Sales Technologies: Are They Just a Waste Of Money?

Are Sales Technologies Just a Waste of Money?

Not all technological leaps are leaps forward. Some can even be deceiving in their alleged benefits to business and mankind. Take lead for example. It was once widely and cheaply used in nearly every corner of the infrastructure industry, from paint to pencils, and touted by scientists as healthy cheap. Just a few short decades later, most societies are grappling with the difficult challenge of eradicating the dangerous substance.

While it’s very unlikely, almost laughable, to think that sales technologies could one day prove to be physically harmful to humans, how can we be sure that they aren’t just a waste of money, a distraction from a better path forward for the entire industry?

Millennials … millennials everywhere

The technology explosion of the last 20 years has defined a generation – a generation that has now taken over management and control of business both directly and through the influence of a booming customer base that demands the latest technology for the cheapest price.

This insatiable demand makes sales technologies a requirement rather than a luxury. Not only will technologies like cloud computing help a business keep up with demand, it will also meet the desires of tomorrow’s sales representatives who – guess what – are millennials themselves. This generation is used to being constantly connected and the efficiency of new technologies has become an everyday part of their private lives rather than a skill that must be mastered for work.

The sales people of tomorrow would hardly be happy or efficient doing things the old way, unaided and unwilling to pioneer the latest technologies.

Big data

The direct business benefits of adopting sales technologies are also evident in industry trends. Try beating out the competition today without some significant data and insights into your customer base – it’s not going to happen.

Many sales technologies offer businesses ingenious and invaluable ways of tracking trends among buyers. Like a military general with the enemy’s playbook on his lap, businesses use this data to strategically place their other technologies and assets, significantly increasing the likelihood of successful sales.

But wait, there’s more

The massive amounts of valuable data, along with other kinds of sales technologies, translate into increased sales, essentially the end game of your efforts at work day in and day out.

Despite its importance however, sales productivity is the most challenging business aspect for 2/3 business-to-business (B2B) enterprises, according to research from The Bridge Group. A positive economic outlook has many sales teams pushing the envelop, setting goals for growth well beyond what they can achieve without the use of new sales technologies.

The compiled evidence and emerging testimony from companies that have pioneered the technological path into the future paint a picture of sales technologies as nothing less than a revolution in the industry. The benefits of springing forward haven’t fallen on deaf ears; according to TOPO, 72 percent of businesses have plans to invest in sales technology during 2016.