As companies advance towards technological platforms, it is imperative for supporting functions and all business units to remain organized and cohesive. This is especially important for sales associates who drive a company's revenue. In 2016, investors pumped more than $5 billion into sales tech startups.
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As more and more technologies emerge onto the market , it is important for sales team members to ensure market viability to both target consumers and their co-workers in order to remain organized and drive sales.
Without cohesion between key functional areas, the bottom line will be affected. Sales managers who work with members of different departments develop better understanding of the target market. Collaboration with departments such as HR, marketing and customer service, sales team members improve sales processes that lead to closing deals.
These emerging technologies are especially important when a sales team member is trying to sell the new product to a consumer, making it important to break down the technology to increase market acceptance rates. Emerging technologies in big data can also help a sales associate to know where to focus their efforts in terms of their target market and customers.
However, despite the powerful and booming technological industry, sales team members still find it hard to make these emerging technologies successful within both their own company and to customers they are trying to target. Despite the push towards big data, companies still only analyze about 12% of the data they have.
This makes it harder to streamline the sales process and complicates a sales team members target efforts. There are a few tips that a sales team manager, associate or team member can follow that will help boost emerging technological sales while streamlining its process.
4 Tips to Making Technologies Successful
From technology manufacturers to consumers, sales team members are one of the many, but important, driving forces to making new technologies successful across a company itself and to its customers.
- Utilize Data and Media Content
Data and Media content are essential for sales associates to be able to communicate their products successfully to specific target consumers and markets. Sales associates need to be able to know who they are targeting and why, and big data is essential to this analytics process. In the next 6 years, the digital universe will grow from from 3.2 zettabytes today to 40 zettabytes.
This is important when looking at how rapidly the digital market is growing. In order for companies to maximize their efforts in the technology field, associates need to know who they are targeting and why. Market data and knowing their customers are powerful tools to close a sale.
- Use of Social Media
Social platforms are the driving force behind the relationship between a customer and a sales associate and vice versa. These technologies increase the likelihood of a sale with 78% of salespeople that use a form of social media outsell their peers and social media being the main driving force behind the exposure to that sale. As the world becomes more digital, these “social digital” relationships will become more essential in the sales process, making it important for sales associates to maintain their relationships and reputation online.
By using social media, sales associates can use these platforms to leverage their relationships with consumers. Social media makes it easier for associates to connect with their target audience allowing them to exploit their information in a concise, brief way. This makes it easier for associates to educate consumers on their products, especially emerging technologies.
- Keep Sales Members Engaged
Employee engagement and productivity are directly correlated with employee happiness and gratification in the workplace. A less engaged employee is less likely to want to perform, decreasing overall morale and revenue in the workplace. Every year, the United States loses $1.3 trillion on the account of the productivity of employees.
When employee engagement increases, there is a corresponding increase in employee retention by up to 87% . Keeping your employees engaged can be hard for some employers, but increasing overall morale with “Waffle Fridays” and incentivising your employers to perform with cash prizes, days off, or special discounts through gamification or other means of performance raises overall engagement levels.
- Micro-Learning
The more a sales team member knows about the product they are selling, the more likely they are going to sell it. As technologies are rapidly changing the landscape of the workforce, it is important for employees to keep up with knowledge of the industry. However, classroom learning techniques prove to be out of date with, only 20% of employees retaining what a trainer taught them after 3 days.
Mobile gamification apps are the perfect tool for both engaging your employees while also keeping their retention rates high. They promote learning incentives while also increasing instant knowledge about the product they are selling.
The mobile essence of the tool allows for on-the go convenient learning that grants employees the freedom of “playing” whenever they want. This is important when new technologies emerge, as the industry is continuing to grow at a fast pace. On the go learning is beneficial to sales team members who are trying to sell these new emerging technologies.
