Technology Altering the Dynamics of Sales Enablement Industry

Humans have instinctively, since the beginning of time, edged towards developing innovative methods to mitigate and maneuver, both their personal and professional interests. Given the constant socio-economic upheaval, there has been a shift in technological paradigm; a glaring example of this is the disruption of industrial revolution by the software connoisseurs during the 80s and 90s. Technology today is slowly substituting majority of manual and managerial work with robotics and artificial intelligence. With converging boundaries between real and virtual world, cloud technology penetration has also bypassed industry experts’ expectations. As per notable industry reports, tech platform like public cloud services market in India is projected to grow at the rate of 30% in 2016 to total $1.3 billion approximately.

Such statistics reflect a transition in the working model across industries. For sales sector, this evolution has proven to be a path-breaking concept which has led to the advent of smart selling practices. Recognition of sales enablement as one of the most critical business functions, is in itself, an endorsement of this exponential evolution. Be it about database sieving, prospect profiling or even executing a campaign, sales methodologies has been revolutionized by technology evolution and adoption.

Couple of technology advents which have been significant contributor in shaping the present-day sales enablement methodologies :

Prospective Customer Database

For a successful sales program, an insightful customer data is a pre-requisite; a provision which follows the creation and maintenance of a well-consolidated database.  With technological intervention, generating Whitespace database has become faster and maintaining the liveness of the database specially in a fast changing SMB scenario has become easier.  Today, machine learning has strengthened data extraction algorithms and made consolidation of data inputs from multiple sources easier and effective leading to bridging of the gap between registered entities versus actual available information about these entities.  

Data Analytics

Leverage of analytics has steered the sales industry towards intelligent and efficient decision-making.  From mere insight generation machinery to big data-based predictive analytics, technology development, as well as, deployment has progressed exponentially.  Analytics enable the creation of a smart database access platform (SDAP) by mapping exhaustive data profiling with trends extracted out of  historic sales data. This further facilitates the prioritization of contactable database by mapping them onto past sales trends linked to seasonality, conversion rate - sector-wise or area wise etc. Eventual result is the enhancement of team efficiency by cutting down on their non-productive efforts and channelizing their time and energy towards generation of successful leads. A key driver for sales enablement, data analytics, while being in its embryonic stage, is already creating disruptions across all the industrial sectors.

Digital Marketing Platform

This is the age of customization and automation, and our industrial landscape has not remained untouched by this technology trend. Digital marketing platforms allow enterprises to maneuver with customization and automation techniques and thus, deliver a top-notch experience to their customers. Adding to this is the leverage of social media, which has truly given a new dimension to customer-base profiling and prioritizing practices. With social media formulating a pivotal pillar in the scheme of things when strategizing a sales plan, sales team is able to zero down on the propensity of a lead by aligning with the buying behavior and necessity exhibiting digital footprints of the prospect. Reason, as well as, the purpose of this growing trend is to enable sales professionals to understand the potential customer base better and hence, design their sales pitch in alignment with the precise value propositions for the prospect. Adoption of this technology also paves way for a full-proof contextual marketing with a higher conversion rate probability.

Localized Speech Recognition

India’s linguistic diversity coupled with its demographic variation handicaps the most essential and critical sales function, i.e. timely reception and processing of customer feedback. Localized speech recognition technology can help overcome this linguistic barrier and other data transfer challenges. Lack of writing abilities or a need for smart phones can also be done away with evolution and adoption of this technology. Inclusion of localized speech recognition technology would help in the smooth functioning of the sales engine; especially in context of a country like India, which has 22 major languages, 13 different scripts and 720 dialects.

Artificial Intelligence

Lately, in the industrial scenario, most of the mechanical processes are being replaced by automation, be it in the field of sales or any other. Almost every industry is empowered by artificial intelligence to map market tendencies beforehand and formulate a plan of action accordingly. This sensory intelligence has resulted in the birth of intelligent machines which can communicate not just within their own sect (M2M communication) but also, efficiently assist organizations in achieving their prospective targets. Leveraging AI along with speech recognition can help in reducing human intervention and thus, lessening the probability of error and improving scalability of any sales automation process..

It will be factually correct to say that the boom of modern and progressive technological platforms has definitely reformed the functioning of organizations and has also provided a platform for  the entire sales sector to reach a level of customer -servicing, which earlier was only a pipe dream. 

Snehashish Bhattacharjee
Global CEO & Co-Founder, Denave