Top Sales Trends for 2024 — and Beyond

With AI infiltrating nearly every aspect of our lives in 2024, sales leaders are already seeing huge industry transformations — automation, data analysis, and enhanced productivity for starters. What other revolutionary trends will we see explode onto the scene? Here are five trends that sales leaders should keep an eye on:

Trend 1: Using AI for efficiency

According to the State of Sales report, operational efficiency is one of the most important trends in sales. Typically, sales reps spend only 28% of their week actually selling, which means that they’re spending 72% of their time on administrative and other tasks. AI has the potential to save significant time by handling these routine tasks, giving your team the freedom to spend more time building relationships with customers and making sales.

To get started with AI, invite your whole organization together for a brainstorming session where the group identifies their most time-consuming tasks. From there, break up into teams, and have each team research the best AI tools to improve efficiencies for those processes.

Trend 2: Prioritizing human connection

In 2024, prioritizing authenticity and human connection is key, helping you edge out the competition by building trust. Start by getting curious about who your customers are and what matters to them.

Try inviting a few of your customers to a lunch-and-learn with your sales team. Ask them to walk your team through some of the problems they deal with every day, and leave time for you and your team to ask questions. Then, have your SDRs call a few prospects and ask them if they’re running into the same types of challenges. Once your team finishes these calls, come back together, discuss the results, and come up with a plan to address these challenges via one-on-one prospect engagement.

Trend 3: Building a data-driven culture

Plain and simple, companies that use data to drive decision-making are more likely to beat revenue targets than those that don’t — 58% more likely . With so much data at our fingertips, there’s a huge opportunity for your team to use it to make more informed decisions. Sales leaders can use sales data to make better decisions, uncover insights into sales and deal opportunities, and refine sales growth strategies, among many other things. That’s why you need to create a data-driven culture, using data at every stage of a sale and during training and coaching.

Read the full article for Trends 4 & 5

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