Top Sales & Marketing Trends Of 2016

2016 is about to end and people, as well as businesses, are all looking to wrap up the year in style. It’s the time of the year when businesses start looking at what they have accomplished and what they have not done over the last ten to twelve months. So in this post, we look at all that was trending in sales and marketing this year.

If you haven’t started with Salesforce, you can join in a quick Salesforce training online and become a pro, before the year ends. That would be a great way to welcome in the New Year equipped with the latest Salesforce technology. In this post, we take a look at the top sales and marketing trends 2016. Also, have a look at the top Salesforce statistics of this year, http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/salesforce-statistics/, to get an idea on how Salesforce impacted and aided the growth of businesses this year.

1. Analytics has replaced Branding Strategies
This year we saw a change in sales roles. Sales roles moved over from being generic to highly specialized. There was a shift in the way marketing departments handled data. Instead of relying on branding, there was a greater dependency on data and analytics uniformly across all the popular marketing channels. There was an increased usage of mobile driven data and analytics were also sourced from several non-conventional sources like events.

2. Improvement Over Innovation
Companies that invested in analytics were able to make significant strides in their revenue generation. Sales and marketing are now more closely inter-linked with e-commerce. The internet continued to be the medium of choice for the masses. This is either a blessing or a curse for organisations. The internet though helped to level the playing field, companies must now be on their toes constantly.

The internet helped small to medium businesses compete and even emerge victorious against the big players of the industry. However, with the boom of social media, companies that failed to mark their presence online were soon out of the game.

Also, companies had to deal with the ever-growing impact of online reviews. More and more people are googling up a business or service before even approaching them. This has led to the need for companies to constantly monitor what is said about them online, to stay in the game.

3. 2016 – The Year of AI
2016 was officially the year of the boom of AI. Though the internet of things still has a long way to go, this year there was an increased use of AI in several new platforms. AI helped to eradicate the tedious, mechanical processes associated with sales. This year even saw the introduction of CRM systems that churned out all information about companies with a single click. No more boring, dull data entry systems.

2016 has been an interesting year so far. When it comes to sales and marketing, it has been a mixed year. There were significant strides in some areas while others didn’t receive much attention. As we come to the lag end of this year, we can’t help but wonder what 2017 holds for the industry.