Top Five Sales Technology Innovations for Your Business

In a climate rife with economic pitfalls and stiff competition, it has become more essential than ever that business owners not only seek out employees with experience under the belt, but also search for cheaper and faster means of training them when necessary, while simultaneously better leveraging customer data to unearth more opportunities. This has led to several new technologies, and even older ones, being innovated and adapted to suit the needs of those companies struggling to drive sales.

Here are five of the most increasingly relevant technological innovations which might be worth incorporating and highlighting in any large company sales training.

1. Mobile Applications

Over the past few years, a growing number of consumers have purchased computer tablets and have become increasingly accustomed to using smartphones as a part of their daily routines. This trend shows no sign of slowing. With customers now available 24/7 through these media, businesses have witnessed new opportunities unfold through the use of the mobile applications found on these devices.

For example, new methods of selling have developed through the use of simple applications like Square, which effectively replaces traditional brick-and-mortar cash registers with digital ones, and SignEasy, which allows the signing of digital files on a smart phone.

Likewise, sales training can be augmented with apps such as Handling Objections and Questioning for Needs.

2. Social Media

Social media have become invaluable to sales organizations. As an example, Twitter is now being used not only as a means of advertising but also as a means of recruitment. The same is true of social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn. The use of these tools to bolster a company’s advertising and recruiting prowess has become practically essential for sales organizations.

3. Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has been a part of business for decades, but new innovations in this technology have brought it to the forefront and fundamentally changed the way some companies operate. Allowing businesses to store and share information, or more importantly even store and sell digital products on servers instead of a physical medium, means that upfront investments and overall expenditures have consequently been greatly reduced. This has allowed many companies to prosper that otherwise may have stagnated or failed.

4. iSell

Two of the biggest obstacles for businesses revolve around prospecting for new business and forecasting sales revenue. These have been the subject of expensive and time-consuming large company sales training for many companies, yet many still fail to get a grip on future sales. To do this successfully, it is necessary for a firm to not only have extensive knowledge of its own products and its targeted customer base, but to keep a thumb on the pulse of their specific market through intelligence and research. To make things exponentially easier and cheaper, the product iSell from OneSource has sought to automate this process, absorbing and analyzing enormous amounts of data so employees don’t have to.

5. Foretuit

Similarly, a product called Foretuit for the ubiquitous Saleforce CRM analyzes the habits of a company’s employees in order to predict an ideal set of patterns and behaviors which would result in more sales. The innovative aspect of Foretuit is that through predictive analytics, it attempts to solve one of the biggest sales manager banes: the fact that salespeople rarely enter all the data you want about their activities and their prospects into your CRM software.

Whether for those leading large company sales training, recruitment, or entrepreneurs looking to get started in a harsh sales market, these technological innovations and applications are worth looking into to take your business to the next level.