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The rapid growth of AI in 2023 changed the domain of sales significantly with data analysis, automation, next-level personalisation, and smart data storage, among others. In 2024, sales leaders will embrace AI with more gusto and focus on building a data-driven culture while prioritising human connection and sales ethics.
Curious about what the sales landscape will look like in 2024? We bring you the top sales trends to watch out for in 2024!
1. Leveraging AI to Meet Goals
At present, one of the key sales trends for 2024 is the rapid adoption of AI/automation tools by salespeople, who are primarily using them to obtain data-driven insights, automate manual tasks, and write tailored prospect outreach messages.
CRM automation is also gaining momentum as salespeople are using it to set drip campaigns, automate their outreach, visualise the sales pipelines, and manage them more proficiently. 2024 is set to see more salespeople relying on AI/automation tools to cut down the time they spend on mundane work, connect better with customers and prospects, and boost their productivity.
If your salespeople aren’t making the most of AI yet, you can help them get started with it for
- Spotting clients’ buying trends, collecting relevant data, and interpreting them
- Offering suggestions to customers based on their recent purchases
- Forecasting buying and selling trends and planning ahead to stay on top
2. More Focus on the Alignment of Sales and Marketing
When sales and marketing teams are aligned through shared goals, strategy, and communication, their cross-functional collaboration improves. This paves the way for high-impact marketing activities and improved sales effectiveness, which ultimately helps the revenue to climb up.
In 2024, the spotlight will be on businesses getting their sales and marketing teams more aligned to accomplish their goals. With the threat of economic instability lurking over us, businesses with existing customers who are tightening their budgets by cancelling their purchases/subscriptions or downgrading their existing plans are likely to feel the pinch more.
But if their sales and marketing teams are better aligned, they can benefit from the high-quality leads such an alignment can drive by bringing together early prospect targeting and the buyer’s journey. Such alignment can also generate massive volumes of precious data on customer preferences and segments. In your company, if these two teams are misaligned, it’s time to bring them on the same page for faster and more efficient goal accomplishment.
3. Creating a Data-Driven Culture
Did you know companies using data-driven B2B sales-growth engines experience above-market growth and a 15% to 25% increase in their EBITDA? When businesses today have tons of data to glean information and useful insights from, it pays to use them to refine strategies for sales growth, create sales and deal opportunities, and make more informed and faster decisions.
In 2024, sales leaders will emphasise more on building data-driven sales teams because these teams are more likely to achieve their revenue targets compared to their counterparts who don’t use data at every stage of a sale and during their training.
Not sure how you can build such a team? You can ask your sales reps to get data related to leads and conversions at various stages in the sales funnel analysed.
You could even encourage them to experiment with diverse sales techniques and examine the results together as a team to get a better idea of what’s working and what needs to be chaanged. To convert speculation-driven actions and decisions into evidence-driven and data-backed choices, data-driven training can help.
4. Prioritising Human Connection and Authenticity
With a growing focus on ethical sales, which is all about creating and forging a bond of trust with your customers through transparency, honesty, and fairness, human connection will be the key factor to drive sales as 2024 sales trends indicate. To get one up on your competition, your company will need to build trust and prioritise authenticity.
You can get started on the right path by knowing your customers better. Learn what they talk about, what matters to them, what their pain points are, what their opinion is about your offerings, etc. You may even seek suggestions from them (say, about the features they would love to see in your products) or encourage them to talk to your sales team about the challenges they run into every day and that your offerings might solve.
Buyers today are quite well-informed and can do their own research using AI, which often helps them make informed decisions without getting a sales rep involved. This means the job of a sales rep is no longer about making the prospect buy.
Instead, sales reps today use the knowledge a prospective customer already has, answer any remaining questions that the person may have, and build trust-based, long-lasting relationships. In 2024, more and more salespeople will be playing the role of a consultant-and-relationship builder.
5. Personalisation Will Continue to Matter
As buyers become more informed and shop smarter, a large percentage of the buyer’s journey no longer depends on the sales reps. Thus, you can’t predict with certainty exactly when a buyer will enter the funnel, because it can happen at any stage. Additionally, buyers today are no longer tied to a solitary channel, which again makes such predictions tougher than before.
When forming their sales strategy, salespeople must take these factors into account. Since different buyers have different preferences, the approach to entice them too should be different because you can’t expect the same approach to work for all. This means establishing diverse channels to let your buyers select whichever they prefer best.
Whatever be the sales channel that your customer chooses, it must give them consistent customer experience. Offering the choice of switching different channels without losing vital information is another key factor that can ensure a seamless buying experience.
If your sales team hasn’t focused on personalisation much, now is the time to experiment with various distribution, promotional, and purchase channels to find the right mix and make your sales cycle more efficient and tailored to meet the needs of your prospects and existing customers.
Final Words
Top sales trends for 2024 indicate the growing use of AI to meet goals, alignment of sales and marketing teams, and the rise of a data-driven culture. Additionally, sales reps are likely to act as consultative relationship builders and focus more on personalisation to bring in more leads and sales.
If you need help hiring for the executive sales position, connect with us at InHunt World right away!
This article was written by Sonali