A few months ago, I came across Huvr, a hoverboard that would change the way we transport ourselves from one location to the next. The hoverboard was promoted and backed by everyone from Mark Cuban to Terrell Owens. It was written about by almost every technology blog on the web and was the most talked about product on Facebook and Twitter for an entire day.
I was ready to pull out the credit card and make the purchase. I was ready to unleash my inner Marty McFly. That is, until the hype died down and it was announced that Huvr was nothing more than a hoax.
While I may not be able to buy a HUVr board today, I’m still excited about what the future might hold. The idea of a hoverboard brought back memories of the hit movie, Back to the Future. It also made me think about the possibilities of the future and how far we’ve come from the days of floppy disks and VHS recorders.
In business, it’s important to always think about what the future will hold for your career. It’s important to understand what trends exist today that will shape our world for tomorrow. In sales, we’ve already seen significant change. In marketing we’ve seen change as well. As we look forward to the future, the best sales people are getting prepared for the unknown. Here are the some of the things they’re doing to ensure they don’t become a memory of the past:
Celebrating & Embracing Technology
The most significant changes in the last few decades have happened on the back of technology. Whether it was the emergence of mobile phones or the proliferation of the internet economy, technology has changed the world.
Sales professionals who embrace change and celebrate the advancements and power of technology will generate meaningful results for their businesses. Through the combination of CRM technology and social selling software, organizations of tomorrow will be able to make smarter decisions around organizational structure and business development strategies.
Capturing Data & Information
Social selling software provides sales professionals with insights and information that will uncover real business opportunities. With Introhive, you can be alerted of potential account problems when one of 15 different negative relationship signals takes place. Further, you can stay up to date on account activity and never miss an interaction taking place between co-workers and your priority accounts.
It’s impossible to figure out where you’re going without knowing where you’ve been. Big data and the intentional act of gathering information will give sales professionals a chance to make better decisions about their business.
Leveraging Insights
Insights that show how strong your relationship is with key accounts empowers the entire business to be more strategic in their next steps. You can leverage insights from tools like Introhive to allocate resources to problem accounts and aligning them with strong connects to increase the chance of success.
Insights come in all shapes and sizes. You can find insights through a Twitter feed or through a platform like ours. The best sales professionals are realizing that insights lead to making better decisions and help them in being more strategic in their approach to prospecting, lead generation and closing a deal.
Nurturing Relationships
No matter how forward thinking we are when it comes to the future for sales; relationships will always matter. The stronger our relationships the better our chances to retain a client or acquire a new one. It’s our relationships with people that make our careers, our businesses, our teams and our successes.
The best sales professionals know that relationships aren’t going anwhere. The best sales professionals are investing in relationships for the future by nurturing and taking care of those they have in the present.
What are you doing to prepare for the future? Download our ebook on how the best sales professionals are using technology to drive results so you can be prepared for what the future has in store.