tools

• On average, sales reps spend 64% of their time on non-selling tasks. (Salesforce)
• On average, high-growth sales development teams have 5 applications in their technology stack. (TOPO)
• More than half of high-performing sales teams already use or are planning to use, a mobile sales app. (Salesforce)
• 42.5% of sales reps take 10 months or longer to become productive enough to contribute to company goals. (Accenture)
• 49% use mobile to support selling in customer-facing situations. (Salesforce)

People and Relationships

• HubSpot Research’s survey of salespeople revealed more than half rely on their peers to get tips for improving. Forty-four percent looked to their manager, 35% to team training resources, and 24% to media. (Hubspot)
• In the future, leaders are accelerating into judgment work with 41% more time with customers and suppliers as well as more collaboration and more coaching/feedback.  (Accenture)

The Future of Sales is AI

• AI is the top growth area for sales teams — forecasted to grow 139% over the next three years. (Salesforce)
• The use of predictive analytics technology will grow 155% in the next 18 months. (Pardot)
• By 2020, 30 percent of all B2B companies will employ AI to augment at least one of their primary sales processes. (Gartner)

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