The Inundation of AI Tools

In the rapidly evolving sales landscape, the looming presence of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked both anticipation and apprehension. With AI’s potential to revolutionize sales processes, the fundamental question arises: will it replace salespeople altogether, rendering traditional methods obsolete? Here, we delve into the multifaceted impacts of AI on sales, exploring its implications for sellers and the broader industry.

Saturation and Differentiation

One of AI’s most noticeable short-term impacts in sales is the proliferation of AI-powered tools flooding the market. The ease of developing applications, even for those without extensive engineering expertise, has led to a saturation of solutions catering to various industries and use cases. This surge in competition intensifies the struggle for visibility and differentiation in an already saturated Software as a Service (SaaS) market.

Personalization at Scale

Moreover, AI empowers sellers to personalize and tailor their outreach at scale, inundating buyers with hyper-personalized messages. What once set apart a standout email now barely meets the threshold, as AI-driven insights enable mass customization. Consequently, sellers must seek alternative channels to cut through the noise and forge genuine connections with potential buyers.

Challenges to Trust and Authenticity

However, AI challenges trust and authenticity in sales interactions alongside these opportunities. Buyers may struggle to distinguish between human and AI-generated content, fueling skepticism about biases inherent in AI algorithms. In an era of information overload, distinguishing between legitimate solutions and superficial promises becomes increasingly daunting.

Empowering Elite Performers

Nevertheless, amidst these challenges lies a silver lining for adept sales professionals. Integrating AI tools empowers top performers to streamline mundane tasks and focus on cultivating meaningful client relationships. By leveraging AI to deepen their understanding of buyers’ needs and preferences, elite sellers can navigate the noise and establish genuine connections.

Job Security in the AI Era

Furthermore, adopting AI in sales will not lead to wholesale job displacement—at least not in the foreseeable future. The inertia of technological adoption among companies and lingering skepticism ensures the persistence of traditional sales roles. Even as AI becomes more sophisticated, its widespread adoption remains contingent on organizational readiness and cultural shifts.

Embracing AI for Success

For sales professionals, the key to resilience lies in embracing AI as a force multiplier rather than a threat. Sellers can position themselves as indispensable assets within forward-thinking organizations by honing their skills and adapting to AI-enabled strategies. Elite performers at the forefront of AI adoption stand to reap substantial rewards, command higher salaries, and achieve unprecedented career success.

Conclusion: Embracing Change for Growth

In conclusion, the advent of AI in sales heralds both promise and peril. While it may democratize access to advanced tools and insights, it also challenges the authenticity and trustworthiness of sales interactions. However, for those willing to embrace change and harness the power of AI, the future holds boundless opportunities for innovation and growth.

As the sales landscape evolves, adaptation and agility will remain the hallmarks of success. By embracing AI as a complementary tool rather than a replacement, sales professionals can navigate the complexities of the modern marketplace and emerge more vital than ever.

The traditional approach of face-to-face meetings and extensive paperwork was broken by COVID-19, prompting the need for more streamlined and remote-friendly processes. Today’s B2B buyers are also accustomed to self-driven, personalized, digital shopping experiences in their private lives, and they want a similar process for business sales. 

Legacy sales processes tend to be rigid and inflexible, making it difficult to adapt to changing customer needs or market dynamics. Additionally, using a CRM as ground zero, today’s sales teams have far more data than ever before, which gives them a better understanding of their target market, but also raises expectations for a more personalized and frictionless sales experience. 

Fortunately, enterprises are increasingly recognizing the value of automating as much of the sales process as possible. This trend has driven the global sales automation software market to almost triple its revenues over the last two years, from $3.4 billion in 2021 to $9.25 billion in 2023, with a projected CAGR of 8.7% between 2023 and 2030. 

Gartner predicts that by 2028, 60% of the work involved in B2B sales will be carried out using generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies like conversational user interfaces. With the help of AI and automation, sales teams can minimize tedious busy work, derive valuable insights from their mass of data, and generally make sales processes more efficient and less frustrating for both sides. 

Here are five pivotal B2B sales processes that today’s enterprises are automating to remove friction from the sales cycle. 

1. Prospect identification 

Prospecting is a data-heavy task, which makes it perfect for automation. Automated tools can help identify and qualify potential leads by gathering and analyzing vast amounts of data and criteria, far more than human sales reps could grasp, and finding the most promising prospects. 

What’s more, automating prospecting processes helps eliminate human error and ensure consistency. When you begin with appropriate prospects who are a good fit for your solution, you can remove friction from the entire sales cycle, and often shorten it significantly. 

2. Cold outreach

Cold outreach is a prime candidate for automation, because it can be time-consuming and repetitive. Automated email and text messaging platforms make it possible to send personalized messaging to the right prospect at the right time at scale, thanks to improved lead segmentation and intent trigger integrations. They also remove the risk of forgetting to follow up or missing the ideal window of opportunity. 

Gartner forecasts that automation will go further, including not just scheduling and sending messages, but generating them from scratch. Within two years, the consultancy predicts that almost one-third of outbound messages will be produced by generative AI. Automated outreach sequences can also be optimized for engagement and response rates, tracking metrics to refine and improve strategies over time.

3. Demo personalization 

Demos play a very important role in moving the lead towards purchase, but only when they are personalized for the potential customer and run smoothly. This is where automation can play a key role, by leveraging customer data and insights to tailor the demo to the specific needs and interests of each prospect.

This level of personalization increases the likelihood of a successful demo that resonates with the prospect’s unique challenges and goals. Automated demos also increase consistency in messaging and allow sales teams to engage with a larger number of prospects while still delivering a high-quality, tailored experience, ultimately increasing the chances of converting leads into customers.

4. Price quote generation

Quoting software is another key way to remove friction from B2B sales. Price quotes often involve complex calculations, and can change frequently as customers adjust their requirements and supply markets fluctuate. Automation saves time on generating new quotes while also reducing the risk of errors, thereby increasing customer trust and increasing your competitive edge.

Additionally, automated quoting software stops sales reps and leads from having to go back and forth making adjustments to prices. Instead of a long email thread or messaging spread out across multiple channels, the quote history is stored in a centralized interface and updated without effort, making it easy for all parties to see relevant changes in discounts or deal terms. 

5. Contract signatures

Automated eSignature platforms allow both parties to sign documents digitally, which is both faster and more secure than manual processes. Eliminating manual paperwork, mailing, and physical signatures helps shorten the sales cycle, removes the risks of fraud, and enhances convenience for both parties involved. 

With an eSignature platform, contracts and agreements can be sent, reviewed, and signed electronically, reducing the time it takes to close deals. Additionally, automated eSignature solutions often include tracking and reminders, ensuring that sales teams can closely monitor the signing progress and follow up as needed, leading to faster deal closure and a more streamlined sales process.

Automation is the power pack for B2B sales

As the range of automated solutions increases, enterprises can pick and choose between any number of ways to apply automation to B2B sales processes. In the face of often-bewildering options, it’s best to prioritize key steps that offer the opportunity to remove the most friction from the sales process. This helps you streamline sales interactions, shorten sales cycles, and ultimately to drive more recurring revenue.

Avishai Sharon, Co-founder & CEO of TrenDemon, discussed their software on ILTV:

How Do You Connect Content Marketing to Sales?

My personal background was heading a marketing agency for many years and one of my biggest struggles was how do I prove our value and our effort to our customers and how do you connect the impact of what we call content marketing to business goals and to sales? When we couldn’t find an easy way to show that correlation three and a half years ago we went ahead and founded TrenDemon to help companies do just that.

We connect their marketing efforts, which today rely mostly on content, you want your audience to consume valuable content, as opposed to just advertising. The big challenge is how do you attribute those efforts to sales? There’s actually a prior problem, how do you actually map the customer journey? How do you track those different touch points into one picture?

Reverse Engineering Successful Customer Journeys

The first thing we do is look at all the different touchpoints that a customer has had over his lifecycle. We ask the question, not just where do they come from, but how deep was their engagement? Did they actually watch the video? Did they actually read the article? Then you can start reverse engineering those successful journeys and say what’s common about all of these successful journeys.

What we found, and this is the interesting thing, we’re working with over 90 companies today worldwide and the vast majority of content the companies produce, over 90 percent, is ineffective at driving business goals. As you guys know it’s very expensive to create quality content and it takes a lot of effort.

If People Read the Right Content They Will Covert to a Sale

The second interesting thing is that if you do manage to find those 10 percent and you find a way to get it in front of the right people you’re actually able to improve dramatically your results. So there’s not just a correlation between what buyers did beforehand, there’s also a causation, a causal relationship, that if people read the right content at the right time they’re more likely to follow a path. We’re not probably as sophisticated as we believe that we are.

We’re a SaaS company, a cloud-based solution. We’re working a lot in the US and one of our biggest markets and growing markets is Japan. They’re investing a lot of content and a lot on technology. Essentially, because we look at the customer journey and not necessarily specific languages we can operate in any environment which allows us to grow pretty much anywhere. As long as they have content, which means that they’re producing something other than just advertising, they want people and audiences to actually engage with what they’re producing and they do have some business outcomes that they’re looking to measure.

About TrenDemon:

Founded in 2013, TrenDemon is the world’s leading content marketing attribution and optimization solution, helping marketers prove and improve their content’s impact.

TrenDemon insights can help you uncover your content marketing ROI, impact on business goals, and engagement to help guide the content strategy. Our optimization units will help you increase conversions and shorten time to convert on your owned assets.

TrenDemon proudly serves a wide range of customers, from Fortune 500s and brands to SaaS, B2B, and financial companies and is backed by leading VCs.

As a result, the popularity of eCommerce apps has also grown. According to the latest statistics, more than 90% of the time mobile users spend on mobile software. And almost 80% of people have an experience with online shopping. So developing an app does really make sense. This is your opportunity to increase traffic, sales, and revenue in the end. 

If you haven’t launched a mobile app for your project yet then hurry up to do it. While you doubt your rivals attract customers, sell their goods, and get insane profits. And if you have already developed mobile software for your company then take care of its promotion. Make people want to install and use your app. Try these tips to make your eCommerce mobile apps truly popular and efficient.  

Follow the Requirements of ASO

The basic principles of App Store Optimization are called to promote your application in the App Store and Google Play. By using proper keywords, adding informative descriptions, placing relevant screenshots, and so on you will allow users to find your software among thousands of other apps.  By increasing your recognition, you’ll notice a higher amount of downloads.

In general, ASO is powerful enough to guarantee the following benefits:

– increase retention rate. It demonstrates that the number of active users installing your app is much higher than the number of those customers who have uninstalled it;

– scale the loyalty of users. Paid ads also boost your mobile app traffic but organic search forms a loyal community of people truly interested in using your software for a long time;

– further app improvement. By getting feedback from your users you will be able to detect bugs and get rid of them efficiently. 

Take Advantage of Email Marketing

Newsletters and promotional emails aren’t dead in marketing meaning, as you may think. No matter new and original advertising tools, email marketing is still known as one of the most efficient and low-cost tools to reach desired goals. By sending regular emails and newsletters you are able to share with subscribers new information about your sales, promote special offers, gift them with personal discounts, and so on.

Many companies use email marketing to announce the launch of their apps. You can propose users download the app and get special benefits, for instance, a coupon or early access to a new collection of your products. 

Use a Landing Page

A customized landing page is a great mobile eCommerce platform to promote your shopping offers. It helps in brand recognition so potential buyers can find out more about your company. In addition, powerful CTA elements will intrigue users and motivate them to try your software for a better shopping experience. 

All you need is to create a one-page website with a detailed description of your app’s features and advantages. Don’t forget to add downloading links so the visitors of your landing page can easily reach your software. 

Promote Your Apps on Social Media

Depending on the type of your business, you may be interested in investing more funds in SMM marketing. It means you need to grow the number of subscribers and share with them viral content. Such an approach is powerful because an average user spends approximately 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media every day. 

If you have a successful account on social media platforms you should definitely promote your app. There are many ideas on how to encourage your subscribers to do it. For instance, you can explain the beneficial eCommerce app features and customers’ benefits. Launch a relevant hashtag and let people share their opinions about your offer. Thanks to using the power of your social media accounts, you can make your app popular too.

Launch Referral Marketing

Have your friends ever shared with you any link, product, or app? This is an example of referral marketing. It means the recommendation of something to other people for a bonus. Person A only needs to have a unique affiliate link or code to share it with user B. After user B installs your app, user A will receive a reward. 

As you can see, the mechanism of referral marketing is very simple. No need to invest funds in software ads – your users will be your ambassadors for free. As a result, you can reach your planned goals: increase the number of app installs, save money on advertising campaigns, scale your loyal community, etc. 

Try to Work with Influencers 

Influencer marketing isn’t a new thing. You can contact social media personalities with great bases of subscribers for cooperation. Such influencers may advertise your mobile eCommerce app without noticeable signs of traditional advertisement. That’s the point of native marketing: by working with influencers you’ll make your ads look like friendly recommendations. 

As a result, online buyers will be much more excited to purchase your products using your mobile software. Once the social media personality shares a recommendation with them, they may rely on it and give your offer a chance. 

Develop Your Business with a Mobile App

A mobile app is a key to massive sales nowadays. It allows you to reach new target audiences, motivate your loyal customers to make orders, improve conversation rate, increase brand recognition, build better relationships with customers and, finally, reach your business goals. 

It seems you can generate mobile app sales. It’s possible that your app isn’t good enough to bring you desired results. Then you must improve it to make its features and interface user-friendly. But if your software is great but traffic and sales leave much to be desired then rely on the listed above tips. Make a step forward in your eCommerce success now and your business will demonstrate better results soon.

This article will explore some proven ways businesses can leverage technology for development and growth. You can read the benefits of each technology and how companies can implement them to achieve their objectives.

The Role of Technology in Business Development

Technology has transformed the way businesses operate, communicate, and reach customers. It has enabled businesses to streamline operations, increase overall operational, and improve customer engagement to deliver excellent experience. Latest technologies have also created new growth and development opportunities for businesses to expand their reach and grow their customer base. However, you must invest in the right tech tools that can effectively increase productivity and performance of your business.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is a great way to promote a business or its products using a variety of digital channels like social media, search engines, and email. Digital marketing can be used to increase brand awareness, generate leads, and drive sales. Digital marketing can also be used to gather customer insights and feedback, enabling businesses to improve their operations. Whether you are a small business selling climbing sticks or a service provider company offering cleaning services, you can reach your potential customers effectively through digital marketing.

Businesses can leverage digital marketing by developing a strategy that aligns with their business goals. Digital marketing can be used to reach a wider audience, drive traffic to a website, and increase sales. Digital marketing can also be used to gather customer feedback and insights, which can be used to improve business operations.

Automation

Automation is one of the best ways technologies can help businesses improve efficiency and reduce operating costs. Business process automation can be used to put repetitive tasks such as data entry, inventory management, and invoicing on autopilot. This helps business free up time to focus on more strategic tasks that require human expertise, such as customer service and product development. For instance, an internet business expert can really be helpful.

Businesses can leverage automation tools such as Zapier, IFTTT, and Microsoft Power Automate to automate repetitive tasks. For instance, Zapier can be used to automatically create new customer records in a CRM software when a new order is received, while Microsoft Power Automate can be used to send email notifications when a specific event occurs automatically.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is another technology that can help businesses improve efficiency and reduce costs. Cloud computing allows businesses to store and access data and applications over the internet rather than on physical servers. This can reduce the need for expensive hardware and IT personnel. Cloud computing also allows businesses to scale up or down their computing resources as needed, making it a flexible and cost-effective option.

Businesses can invest in reliable cloud computing services such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud to store and access data and applications. Cloud computing can also improve employee collaboration by providing access to shared files and applications.

Data Analytics

Data analytics is a powerful tool that can help businesses make informed decisions and identify areas for improvement based on data generated by different tools and software. Data analytics helps track customer behavior, monitor sales trends, and identify inefficiencies in business operations. Businesses can make informed decisions and take action to improve performance by analyzing data.

Businesses can use advanced data analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Microsoft Power BI, and Tableau to track and analyze data. For example, Google Analytics can be used to track website traffic, while Tableau can be used to create interactive visualizations of data.

Mobile Technology

Mobile technology has transformed the way businesses interact with their employees and customers. Mobile devices are now the main source modern consumers access the internet, making it essential for businesses to have a mobile presence. Mobile applications are used to improve customer engagement, increase sales, and improve efficiency. Mobile technology can also be used to provide employees with access to business information and applications while on the go.

Businesses can leverage mobile technology by developing mobile apps or optimizing their websites for mobile devices. Mobile apps can be used to improve customer engagement by providing a convenient way for customers to interact with a business. Mobile apps can also help employees access business information and applications while on the go, improving efficiency and productivity.

Social Media

Social media has become crucial for businesses to connect with customers and build brand awareness. Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the best marketing platforms for businesses to engage with customers, promote products and services, and share industry news. Social media can also be used to gather customer feedback and insights, which can be used to improve business operations.

Businesses can leverage social media by creating a social media strategy that aligns with their business goals. Businesses and brand should also use social media to engage with customers, promote products and services, and build brand awareness. This can also help companies to gather customer feedback and insights, which can be used to improve their products or services.

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things or IoT is a network of interconnected devices, tools and sensors that can communicate with each other over the internet. IoT can be used to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and improve customer experiences. For instance, IoT sensors can be used to monitor energy usage in a building, allowing businesses to identify areas for improvement and reduce energy costs.

Businesses can leverage IoT by implementing IoT sensors in their operations. IoT sensors are used to monitor inventory levels, track shipments, and monitor equipment performance, enabling businesses to optimize their operations and reduce costs.

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity has become a critical concern as businesses become more reliant on technology. Cyber threats such as data breaches, phishing scams, and ransomware attacks can cause significant damage to businesses. Businesses must take steps to protect their data and systems from cyber threats. This includes implementing strong passwords, regularly backing up data, and providing employee training on cybersecurity best practices.

Businesses can leverage cybersecurity tools such as firewalls, antivirus software, and intrusion detection systems to protect their data and systems from cyber threats. It is also essential for businesses to establish a comprehensive cybersecurity policy and ensure that all employees are trained on cybersecurity best practices.

Conclusion

In conclusion, technology has become an integral part of business development. By leveraging technology, businesses can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and improve customer engagement. From automation to social media, there are numerous ways businesses can use technology to drive growth and stay ahead of the competition. As technology continues to evolve, businesses that can adapt and leverage new technologies will be the ones that thrive in the future.

Invest in the right technology tools if you also want to take your business to the next level. By doing so, you can streamline operations, increase efficiency, and improve customer engagement, all of which will contribute to your long-term success.

As a result, the popularity of eCommerce apps has also grown. According to the latest statistics, more than 90% of the time mobile users spend on mobile software. And almost 80% of people have an experience with online shopping. So developing an app does really make sense. This is your opportunity to increase traffic, sales, and revenue in the end. 

If you haven’t launched a mobile app for your project yet then hurry up to do it. While you doubt your rivals attract customers, sell their goods, and get insane profits. And if you have already developed mobile software for your company then take care of its promotion. Make people want to install and use your app. Try these tips to make your eCommerce mobile apps truly popular and efficient.  

Follow the Requirements of ASO

The basic principles of App Store Optimization are called to promote your application in the App Store and Google Play. By using proper keywords, adding informative descriptions, placing relevant screenshots, and so on you will allow users to find your software among thousands of other apps.  By increasing your recognition, you’ll notice a higher amount of downloads.

In general, ASO is powerful enough to guarantee the following benefits:

– increase retention rate. It demonstrates that the number of active users installing your app is much higher than the number of those customers who have uninstalled it;

– scale the loyalty of users. Paid ads also boost your mobile app traffic but organic search forms a loyal community of people truly interested in using your software for a long time;

– further app improvement. By getting feedback from your users you will be able to detect bugs and get rid of them efficiently. 

Take Advantage of Email Marketing

Newsletters and promotional emails aren’t dead in marketing meaning, as you may think. No matter new and original advertising tools, email marketing is still known as one of the most efficient and low-cost tools to reach desired goals. By sending regular emails and newsletters you are able to share with subscribers new information about your sales, promote special offers, gift them with personal discounts, and so on.

Many companies use email marketing to announce the launch of their apps. You can propose users download the app and get special benefits, for instance, a coupon or early access to a new collection of your products. 

Use a Landing Page

A customized landing page is a great mobile eCommerce platform to promote your shopping offers. It helps in brand recognition so potential buyers can find out more about your company. In addition, powerful CTA elements will intrigue users and motivate them to try your software for a better shopping experience. 

All you need is to create a one-page website with a detailed description of your app’s features and advantages. Don’t forget to add downloading links so the visitors of your landing page can easily reach your software. 

Promote Your Apps on Social Media

Depending on the type of your business, you may be interested in investing more funds in SMM marketing. It means you need to grow the number of subscribers and share with them viral content. Such an approach is powerful because an average user spends approximately 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media every day. 

If you have a successful account on social media platforms you should definitely promote your app. There are many ideas on how to encourage your subscribers to do it. For instance, you can explain the beneficial eCommerce app features and customers’ benefits. Launch a relevant hashtag and let people share their opinions about your offer. Thanks to using the power of your social media accounts, you can make your app popular too.

Launch Referral Marketing

Have your friends ever shared with you any link, product, or app? This is an example of referral marketing. It means the recommendation of something to other people for a bonus. Person A only needs to have a unique affiliate link or code to share it with user B. After user B installs your app, user A will receive a reward. 

As you can see, the mechanism of referral marketing is very simple. No need to invest funds in software ads – your users will be your ambassadors for free. As a result, you can reach your planned goals: increase the number of app installs, save money on advertising campaigns, scale your loyal community, etc. 

Try to Work with Influencers 

Influencer marketing isn’t a new thing. You can contact social media personalities with great bases of subscribers for cooperation. Such influencers may advertise your mobile eCommerce app without noticeable signs of traditional advertisement. That’s the point of native marketing: by working with influencers you’ll make your ads look like friendly recommendations. 

As a result, online buyers will be much more excited to purchase your products using your mobile software. Once the social media personality shares a recommendation with them, they may rely on it and give your offer a chance. 

Develop Your Business with a Mobile App

A mobile app is a key to massive sales nowadays. It allows you to reach new target audiences, motivate your loyal customers to make orders, improve conversation rate, increase brand recognition, build better relationships with customers and, finally, reach your business goals. 

It seems you can generate mobile app sales. It’s possible that your app isn’t good enough to bring you desired results. Then you must improve it to make its features and interface user-friendly. But if your software is great but traffic and sales leave much to be desired then rely on the listed above tips. Make a step forward in your eCommerce success now and your business will demonstrate better results soon.

Avishai Sharon, Co-founder & CEO of TrenDemon, discussed their software on ILTV:

How Do You Connect Content Marketing to Sales?

My personal background was heading a marketing agency for many years and one of my biggest struggles was how do I prove our value and our effort to our customers and how do you connect the impact of what we call content marketing to business goals and to sales? When we couldn’t find an easy way to show that correlation three and a half years ago we went ahead and founded TrenDemon to help companies do just that.

We connect their marketing efforts, which today rely mostly on content, you want your audience to consume valuable content, as opposed to just advertising. The big challenge is how do you attribute those efforts to sales? There’s actually a prior problem, how do you actually map the customer journey? How do you track those different touch points into one picture?

Reverse Engineering Successful Customer Journeys

The first thing we do is look at all the different touchpoints that a customer has had over his lifecycle. We ask the question, not just where do they come from, but how deep was their engagement? Did they actually watch the video? Did they actually read the article? Then you can start reverse engineering those successful journeys and say what’s common about all of these successful journeys.

What we found, and this is the interesting thing, we’re working with over 90 companies today worldwide and the vast majority of content the companies produce, over 90 percent, is ineffective at driving business goals. As you guys know it’s very expensive to create quality content and it takes a lot of effort.

If People Read the Right Content They Will Covert to a Sale

The second interesting thing is that if you do manage to find those 10 percent and you find a way to get it in front of the right people you’re actually able to improve dramatically your results. So there’s not just a correlation between what buyers did beforehand, there’s also a causation, a causal relationship, that if people read the right content at the right time they’re more likely to follow a path. We’re not probably as sophisticated as we believe that we are.

We’re a SaaS company, a cloud-based solution. We’re working a lot in the US and one of our biggest markets and growing markets is Japan. They’re investing a lot of content and a lot on technology. Essentially, because we look at the customer journey and not necessarily specific languages we can operate in any environment which allows us to grow pretty much anywhere. As long as they have content, which means that they’re producing something other than just advertising, they want people and audiences to actually engage with what they’re producing and they do have some business outcomes that they’re looking to measure.

About TrenDemon:

Founded in 2013, TrenDemon is the world’s leading content marketing attribution and optimization solution, helping marketers prove and improve their content’s impact.

TrenDemon insights can help you uncover your content marketing ROI, impact on business goals, and engagement to help guide the content strategy. Our optimization units will help you increase conversions and shorten time to convert on your owned assets.

TrenDemon proudly serves a wide range of customers, from Fortune 500s and brands to SaaS, B2B, and financial companies and is backed by leading VCs.

Microsoft has been working on challenging Salesforce’s dominance in the CRM market for years. The company’s latest effort is the Viva Sales tool, designed to with with any CRM and integrate its data with Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365.

“The future of selling isn’t a new system. It’s bringing the information sellers need at the right time, the right context, into the tools they know, so their work experience can be streamlined,” said Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer at Microsoft. “Empowering sellers to spend more time with their customers has been our goal — and we’ve done that by reimagining the selling experience with Viva Sales.”

Viva Sales allows sales reps to tag customers in Outlook, Teams, or Office apps, automatically capturing the data as a customer record. The software then uses AI to help move a customer through the sales process, prioritizing the next steps and providing valuable insights. The AI also helps sellers with recommendations to improve customer engagement and follow-through.

“Sellers rely on digital collaboration and productivity tools to connect with customers and close deals, but a lot of the insights they uncover with these tools don’t make it into the CRM,” said Paul Greenberg, founder and managing principal, The 56 Group. “Microsoft is taking on this challenge by offering a solution that complements the CRM. Viva Sales automates the busy work, captures critical information about the customer and helps sellers get the job done.”

Salesforce clearly sees Microsoft as a significant threat to its business, with many believing its acquisition of Slack was a way for the company to better fend off the Redmond giant.

While Viva Sales works with any CRM, the app could represent a significant foothold effort. If companies find that Viva Sales lives up to expectations, it’s one more piece of Microsoft software integrated into their workflows. Eventually, they may find a full switch to the company’s CRM is the next logical choice.

As the pandemic demonstrated, nearly everything is available online and ready to ship to your door instantaneously. From toilet paper to milk, bedding to televisions, everything you could possibly want, need, or desire can be found online. This fact is mindblowing when you think about how shopping used to be strictly done in-person. Now you can pre-order your groceries from the comfort of your couch and order school supplies for your kids at the same time. 

The online marketplace is cluttered with literally millions of brands competing for the same consumers. Differentiating yourself as a brand can be tricky, no matter if you are a small business or a large retailer. If you’re looking to increase your brand’s sales online, then you’ve come to the right place. Below are three ways to boost your sales and get consumers coming back for your products time and time again.  

1. Make Friends with Amazon

Despite your personal feelings toward Amazon, the truth is, selling on Amazon can be extremely beneficial. Consumers who are willing to try a new product will likely first search on Amazon to see if it’s available. Free, expedited shipping for Prime customers is a gamechanger for consumers in this must-have-it-now landscape. And while buying on Amazon may be simple, selling on this e-commerce site is a different story. 

Before you start selling on Amazon, be sure to read all of its rules and regulations. Skipping this step may lead you to a suspended amazon seller account. This often happens due to lack of performance, like policy violations or a lack of sales. It can also happen, however, if you have multiple selling accounts or you are selling something prohibited by the site. Having a suspension can be a frustrating experience, and it can take days if not weeks to get your account restored. 

Your best bet to selling successfully on Amazon is to do your homework. Make sure your business is set up with proper documentation. Once you’re on the e-commerce site, be responsible to your purchasers. If something is delayed due to inventory, communicate this with your buyers. Also, if you receive a negative comment, be sure to respond to the feedback on the site directly. These small tips will boost your Amazon seller profile and hopefully keep you far away from a suspension. 

2. Be Active on Social Media 

Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are making it even easier for users to stop what they’re doing mid-scroll and purchase products. As a business, you want to capture users’ attention when they are most vulnerable and most likely to purchase. You can do this by being an active brand on social media. This can look like creating funny or memorable Instagram Reels or having an enticing giveaway. 

If you aren’t socially savvy, that’s alright. There are plenty of tutorials online to get you started and inspire you to create buzzworthy content. If you’re still at a loss, you may consider hiring a social guru either as a full-time employee or contractor. Having a dedicated social media person on your team can ensure your business is at the forefront of latest trends. This will pay off quickly when you see how many new customers are finding your brand through social apps. 

Another thing to note: make sure your checkout experience is simple. The more seamless the checkout experience, the more likely someone is going to buy right away. If the process is tedious or laborsome, users will click back and continue scrolling. The likelihood of them coming back to your site to purchase is slim to none. Monitoring your consumers’ purchase journey is one key way to ensure they are completing their orders quickly and efficiently. 

3. Manage Your Inventory

This last tip is especially relevant today. Shortages have become relatively normal since the onset of the pandemic. Currently, everything from baby formula to tampons to Sirarchia is in low supply. The reason for these shortages stems from a weak supply chain. Raw materials are limited, human labor is varied, and shipping or transportation is unstable. This can lead to your business suffering from less or delayed inventory. 

As a business, being upfront with your customers is key. If you are facing inventory shortages, it’s important to let your customers know before they checkout. This can look like putting a banner on the top of your website communicating this to them. Nobody wants to be surprised after they’ve already paid to find out the new item they bought will be shipped weeks from now. The sooner you communicate issues with your consumers, the more they will trust you as a brand and repeat business. 

If you are selling on multiple platforms — like your website, Amazon, and social — then keeping up with your inventory is key. You may want to look into an inventory management system to help you and your team keep track of what is available. Moreover, implementing this system can help you track what items are in demand and when you need to order more. 

Takeaways

Selling online isn’t as simple as selling lemonade at your neighborhood block party. You have to get in front of the right audience in the moment they are looking to buy. You also have to create a seamless shopping experience and communicate openly to increase customer satisfaction. While you will definitely face hiccups from your online marketplaces, remember that honesty is always the best policy. Represent your business and show up for your customers with respect to become a favorable brand in their eyes. 

Manny Medina, CEO of Outreach, discusses the “rise of the revenue innovator” in an interview today on CNBC:

The Rise of the Revenue Innovator

We’re seeing the rise of what we call the “revenue innovator.” The revenue innovator is a different job description that has changed since the pandemic. It’s a data-driven digital-first predictable long-building trusting relationship kind of seller. What we are seeing is this influx and this growth in the type of seller that knows how to drive a digital conversation but is complemented with a hybrid approach of visiting your customer. It’s a very predictable, very data-driven kind of job description.

The growth happening across our customer base is the growth of that kind of seller. This is a seller and a customer-facing rep who is going to be very data-driven and very innovator-led. If we are going to think of the Salesforce numbers that just came out these are incredible signs of growth for the cloud platform. That’s an incredible sign of growth for us as well because what we are seeing is the system of action is taking place on top of the system of record that Salesforce is providing.

Second Wave of Digital Transformation

All of the companies that used to be in the mainstream economy are accelerating into the second wave of digital transformation. The first wave of digital transformation is to move all of the data into the cloud and that is happening but it’s not what companies are talking about. Companies are talking about how do you make me smarter? How do you make my teams more efficient? How do you make my teams digital-first?

How do I live and thrive in this new hybrid environment post-Covid in which the buyer is not ready to see sellers until post transaction until you are expanding not selling? All of these “before-laggers” are becoming early innovators and early adopters with new technology such as Outreach which is AI-driven and digital-first.

The new job description is the revenue innovators, the digital-first, and the digital native. They may not have them yet but they are coming online, they are getting these jobs. Those revenue innovators are the new revenue leaders. They are also hiring people of the same ilk that are looking to drive this innovation within their companies. That’s what you are seeing in this transformation. Transformations are always people first.

It’s this new wave of people that are coming into traditional companies that are driving this second digital transformation. They are forward thinkers and they are data-driven.

Outreach Doubling Headcount Again

Outreach is doubling its headcount again. We almost doubled from the beginning of the pandemic all the way to now and we expect to hit another double in terms of hiring. We expect another 600 to 700 people to come on board. Most importantly, what we are seeing is that our customers are growing as well. We sell seats ahead of sales demand and we are seeing sales seats being bought very quickly.

We are expecting our customers to be driving double-digit growth across the board. This is a great sign for the economy.

Terry Smith is a well-known fund manager in the UK, and has been called “the new Warren Buffet.” Smith’s fund is heavily invested in tech stocks, leading to some concern that he’s vulnerable to another Dotcom Bubble crash. In a letter to investors (PDF), Smith addresses those concerns and explains why he doesn’t believe tech stocks are in jeopardy.

One of the biggest factors Smith points to is how differently tech stocks, which often have intangible factors, must be evaluated. In so doing, he points out an inherent advantage of tech companies, whose trade is more often than not in information and intellectual capital.

The main assets of the companies we seek to invest in are often intangible. Some examples of intangible assets are brands, copyrights, patents, know-how, installed bases of equipment which require servicing and maintenance and so produce customers who are locked-in to the supplier, software systems which are critical to a business or person and so-called network effects. They are distinct from tangible assets such as real estate, machinery and equipment, and vehicles.

The return on intangible assets is higher as they mostly need to be funded with equity not debt and attract an appropriate return. Lenders seem to crave the often false security of lending against tangible collateral. Intangible assets can also last indefinitely if they are well maintained by advertising, marketing, innovation and product development and the duration of an asset is an important factor in figuring out its real returns.

Interestingly, Smith also makes the case that COVID is setting up for some specific growth trends. Like many, he likens the current pandemic to the Spanish Flu, and draws a comparison to Henry Ford and the Model T.

The assembly line was not invented as a result of the Spanish Flu pandemic — the Model T Ford was put on an assembly line in 1913 — but it accelerated its adoption.

The increase in productivity this delivered helped to fuel an economic boom as the cost of production of items such as cars and household electrical appliances were reduced as the volume of production rose so that they became affordable by the middle classes for the first time. This helped to fuel the economic and stock market boom of the Roaring Twenties.

Smith sees the possibility of something similar happening post-COVID as a result of remote work and digital communication becoming normalized. Salesmen will be able to meet with more clients virtually than they could in person, businesses will see reduced costs, factories will be able to maintain production despite using less staff and more.

Obviously, as he points out, it’s not good news for all industries.

Of course not all businesses benefit from these developments. The airline industry, hospitality, bricks & mortar retailing and office property may all have some very difficult problems to face, just as you wouldn’t have wanted to have been a saddler when Henry Ford and his competitors hit their stride.

This analogy helps explain why Smith’s fund is so heavily invested in tech and why he’s not worried about a possible crash. Of course, as he humorously points out, no one’s predictions are perfect.

I will leave you with this thought: What are the similarities between a forecaster and a one-eyed javelin thrower? Answer: Neither is likely to be very accurate but they are typically good at keeping the attention of the audience.

Salesforce announced its much-anticipated acquisition of Slack earlier today, sparking nothing short of a battle over the cloud.

Salesforce made headlines last week when news broke that it was looking to acquire Slack. Talks progressed rapidly, with the deal announced a few hours ago. In the statement announcing the deal, Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s CEO and Co-Founder, provided a clue about what’s at stake:

Salesforce started the cloud revolution, and two decades later, we are still tapping into all the possibilities it offers to transform the way we work. The opportunity we see together is massive.

Despite being responsible for starting the cloud revolution, Salesforce has come under increasing pressure from other companies, most notably Microsoft. The Redmond company has made no bones about its intention to unseat Salesforce as the dominant CRM company. Most recently, Microsoft partnered with C3.ai and Adobe to roll out an AI-based CRM.

Similarly, Slack has been under increased pressure from Microsoft Teams. Teams doubled Slacks installed user base in November 2019 when it reached 20 million daily users. Its user base has exploded since then, reaching 115 million in October. Much of Teams’ growth has been the result of Microsoft’s bundling it with Office, a practice that prompted Slack to file an antitrust complaint with the EU.

Butterfield’s comment about “the opportunity we see together is massive” is indicative of just how much both companies need this merger. Since its IPO, Slack has never turned a profit. To make matters worse, Slack has not experienced the same pandemic-fueled boon like Zoom and other cloud platforms. It’s experienced significant growth to be sure, but not to the same degree as competing companies.

The combination of the two companies will help both fight Microsoft.

“The core reason for this deal in our opinion is to keep pace with the cloud behemoth in Redmond,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors Tuesday, reports CNN. “Slack despite facing stiff competition from Microsoft has been a clearly successful solution set further penetrating enterprises and thus looks like the natural fit for Salesforce to beef up its collaboration and messaging footprint and keep pace with [Microsoft].”

It remains to be seen if the two companies will be more effective together, but it’s a good start. The combination of the two platforms helps both provide a more complete offering to its customers.

The new product, C3 AI CRM, is powered by Microsoft Dynamics and fully integrates with Adobe Experience Cloud. The goal is to deliver “the first enterprise-class, AI-first customer relationship management solution is purpose-built for industries.”

Salesforce, in particular, should be worried by this development. Microsoft has been trying for years to dethrone Salesforce as the CRM king, with little success. While Dynamics 365 has certainly carved out a corner of the market, Salesforce is still the undisputed leader.

The combination of Dynamics’ foundation, C3.ai’s artificial intelligence and Adobe’s “AI-driven solutions for marketing, analytics, advertising, and commerce” may be just the winning combination Microsoft has been looking for.

“This year has made clear that businesses fortified by digital technology are more resilient and more capable of transforming when faced with sweeping changes like those we are experiencing,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “Together with C3.ai and Adobe, we are bringing to market a new class of industry-specific AI solutions, powered by Dynamics 365, to help organizations digitize their operations and unlock real-time insights across their business.”

The companies made a point of highlighting how the digital transformation had changed the requirements for a CRM solution, with general-purpose software no longer meeting customers’ needs.

“Microsoft, Adobe, and C3.ai are reinventing a market that Siebel Systems invented more than 25 years ago,” said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai. “The dynamics of the market and the mandates of digital transformation have dramatically changed CRM market requirements. A general-purpose CRM system of record is no longer sufficient. Customers today demand industry-specific, fully AI-enabled solutions that provide AI-enabled revenue forecasting, product forecasting, customer churn, next-best product, next-best offer, and predisposition to buy.”

Microsoft’s open approach to data and integration have already been labeled a big advantage over Salesforce’s approach. Should this new partnership deliver on its promise, Salesforce may soon find itself scrambling to catch up.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses their new Work.com platform for vaccines which utilizes technology to successfully battle the COVID pandemic:

COVID Vaccine Is Biggest Technology Challenge In History

I hope you got your flu shot. Obviously, the flu shot is a vaccine also. We, of course, have COVID vaccines coming. We are in a situation right now where vaccinations are one of the most important things we can do for public health. We all know that. We have hundreds of new vaccines coming for COVID. It will be one of the biggest logistical and technology challenges really in the history of the planet.

Salesforce is building and delivering now our new Work.com for vaccines. We are extending our super successful Work.com product which has helped so many states, nation-states, and companies succeed during the pandemic. We’re going to make sure this vaccination program is a major success as well.

Technology Is The Key To Determining Best Vaccines

You can already look at amazing organizations here in the United States, states like Texas, cities like Chicago, and many others that we work with for contact tracing. They’re already starting to deploy our vaccination program. This means that they have the ability to manage all the information associated with the vaccine, who’s received the vaccine, and how many vaccinations they’ve had.

Some of these vaccines are going to require multiple boosters. The efficacy of the vaccine. The ability to have the person who’s received the vaccine to self-report. Every vaccine is not going to be the highest of quality. There are going to be an assortment and we’re going to rapidly have to be able to determine the wheat from the chaff so that we can have the best vaccines possible. Technology is the key to doing that.

Armita Peymandoust, VP Product Management, Analytics, and Einstein at Salesforce, discusses new AI-powered email features for Marketing Cloud announced by Salesforce at Connections 19:

AI-Powered Email Capabilities Released Into Salesforce Marketing Cloud

As we know email is still a really important channel. Over 64 percent of customers are still saying that they prefer email channels to all the others. What we’re doing is we’re making email marketing even smarter with a set of new AI capabilities getting released into Salesforce Marketing Cloud. One of them is Einstein Engagement Frequency. The other one is Einstein Send Time Optimization. We also have Einstein Content Tagging out and available today to our customers. Email is definitely not dead. Even the Millennials say that.

Einstein Engagement Frequency

With Einstein Engagement Frequency we’re trying to tell the marketer what’s the sweet range that they should keep on engaging with their customers. As marketers, we want to keep on engaging with our customers but we just don’t want to get to a point that we’re potentially annoying them. So we are telling them that this is the range that you should stay in.

Einstein Send Time Optimization

Now that the marketer knows what the frequency of engagement should be, with Einstein Send Time Optimization we’re also telling them what is the right time to send those messages. It’s really easy with a drag and drop of an activity into Journey Builder we make every message go out at the right time for the customers.

Einstein Content Tagging

Then with Einstein Content Tagging, we’re basically bringing image recognition the same set of AI capabilities that you’re familiar with for your customer based or consumer based products. This is where you upload photos and then they automatically get tagged. We are bringing that same technology to the hand of the marketer. Every image that’s getting uploaded into Content Builder gets automatically tagged so they can find it later and use it when they’re building their messages.

Transactional Messaging

We’re also releasing Transactional API’s for Emails and SMS. There are different types of emails out there. There’s the commercial one and there’s the transactional one. It allows the marketer to bring both of those two in an inter-marketing cloud and take advantage of Marketing Cloud to send those emails to have the same voice, the same brand voice, and also be able to see how those are performing all in one place.

Indiana Pacers Improved Customer Engagements By 20 Percent

These features are all relatively new. So we have pilot customers that have been taking advantage of them. We have one retailer that talked about Einstein Engagement Frequency. They had a hunch that they were over messaging customers but they couldn’t really put their finger on it. With Einstein Engagement Frequency we could show them visually exactly where they’re over engaging with their customers and let them take action on it. The platform automatically created lists so that they would not send messages to the ones that are getting too many email messages.

We’ve had a set of AI features in Marketing Cloud, specifically Einstein Engagement Scores, was one that the NBA’s Indiana Pacers is taking advantage of, to increase the engagement rate that they’re having with their fans. They got a 20 percent increase in engagements with their fans using that.

Customer Engagement Getting Even More Granular

We have a jam-packed roadmap for the next of the rest of the year as well. One of the things that I’m really excited about is Content Selection that’s coming out. Content Selection lets each of those messages that we’re creating be dynamically optimized for every customer that’s receiving them. Think of your email as a template that has different aspects or different selections in it that gets automatically replaced with what your customer cares about most and also what they have engaged with most and historically. It’s very engaging for every one of your customers.

The other one that I’m interested in (that is coming later) is bringing natural language processing to understanding your subject lines. What types of subject lines are resonating? Why is it that they’re resonating with your customers? It will give you an insight on them first and then also give you recommendations on how to improve your subject lines.

Rowe says that taking in data on sales prospects and making it available to salespeople can drive results: “When you are bringing all of the data into one real-time place, then you can start empowering salespeople to use the data. You can track your customer journeys in real-time.”

Jonathan Rowe, Chief Marketing Officer at nCino, discusses how to use data to track and improve marketing ROI in an interview with James Carbary, the founder of Sweet Fish Media on the B2B Growth Podcast:

The Four Pillars of Measuring Marketing ROI

Knowing Your Costs

There are four variables that we use to measure ROI that have proven very successful for us. It starts with your costs. Whether it’s headcount costs where you are investing in people, whether it’s the cost of investing in PR, whether you are doing webinars or podcasts, whether you are advertising, etc., it’s really making sure that you have a good understanding of here’s where I’m actually spending my money and how much. So it starts with your costs.

Identifying Marketing Activities

The next step from there is here are all the different activities that we are spending money on. It’s advertising, attending conferences, or doing podcasts. Here are the activities. You have your costs and you have your activities.

Connecting Activities to Sales Opportunities

Then the next big step is connecting those activities to actual sales opportunities. As a B2B marketing organization at nCino, we are selling and marketing to banks. Whenever we initiate a conversation with a financial institution it often takes us 9-12 months from that initial interaction to hopefully when they become a nCino customer.

Over that 12 months, there are hopefully going to be a lot of different marketing activities where that bank and different individuals at the bank interact with nCino. We want to be able to capture that information. So we take the activities that we are doing and we actually connect them to a specific sales opportunity at the financial institution and the individual at the financial institution.

ROI: Measuring Results

The fourth pillar is the results, where we actually turn that prospect into a nCino customer. Then we can say that marketing played this role. At the end of the day, we are in a business where it’s more than marketing. We have sales groups and others involved.

When we sign a financial institution to become a nCino customer I’m always very proud to say here are all the different marketing activities (that led to the sale). Whether it’s white papers and thought leadership or press releases or attending a conference in a booth, how all those activities played an influential role.

It’s really understanding your costs specific to the activities you are doing in marketing, tying those activities to your sales opportunities, and then measuring results.

You Have to Be Committed to Data Analytics

One, you have to really be committed to data analytics. You want to have that marketing driven organization knowing it’s going to take time and costs to get there. Then two, you want to make smart decisions around the technology you use because connecting all of the dots around your data is probably the most important thing. I want to be able to go onto two or three systems which are what we have at nCino and be able to look and see all that data together.

I can see, for example, that Mary who works at a financial institution that we are talking to was on our website yesterday, that she looked at all of these different pages, that she spent seven or eight minutes on each page, and she actually downloaded one of our whitepapers. Then I find out that we are going to see Mary at a banking conference that we are going to in a few weeks.

With all of that automation, I know that the salesperson will log in and see all of that information on the financial institution and Mary.

Track You Customer Journeys in Real-Time

That sales rep will have literally on their phone before they have that face to face conversation at the conference all of Mary’s interactions. Some things you probably don’t want to tell Mary, which is hey, by the way, we’ve been tracking all of your website activity on the nCino website. But what you can have is a conversation around the fact that she downloaded our artificial intelligence whitepaper around banking and you can talk about that.

When you have fewer systems and you’ve made the commitment and you’ve gotten to the place where you are bringing all of the data into one real-time place, then you can start empowering people to use the data. You can track your customer journeys in real-time.

>> Listen to the complete B2B Growth podcast interview.

Matthew Bellows, Founder & Chairman Of The Board at Yesware, recently talked at Web Summit about salespeople being ‘Authentic at Scale’  and how Yesware can help companies and their sales teams more effectively drive lead generation:

Important for Salespeople to be Authentic

There’s not only just the business model which is changing the relationship between the salesperson and the prospect but also the fact that information is freely available, that your reputation sticks with you much longer now, and all pushes towards more power to the customer. Therefore, it is more important for a salesperson to be authentic and genuine and honest and a long-term partner for success as opposed to a transactional sort of guy.

Whether we’re working with a brand new startup who’s just implementing Yesware for there one or two or three person sales team or the CRO of a publicly held company like Twitter or Yelp, salespeople are always changing stuff. They’re always trying to find out a new angle, they’re always moving territories, always changing a training program or changing their comp structure.

For those of you who have read all the blog post about how you just got to get a repeatable scalable model then pour money on top of it, that is not true. You need to actually continue to iterate and make up stuff and try different experiments with your sales program. That’s the kind of thing that our software tries to enable, basically getting the data from your activities and seeing what works and doing more of that.

Authentic at Scale is What We Advocate For

For those of you who are just starting your businesses and getting going, you are faced with a dilemma which is I want to grow really fast. One approach to that is what we call spray-and-pray. Buy a big list, blast out a ton of emails, and hopefully some people respond. If they don’t keep blasting them out. That is a short-term successful strategy with a medium-term disaster. It burns your brand. As a sales person who’s in that organization you’re ruining your reputation potentially for the rest of your life, and obviously in Europe it’s illegal.

What we advocate for our customers is something we call authentic at scale. Use technology to have genuine authentic communications with customers and prospects in a way that shows that you’re actually paying attention to who they are. You’re recognizing what they need and what they’re interested in and what you can offer or not. But do it at a scale that actually helps you build a business. That’s the binary choice that I think most startups are faced with. You can go either way but authentic at scale is what we advocate for.

When Building Your Team Incrementally Hire

In the very early stages, one one of the mistakes I made early very early on was when I got the board approval to hire our first sales team. I was the first sales person for Yesware and then I hired this kid straight out of college who blew up and was amazing. He closed Box on his own and it was sort of like, oh this is great, this is ready to go. I went out and hired eight other sales reps and it was way too many.

So the big thing I I coach people who are just building their team for the first time is really go two by two by two by two and incrementally hire. Even though you never know if it is the market or the person, at least with that sort of slower incremental sales build you get more feedback and have more time to correct as opposed to going in and hiring a big team all at once.

We Make Software that Helps Salespeople Make Money

Yesware is software for sales people. We help sales people communicate better with customers and prospects and we’ve been doing this for about eight years. I started as a SaaS business and still are.

In the early days, there was very little competition for what we were doing. We were getting a lot of inbound interest from companies that just heard about Yesware. They were like, I gotta try this thing. There was a lot of good word of mouth from the very early adopter kind of companies. Now the market is more mature. We’ve probably crossed the chasm in terms of technology adoption curve and we’re into the early majority and those companies think about things differently and they have a different buying process.

At the end of the day what it turns out to be is if the end users like your product and if we’re helping the salespeople make more money then we’ve got a business. So my first business plan for Yesware as I explained to our early stage investors was we make software that helps salespeople make more money and they’ll give us some of it and that is sort of still what we’re doing.

It’s Hard to Know What Makes a Good Lead

For folks out there who are reading blog posts and just getting your company started it’s harder than it looks. When you read the thing about Arg or whatever, it’s hard to know what makes a good lead. You have to keep revising it. We just did a big data science project to try to figure out of the 2,000 leads that closed in the last 18 months, which were good leads? We had a data scientist work on this problem for three months to figure it out because it’s not obvious what a good lead is actually. You’re going to be frustrated but know that everyone else is frustrated with you.

I think the most important thing is just to get your motivations right. Be clear about why you’re doing this because it’s a long slog and the clearer you can be about why you’re doing this project the more effective you can be when you’re talking to other people about why they should do it too.

Nick Denissen, vice president of small business at Amazon, discusses the huge impact that small businesses have on Amazon sales in an interview on CNBC:

Over 50% of Everything Sold On Amazon Is From Small Businesses

Over 50% of everything that gets sold on Amazon actually comes from small and medium-sized businesses. Their success is our success so we’re definitely focused on doubling down on that. We have over 1.9 million small and medium-sized businesses in the US who work together with Amazon to conduct their business. Those include our sellers, authors, and skilled developers. They’re just a very important part of the customer experience we serve up. 

The 58 percent I just culled out they are actually the part of the business that is growing faster than our first-party business. We definitely have our interests aligned with small businesses on all fronts. As I pointed out, 58 percent of everything that gets bought is from small and medium-sized businesses. Many customers don’t realize that. 

Amazon Storefronts Shed a Little Bit More Light On Small Businesses

Last year, we launched Amazon Storefronts to shed a little bit more of a light on small businesses. Amazon Storefronts is essentially a curated shopping experience where customers can dedicatedly shop from local small businesses. They’re all US-based small businesses. When we opened that Storefront last year a little bit over a year ago we had 20,000 sellers. To date, we’re excited to announce that we actually have 30,000 sellers. 

We’ve also developed special technology for them to share more content. They can actually share their story. Those sellers have reached 70 million customers in the last year and sold over 250 million products. I think those numbers speak for themselves that we really are helping and that small businesses can get discovered on Amazon.

Amazon Announces Small Business Spotlight Awards

Today, we’re super excited to announce our Small Business Spotlight Awards. We’re continuing to shine a spotlight on many of these exciting small businesses where they can share their stories. We’re announcing 18 finalists across three categories. There’s Small Business Woman of the Year Award, Entrepreneur Under 30, and Small Business of the Year Award. When we asked our sellers to nominate themselves for this process we actually had over 1300 nominations. Since it’s the first time we did it we really didn’t know what to expect. 

Starting today our customers can vote until November 8th for their favorite small business in this category. One thing that we’ve learned is that customers do like to learn more about these small businesses, about their stories, and also other small businesses get a lot of inspiration from small businesses. We’re pretty excited to have these sellers on this journey with us. 

Small Business Winner Will Get $80,000

We’re also conducting two live seller events in the US today where we’re enabling small businesses to meet customers and to actually conduct a sale. I just want to call out that one of the nominees, one of the finalists in the Small Business of the Year award, is  Damhorst Toys and Puzzles. They are a multi-generational company. They’ve been in business for 48 years. They hand manufacture their wooden toys in Missouri and now they found their way online with Amazon. They’re growing and it’s great to see those types of companies. 

The winner will get an $80,000 award so we’re pretty excited to have them continue to grow and prosper on Amazon. One of the things we hear from small businesses is it’s not easy to find the skill sets to help them drive an online business, in particular businesses who have started offline. That’s one of the areas we’re also looking at. How can we help small businesses on that front?  So stay tuned on that.

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, discusses their blowout earnings quarter and how the massive digital customer transformation is driving their growth in an interview with Jim Cramer on CNBC:

Massive Digital Customer Transformation

Every customer is going through a massive digital customer transformation. When you see this transformation happening it’s just incredible to watch. I mean this is as big as Y2K was for the tech industry. Every company is going through it. Every one of these major transformations is exactly that, it begins and ends with the customer.

The federal government was one of the most exciting things that happened in the quarter. It wasn’t just the USDA. It was also the Department of Education and the Department of Interior. It was many departments actually. They’re going through a huge digital transformation in the U.S. federal government and Salesforce has been able to offer many of those agencies is the rapid successful digital transformation that they need. We even had a 10,000 person event in Washington, D.C. during the quarter. That continues to be a fantastic growth area for us.

We’re number one in CRM which is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. Every company in every industry and every government is recreating themselves with their customer. This is what’s driving our growth. It’s pure and simple.

Mark Benioff added these comments during the earnings call:

Every Digital Transformation Begins and Ends With the Customer

Just last month, IDC Worldwide Software Tracker ranked Salesforce the number one CRM for the sixth year in a row. And I’ll tell you that is more important than ever, especially so many of our customers are going through these tremendous digital transformations. We all know every digital transformation begins and ends with the customer. And when I’m with these CEOs all over the world, this is really front and center in their mind. It’s probably as exciting to them and it’s important to them as it was to CIOs, who are buying for Y2K, which is almost 20 years ago. I think the digital transformation remains just a huge growth opportunity for our entire industry.

Still In the Early Days of the Digital Transformation

Well, there are many, many companies in the very early days. In fact, if you talk to one of our largest consulting partners, they’ll tell you less than 20% of their strategic customers have been engaged in the digital transformation, but there’s a lot of room for them in the marketplace.

So, we have an opportunity here again around this digital transformation and one of the beauties of a product like Trailhead and My Trailhead is helping these companies through their transformation and scale them up with modern technology because the modern worker has to have modern skills. And that’s what Trailhead and My Trailhead really provide the customers. So we really are coming out with an amazing innovation at the right time to satisfy the needs of these customers

Marc Benioff, co-CEO of Salesforce, discusses Customer 360 Truth at their annual Dreamforce conference with Jim Cramer of CNBC:  

Single Source of Truth – A Computer Science Holy Grail

360 Truth is another amazing thing that we’re introducing here (at Dreamforce 2019) that has been the holy grail of computing. It’s what we call SSOT, the single source of truth. We’ve had three amazing waves of computing. They are stems of record, systems of engagement, and systems of intelligence including AI. We’re now entering the fourth stage of computing. It’s the pursuit of Single Source of Truth, and we’ve built that into our platform. 

This is a computer science holy grail that we’ve been trying to put together for a long time. Now because we acquired MuleSoft and because we acquired Tableau we are closer to providing for our customers the Single Source of Truth for their customer information.

Enables Companies To Build a Single Source of Truth

The company describes Customer 360 Truth as a new set of data and identity services that enable companies to build a single source of truth across all of their customer relationships. They say it connects data from across sales, service, marketing, commerce and more to create a single, universal Salesforce ID for each customer.

All of a customer’s previous interactions and shared preferences are brought together to create a complete view so companies can better serve and even predict their needs, whether addressing a customer service problem, creating a personalized marketing journey, predicting the best sales opportunities or surfacing product recommendations.

From the Salesforce Press Release:

The Holy Grail of CRM: A Single Source of Truth

Nearly 70 percent of customers say they expect connected experiences in which their preferences are known across touchpoints. However, organizational and technical complexity often gets in the way of meeting these expectations. Companies have legacy infrastructure and data silos, leading to fragmented data and fragile integrations between systems. Inconsistent methods for accessing, reconciling and activating customer data make it challenging for companies to deliver connected experiences across these systems. As a result, companies often have multiple usernames, email addresses, or purchase histories for the very same customer across different systems, and managing a customer’s consent and contact preferences across the business becomes harder as new data regulations come into play. 

Having a source of truth—a single, trusted place that brings together all the customer data needed to deliver amazing experiences—has been the holy grail of CRM. Today Salesforce is delivering it.

Deliver a Trusted, Personalized Customer Relationship With Customer 360 Truth

Customer 360 Truth enhances data management across Salesforce apps and other systems, and provides instant access to consistent, reconciled customer data. Services include:

• Customer 360 Data Manager: Delivers the ability to access, connect and resolve a customer’s data across Salesforce and other systems, using a canonical data model and a universal Salesforce ID that represents each customer. With a click-based user interface for app and data management, admins can easily establish trusted connections between data sources to prepare, match, reconcile and update the customer profile. The reconciled profile across apps enables employees to pull up relevant data at the time of need from any connected system, such as when a service agent may need to pull a list of past purchases from an order system to better assist in solving a problem.
• Salesforce Identity for Customers: Removes friction from the login experience and enables a single, authenticated and secure relationship between a customer and all of a company’s websites, e-commerce stores, mobile apps and connected products. Instead of having separate logins and profiles that lead to disconnected experiences, customers now have one login across all of a company’s digital properties. Identity for Customers also elevates trust and compliance with a simple to use two-factor authentication. And it allows companies to obtain valuable customer insights with the ability to analyze engagement and usage with identity reporting and analytics.
• Customer 360 Audiences: Builds unified customer profiles across known data such as email addresses and first party IDs and unknown data such as website visits and device IDs. It then creates customer segments and marketing engagement journeys from those profiles and delivers AI-powered insights, like lifetime value and likelihood to churn. Customer 360 Audiences goes beyond traditional customer data platform (CDP) capabilities and extends the power of CRM to connect customer interactions across various touchpoints — for example, a customer who was redirected from an email campaign onto the website through a service interaction — and make the profile data available in real-time to optimize the experience. 
• Privacy and Data Governance: Enables companies to collect and respect customer data use and privacy preferences, as well as apply data classification labels to all data in Salesforce. Companies can easily understand what types of data they have, what uses of data customers have approved and how best to interact with them. These capabilities can help customers address obligations from regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), with respect to data governance and customer consent.

Introducing the Cloud Information Model

Salesforce Customer 360 Truth is powered by the Cloud Information Model (CIM), an open source data model that standardizes data interoperability across cloud applications. The publication of CIM is enabled by MuleSoft’s open source modeling technology, providing multiple file formats to make it easy to adopt CIM with varying applications. By easily integrating data in the cloud, developers can build new products that deliver connected and personalized customer experiences. CIM reduces the complexities of integrating data across cloud applications by providing standardized data interoperability guidelines to connect point-of-sale systems, digital marketing platforms, contact centers, CRM systems and more. Developers no longer need to spend months creating custom code. Instead, they can adopt and extend the CIM within days to create data lakes, generate analytics, train machine learning models, build a single view of the customer and more.

Unleash the Power of Customer 360 Truth with MuleSoft Anypoint Platform

Customer 360 Truth allows companies to connect siloed customer data sources to a single source of truth, across Salesforce apps or third-party data using MuleSoft. With MuleSoft Anypoint Platform, organizations can easily build APIs that connect any application, data, or device to Customer 360 in an application network, creating a truly complete customer view.

At Dreamforce, MuleSoft also announced new innovations and learning modules, empowering anyone to become an Integration Trailblazer and create connected customer experiences.

Comments on the News

• “Having a complete view of the customer is not a new idea, but it has been difficult to achieve. Companies have siloed data; disconnected apps; a complex, patchwork of sometimes incompatible services; and no way to connect it all,” said Patrick Stokes, EVP, Platform Shared Services, Salesforce. “Customer 360 Truth overcomes those challenges, creating a single source of truth that is the foundation for delivering smart, personalized customer experiences across every touchpoint.”
• “In order to truly succeed with delivering a great customer experience, you have to adopt an agile platform that fosters growth and supports constant innovation,” said Rick Fuson, President and Chief Operating Officer, Pacers Sports & Entertainment. “With the Salesforce Customer 360 platform, Pacers Sports & Entertainment has real-time visibility into all aspects of our business and can operate more efficiently across channels, increase per customer loyalty and drive innovation across the organization.”
• “Connecting customer data and managing consent is more important than ever in light of changing customer expectations and increasing regulations,” said Alan Webber, Program Vice President for Digital Strategy and Customer Experience, IDC. “As a result, companies are prioritizing data unification in ways that will lead to more loyal and valuable customer relationships. Salesforce Customer 360 Truth will help companies break down data silos and deliver the experiences customers expect.”

Salesforce Customer 360 

Customer 360 Truth is part of the Salesforce Customer 360, which includes industry-leading apps spanning sales, service, marketing and commerce, and across every customer touchpoint. The Customer 360 Platform is an underlying set of services and APIs including AI, blockchain, mobile, security, voice and other capabilities that allow companies to connect every customer, empower every employee, and deliver continuous innovation. Salesforce will power more than two trillion B2B and B2C transactions this year for more than 150,000 companies and millions of Trailblazers—those individuals and their organizations who are using Salesforce to drive innovation, grow their careers and transform their businesses.