4 Sales Trends That Will Reshape the Selling Process in 2019
You need to understand your lead's psyche and get to know them in order to craft a pitch that resonates and is relatable. That's where contact enrichment comes in
By Sidharth Malik •
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It is the beginning of the year and it is the best time to take a minute to reflect on what we achieved last year, and what we want to set for 2019. Here are the top four sales trends that are set to shape and influence your sales efforts in 2019. This will help you analyze how your industry has evolved over the last year, and come up with a well-rounded, multi-faceted plan, to bring your company to greater heights.
1. The CRM is Evolving to Become the Holy Grail
These days, CRMs are becoming more powerful than ever—there's no denying that. The new generation of CRMs don't just serve as a place for businesses to store information about leads and contacts; they're the single source of truth where all your customer information is available.
As most business owners will realize, investing in a good CRM is paramount. It lays a foundation for your marketing and sales teams to build upon. The question then remains; what constitutes a good CRM? There are various factors that you may take into consideration here, but the one factor that I want to focus on is how CRM systems should work within an ecosystem, in tandem with helpdesks and chat software. This allows you to keep your data in one place, which in turn lets you gain 360 views of customers and establish context using that data.
2. The Rise of AI in Sales Prospecting
Sales prospecting is the one activity that eats up a majority of the sales rep's time. If your reps spend 40per cent or 50per cent of their workday cold-calling, that's 40per cent or 50per cent less time that they could have potentially spent on negotiating and closing deals.
How do you get around this? Use AI, and outsource the sales prospecting to salesbots. This way, your reps can spend less time on repetitive tasks, and focus on higher-value activities instead. For instance, you've probably trained your sales reps to ask qualifying questions and steer the conversation in one direction or another based on the results. You can program salesbots to do the exact same thing.
3. Real-time Selling is Becoming a Key Driver of Sales
It's no secret that today people demand instant gratification; we have attention spans that are shorter than ever. Considering this, it's not surprising that real-time selling is becoming a growing trend. More specifically, if a lead enters your system, and you reach out to them within five minutes (as opposed to a half hour), your odds of successfully making contact increases by a whopping 100x. In such a scenario, live chat tools are highly effective in increasing your conversions and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
As per reports, 77per cent of customers won't make a purchase on a website if there's no live chat option available. Additionally, 63per cent of customers is more likely to return to a website that has live chat available.
4. Contact Enrichment-Based Selling is Winning Customers Quicker than Ever
Your chances of conversion are much better when you know what excites the person who is going to receive your communication, rather than a one-shoe-fits-all way of templated communication.
As a sales rep, you need to understand your lead's psyche and get to know them in order to craft a pitch that resonates and is relatable. That's where contact enrichment comes in.
To get around this, have a CRM that automatically enriches your contacts. With auto enrichment, you'll have access to a treasure trove of information about your contact. Since this function resides within the CRM, sales reps can easily get more context about their leads and craft communication that resonates well with their profile.
Final word
Your customers are evolving and becoming increasingly sophisticated with time. In 2019, take some time to consider how you can use your CRM as part of a larger ecosystem of products, to tie in lead generation, management and customer support to "wow' your customers. At the end of the day, you want to pre-empt your customer needs and make every touch point with your company as easy and frictionless as possible.
