• The 2019 Hype Cycle for CRM Sales Technology Provides Insights on Prioritizing Sales Technology Investments
“This is the first time blockchain is entering into the sales world and it has the potential to have a transformational impact on how sales organizations typically source leads and contact information,” said Adnan Zijadic, senior principal analyst in Gartner’s Sales practice. “Rather than source from unreliable third-party databases, users can instead partake in a network sharing system supported by blockchain infrastructure to source leads and contacts that fits their organization, while selling leads that do not match their ideal customer profile to other companies that may be in the market for such a lead or customer.”
Other notable technologies in this year’s Hype Cycle include:
- Digital adoption solutions: Digital adoption solutions are a new category of technology used to improve the adoption of multiple tools across the organization. They enable new sellers to onboard more quickly and allow tenured sellers to focus more on selling than the execution of tasks, improving productivity for all.
- Sales engagement platforms: Sales engagement platforms expand sales enablement capabilities by using information about buyer and seller engagement to deliver better sales results. One notable benefit is its ability to measure prospects’ levels of engagement based on how often they download content and interact with sales representatives. When this is combined with coaching capabilities, managers can measure how well their teams are adhering to sales process expectations.
- Conversational engagement analytics for sales: Conversational engagement analytics for sales tools use proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms to analyze audio conversations in order to deliver insights into the quality of interactions with prospects and customers. The technology is relevant to organizations seeking solutions to improve the performance of B2B inside sales representatives where interactions occur primarily by telephone.
