Latest Sales Trends for 2020/21 You Should Know

Growth is essential for any business. If you're not growing, your competitors are, which means you're losing out on new business.

The biggest challenge is finding strategies to help you achieve growth.

You can't predict the future to find out what's the next big thing in sales. However, you can take to heart the hottest sales trends today and use them to your advantage.

Trends could be both your ally and enemy, but leveraging them, can address some of the biggest challenges in sales today, such as competing with low-cost providers (31%), consistency in executing meetings with prospects (26%) creating competitive differentiation, adding value to customer conversations (22%) and gaining appointments (14%).

Another critical factor the Sales need to have the right tools. Researchers found out that only 1 in 5 sales teams has the right tools.

It's not a stretch to think that knowing the current trends in sales and investing in technologies are vital ingredients in increasing your team's sales performance.

Below are four key trends that you should watch out:

• Boost Sales with AI

Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are being dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution” and for a good reason. In the years to come, AI is poised to change the way humans work, including sales significantly.

Right now, about 40% of sales tasks can be performed by AI. But it is expected to increase to 85% by 2021. Artificial intelligence adoption for the sales team is projected at 139% for the next three years.

Other benefits include:

Boost productivity.

No longer having to log data, sales teams automatically get 27% of their time back to focus on engaging with prospects and customers.

Improve forecasting, pipeline analysis, and deal intelligence.

By exposing data previously unseen by the sales team, companies have more dots connected to the big picture. AI gives real-time pipeline analysis and tracking of deal trends with crucial insights into factors that won/closed deals have in common.

Better customer satisfaction.

The recommendations and insights AI provide your business can lead to better customer satisfaction and drive nurturing success.

• Bet on Customer Experience

B2B sales are no longer about big-budget, mass marketing campaigns aimed to attract hordes of new customers. Today, it's about focusing on the people you already have  “ your current customers  “ and making sure you delight them with a positive customer experience every time they interact with you.

Giving your customers a more personalized experience will make them more likely to do business with you. 49% of buyers form an impulse purchase after receiving a customized shopping experience.

The benefits of creating better customer service are as follows:

Increase conversions.

Personalized customer experience will make them more likely to do business with your website.

Customer engagement.

Making suggestions from the website based on what the page the customer is checking out encourages them to stay on your site longer as you help them find what they need.

Customer retention.

Data collected about your customers can be used to make useful suggestions for their new purchase, making them regular customers in the process.

• Training is Key

Businesses often neglect the importance of employee training. Inexperienced employees can cause damage to your brand. So, it's crucial to invest in training to find the most qualified employees for the job.

When you invest in finding the right talent and training, your organization is looking at a more significant ROI in the coming years.

When you invest in training and coaching your employees, your company can see a 95% improvement in your company's revenue.

Other benefits you get when you focus on hiring and training include:

A fresh pair of eyes.

During training and coaching, new employees can help you see new ways to do operations around work that you may have overlooked.

Let them be curious.

As you show your new hire the ropes, let them ask as many questions as they want. It pays to nurture their natural curiosity about the company and how it is run.

Fewer mistakes in the long run.

Allowing enough time for training will help prevent significant errors in the future and gives your employees more confidence when facing customers.

• Sales and marketing alignment

Selling has changed a lot over the past ten years. Buyers like to be more informed on what they're buying than ever before, with 94% doing research online before finalizing a purchase. If your sales and marketing teams are working in silos, it could hinder your business growth.

It was proved that aligning your sales and marketing teams helps generate 32% higher revenue, retain 36% more customers, and achieve a 38% higher win rate  “as you're moving the prospect through a streamlined sales and marketing funnel.

Why? It's because aligned sales and marketing teams will not only you help convert more leads, but generate more high-quality ones, too.

It's no secret that sales and marketing teams often debate (read: argue) "lead quality."

Marketing leads are passed onto sales teams before they are qualified, which often leads to high volume but low quality, making it look like sales teams have a reduced conversion rate.

Combining your sales and marketing departments solves this challenge.

Increases brand visibility.

Active Sales and Marketing engagement helps put your brand at the forefront, which results in better visibility and recognition.

Nurtures high-quality leads.

With better visibility comes high quality leads. Potential customers are more likely to convert than browse what you have to offer.

Better sales results.

Thanks to the high-quality leads from the connections you nurtured, you can then expect more sales.

Knowing and understanding sales and marketing trends allows you to prepare your company for the future better. As this post shows, excellent customer relationships can go a long way.

Providing potential customers with a seamless way to do their shopping from the moment they see your deal on their phones to dropping by your store and offering them excellent customer service will help them become long-term customers in the future. This is, in fact, all the rage now coming off the sales, marketing, and service coupling: having a single customer experience management strategy.

Additionally, finding the best people for the job and giving them the right training contributes to customer satisfaction. So, always ensure that each employee gets the right kind of training to see better customer service for more satisfied customers.