The Future of Sales – Dreamforce 2017

I'm excited to be attending Dreamforce in San Francisco next month because technology is changing everything and many of the best minds on the planet will be there. Is technology creating a bright future for salespeople or could selling 'devolve' into a series of decision trees from natural language queries underpinned by huge amounts of data that are retrieved and processed 'in the blink of an eye' to be served up in portals and apps?

If algorithms rather relationships drive sales then the outlook for many careers is bleak

Those most at risk are the salespeople engaged in low-value relationships or representing commodities. Technology is increasingly penetrating every part of our lives but Kyle Porter from SalesLoft believes, “The best AI vendors are the ones who walk a mile in the salesperson’s shoes and great AI results in better humanity.”

Technology can empower the human buyer and seller experience rather than replace it

Although some buyers seek the ability to simply transact efficiently, others value advice and guidance amidst a tsunami of data that can be overwhelming for them. Sellers who meet this need can become ‘the emotional favorite’ and form relationships that de-risk the buyer’s decision and their process of change.

It's never been more important for sellers to create value by becoming advisers.

The sellers who will prosper in the next decade are those who can be like Iron Man—human with machine to achieve amazing levels of efficiency and effectiveness. Embracing technology can be the key to avoiding being sales career-kill and delivering brilliant 'customer experience'. Make no mistake, creating great Customer Experience (CX) rather than clever marketing or uber-salesmanship is the name of the game today and into the future. Every business' CX focus needs to be on it's employees and partners as well as its customers.

Technology is driving everything as the five big trends converge – social, mobile, cloud, big data and artificial intelligence (AI). LinkedIn see themselves as the 'system of engagement' for B2B selling and they view CRM as the 'system of record'. Salesforce goes beyond CRM to be the platform on which CX is executed by providing the single source of truth about prospects, customers, partners, and stakeholders through every phase of the lifecycle. This includes from suspect to prospect to customer to advocate collaborating in communities. All sales, marketing, service/support, and collaboration technologies should be harnessed to deliver exception Customer Experience. CX is the big picture. The detail of how CX is delivered is what transforms the way buyers feel.

Buyers today expect us to truly know them! After all, we have the data. Then they expect us to personalize their experience and simply engage in any channel and at any time.

Every business and every salesperson needs to embrace technology so be nice to Siri... she could be running the world one day. Seriously, embrace the very things you fear or struggle to understand.

Technology can either empower and enable your prosperity or replace you.

We live in a world where Chinese auto assembly lines are replacing almost all humans, despite those humans being relatively low cost, and the factories are achieving compelling efficiency gains and quantum quality improvements. Will the promised manufacturing jobs really return to the rust belt of the USA… or will automation deliver a return of revenue and profit but without the associated employment? This is why Bill Gates is advocating a tax on automation and machines that replace human jobs. Truck drivers are the next vocation in the sights of the machines but lawyers, bankers, accounts and many other professions are in the firing line for redundancy. Just as aircraft flight engineers no longer occupy the third seat (with the exception of the A380).

We are living in a time when automated marketing is replacing sales- people. The most successful car launch in the history of the automobile was the red carpet reveal of the Tesla Model 3 in 2016. Elon Musk live-streamed it, and sent people to his website shopping cart. No showroom salespeople coercing prospects to buy the paint protection package or extended warranty. Just general estimates of range and battery charging times with a promise of order fulfillment starting 15 months in the future. Elon is not even a polished salesman, just an authentic visionary making electric cars cool to own, exhilarating to drive, sustainably powered (the sun or wind charge the batteries). He promises that you can drive it to the SpaceX parking lot for your trip to Mars and that AI will park it when you arrive. The result? Cash deposits of $1,000 paid within 72 hours equating to $14 billion in sales when fulfilled.

Right now, a shopping cart can replace a showroom salesperson, and salesbots are already everywhere when you go online: Amazon, eBay, Google, and even the infamous Ashley Madison website, which allegedly used sexbot algorithms to entice new male members with flirtatious but fictitious women pretending to be interested in an affair. Cheating the cheaters — how ironic.

You may ask, what can I do, I’m just a rep? Well, you have more power than you think. The first thing you must do is realize what is actually happening. To inoculate yourself, you must first think about your own buying behavior. Why would you buy anything sophisticated, complex, or expensive, and what process do you go through to make that decision? Do you feel uneasy, even a sense of fear in the pit of your stomach, with some buying decisions? No robot can take that away. No Svengali AI can mitigate the truth that you’re going to spend a million dollars on a home, for example. You research everything, maybe even for 10 years, to get your ducks in a row.

The sellers of the future will be liaisons of the ultra-complex. They will combine the skills of a solutions engineer with the strategic thinking of a CEO. They will write prolifically, speak publicly, have sensational EQ and IQ, and leverage all the available tools. There’s no replacing charisma and genuine empathy. The history of the brain’s evolution will never be out-done by AI when it comes to the highly analog components of building trust, displaying integrity, and educating and enabling one’s quarry for their own good.

The future of high-value selling, the type you must elevate toward, is humans in partnership with machines as everything converges. Customers want insight and value from every interaction. Creating seamless Customer Experience that delights the consumer is therefore the panacea of sales and marketing, and it must be delivered with a blend of human relationships and easy-to-use technology, anywhere, anytime, and on any device.

Choose to be one of the few people who will be master of the machines, orchestrating a multiplier effect on the modern sales process. They’ll set appointments, filter through big data for that wow factor insight to hook the skeptical buyer, propensity score your pipeline using a machine learning algorithm that gets smarter, and provide you with data and insights that help buyer and seller alike.

I’ve been rather pessimistic in the past about automation and AI creating a sales career apocalypse but I’ve been converted to believe in a far brighter future for those willing to combine old-school value with new-school technology. Humans who embrace working with bots and leverage advanced technology as they engage prospects and customers will unlock the secret to driving sales pipeline and delivery of the very best Customer Experience.

Salesforce is at the forefront and I'm excited about attending Dreamforce in San Francisco to learn more about how Einstein (their AI entity) is transforming integrated opportunity coaching and forecasting. Einstein is a virtual deal coach who provides predictive lead and deal scores along with opportunity insights, including prompts for the best next steps and methods of outreach. Because Salesforce actually enables and integrates best practice sales processes, Einstein has the ability to monitor critical win factors. Factors it monitors include: whether key information has been obtained, whether the right people have been covered, whether the amount of time in a particular deal stage is damaging the probability of a win, whether frequency of deal updates is on track, and whether the number of calls made and received along with emails sent and received shows proof of high-value engagement. All of this matters because the level of timely buyer-seller interaction absolutely determines the probability of winning a deal. Unlike a human sales manager, Einstein is always transparently monitoring and providing feedback on which deals need attention and where to prioritize precious sales time. For management, Einstein can deliver the Holy Grail of forecasting accuracy.

Other examples of AI include IBM's Watson and sales research assistants such as Larry from Complexica or Troops.ai with synchronization to Salesforce, and you can even deploy a virtual sales assistant that schedules meetings for you with x.ai. You can leverage big data to crunch all your leads to optimize which ones have the highest propensity to close using Lattice Engines. The rise of “automation of everything,” such as Outreach.io, is transforming the way salespeople work, and SalesLoft goes beyond that to incorporate the human element.

Moore’s Law is relentless, and imagine how the world will change if and when the AI Singularity arrives. The question of whether humans will be needed in almost all workplace roles will be answered by societal and political considerations rather than by economics or questions over whether a machine can actually do the task better than a human. Bill Gates is already advocating for machines to be taxed (collected by their corporate employers who fired the humans) to fund the universal wage from governments for the vast majority of people who will be forced out of work.

As a side note, many people derive their sense of purpose from the work they do. Depression, suicide, and crime are sure to skyrocket as increasing numbers of people lose their careers to the advances of technology. The implications for society are enormous. Questions of purpose and meaning in life have never been more important. Philanthropy and good human values are essential for every corporation and Salesforce is a business with a soul.

My belief is that Einstein will be a force for prosperity and service as sellers become equipped to provide personalization at scale and pull insights amidst the volumes of data.

Looking forward to meeting you at Dreamforce in San Francisco! Message me in LinkedIn if you'f like to meet.

Much of the content of this aerticle is also covered in my bew book, COMBO Prospecting. If you valued this article, please hit the ‘like' button and also share via your Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook social media platforms. I encourage you to join the conversation or ask questions so feel free to add a comment. Please also follow my LinkedIn post page for all my articles and visit my website at www.tonyhughes.com.au if you would like to engage me. Or www.RSVPselling.com for sales methodologies that generate pipeline and manage complex opportunities.