Technologies are evolving and disrupting the broader market of sales force automation and even more so at the actual place where selling occurs. This requires sales leaders of the future to become more proficient in leveraging tools for sales and sales management. Big competitive differentiation can be found in process, system and salesperson improvements.
Tomorrow’s sales leadership must focus on the personal aspects of sales force development including mentoring, coaching and teaching and must be aware of new technologies in the cloud, mobile, social and big data that are disrupting existing SFA technology investments as these new new capabilities for delivery and usage of sales applications messes with legacy and outdated systems.
Sales performance management (SPM) and sales effectiveness (SE) technologies have evolved greatly during the past three years inside of the larger framework of sales force automation. Past sales technology investments have put the central focus on tools to manage the customer, with little regard to tools to manage and develop salespeople. A recent shift in thinking by sales leadership to account for new generations of salespeople, and the need to create a stronger sales team, has driven technology vendors to respond with a multitude of tools that allow sales leadership to shift, manage and enhance the behavioral aspects of the sales force. Sales leaders of the future must understand where they have strong processes and technologies to support the selling organization, and where they have gaps.
From the start, you must provide equal focus and attention to both SPM and SE We talk about it in detail in a recent note that I authored Tech Go-To-Market: The Future of SPM and SE Will Change How you Sell (subscription/fee required) and this is a core component of our Future of IT Sales Special Report.
Gartner recently released a special report on the Future of technologies as since March 2013, Gartner has interviewed a number of sales leaders at various technology providers to understand the challenges and opportunities they face. Many of these interactions took place to validate our hypothesis about the future of sales. Other insights have been integrated into this research as quotes and examples, to help contextualize our position and present a unique perspective on where our technology and service provider clients believe the future of IT sales is heading.
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