Incentra Insights

Focus on Sales Effectiveness

Sales managers will be laser-focused on the effectiveness of their sales programs in 2024. Having to adapt to the tsunami of changes caused by the pandemic has compelled sales teams to adjust to a whole new world of processes and procedures. Having weathered the storm so far, managers are hoping they can transform these changes into winning sales strategies. So how will sales teams be able to successfully capitalize on these changes in 2024 and avoid many of the accompanying pitfalls?

Sales Trends to Watch for in the Coming Year

Recently, Exploding Topics, a sales research firm, addressed this issue by identifying several sales trends that are a direct result of the pandemic on the sales industry. The following are the most significant trends that will transform how businesses win customers and close deals in 2024:

• “Virtual Selling” Is Now Just “Selling” - A recent study by Bain found that across industries, 79% of businesses were using virtual selling - an increase of 46.2% over the previous year. Even for high-ticket sales, the era of face-to-face selling as the ultimate method is now over.
  
  That said, virtual selling also has its share of challenges. On average, C-suite executives feel that their organization’s win rate through virtual selling was 48.8% lower than their expectations. They also discovered that revenue was 44% lower than expected when focused on virtual sales processes. Both customers and salespeople will have to continually adjust to virtual selling.

• Greater Focus on Reducing Buyer’s Remorse - Although B2B buyers express a preference for buying without interacting with sales reps, post-purchase buyer remorse increases drastically with unaided buying experiences. This leads to negative outcomes for both buyers and sellers, which can be avoided by providing customers a more meaningful and differentiated buying experience. Businesses are going to have to invest in mobile apps that provide digital experiences of their products in easy-to-access formats. 
  
  
• Sales Automation Is the Key to Boosting Revenue - In 2020, McKinsey found that businesses that adopted sales automation consistently saw sales uplifts of up to 10%, alongside improvements in the efficiency of up to 15%. Roughly a third of all tasks in sales operations can be automated with technology, according to estimates from McKinsey Global Institute.
  
  
• Artificial Intelligence Aids Sales Teams - Gartner reports that in 2020, 88% of sales leaders have already made or are set to make investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The top five areas where sales tasks are being handed over to AI are logging sales data, recording customer information, drafting proposals, scoring leads, and determining actions to take on customer accounts, with 63% to 69% of businesses saying they prioritize AI in these areas. The rise of AI looks to reduce sales interactions in the physical world, with more sales tasks being automated than ever before.
  
  
• Diversified Sales Channels and Tactics - Sales experimentation is at an all-time high as businesses hasten to grow more resilient. 48% of sales leaders indicate that they would invest more in post-sale service as a channel in the coming months. The increased focus on service as an avenue for sales revenue puts the spotlight on live chatbots as a tool that can deliver those outcomes. This suggests that the sales reps are far from obsolete, but they will be working with more software robots and sales analytics in the years to come.

Impact on Sales Incentives

As you experiment with your sales strategies, you will need an incentive program platform that can continually adjust to your team’s new ways of virtual/customer experience selling. Our flexible technology can enable you to motivate the cutting-edge behaviors that will drive sales and produce results. Give us a call.