I meet many companies and their sales teams and the one factor that stands out is the purchase of sales tools, that are given to the sales team and then nothing happens.
Then 3 months in webinars are run and still nothing happens. This is why Sales SaaS vendors invest so much in customer service managers as so often, a client gets to 12 months and they feel there isn't any value from the tool(s).
The Bill Gates quote below nails it .... Sales has changed, OK it hasn't. The way people buy has changed and sales has to change to meet this new buyer. When I started selling people rang up and asked for a brochure and you put one in the post, which they got 3 days later. Nobody would ever do this today, we have access to so much data on the internet. But has selling really changed?
We recently won business against a "well known sales methodology company", the feedback from the client was that they are "internet deniers". They deny that the internet exists and the sales methodology is the same as it was when we called up for brochures.
2018 will just accelerate the change, my advice (but I am biased) is not to fall behind.
“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” That’s a quote from Bill Gates, and I agree. I’ve seen a lot of bad processes automated as well, Bill.