In the last ten years, sales professionals have been asked to do more with less. Most businesses have experienced several rounds of reductions in force, as acquisition and bottom-line pressures eliminate human capital from business. Business has looked to improved technology to keep pace with competitors and run with minimal work forces, thus producing an increasingly stressful, and competitive environment.

1. Adoption of Today ’s Technology; Leading Business Conditions
In the last ten years, sales professionals have been asked to do more with less. Most
businesses have experienced several rounds of reductions in force, as acquisition and bottom-
line pressures eliminate human capital from business. Business has looked to improved
technology to keep pace with competitors and run with minimal work forces, thus producing
an increasingly stressful, and competitive environment.
The proposition seems so simple: improve productivity and reduces overhead. Relating that
to marketing and sales is easy right? You simply eliminate overhead, substitute technology
for people, and increase sales and market share. Sorry, but as you know that answer to this
issue doesn’t work. In fact, as we engineer cost from our marketing and sales practices, we
are vulnerable to making significant errors in the marketing and sale of our products and
services. To revise a marketing plan and eliminate people or reduction of marketing support
levels requires a complete review of the four Ps: price, product, place, and promotion. You
need to consider changes in consumer and customer spending levels, as well as the likely
competitive reactions to revise marketing programs. Ignoring these steps can lead to losses in
market share and diminished customer satisfaction.
A change in sales support to customers requires a complete review of sales process, an audit
of resource allocation, and an evaluation of the strength of the relationship, an assessment to
conclude if changes are warranted and will be productive. Ignoring any of these steps can
lead to lost sales through misappropriation of the elements of the sales mix necessary to
produce the current level of sales success. Consider the consequences that premature
replacement of a popular representative can have on client confidence, or changes in accepted
sales practice, or customer support levels can have on client collaboration, or a client needing
to accept change without input or explanation. The result of any of these changes could be a
significant loss in volume. Customer consolidation means a greater percentage of our
business is at risk with any one account, and each mistake is significantly magnified.
Still changes need to be made to marketing and sales practices. The need to improve
productivity can be answered with technology if we are disciplined in our review of the
process, considerate of talent involved, have an appreciation of what technology can do, and
how it will be accepted, before we can plan to introduce new or more technology into current
business.
While change is uncomfortable, it is also inevitable, and improvements in productivity and
customer satisfaction go hand in hand

2. Technology should be used to facilitate decisions. It should be employed with company-wide
acceptance. Traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have failed in
past because technology was introduced without the required cultural change and because
senior management’s commitment to use the system was not known throughout the company.
Plus, traditional CRM systems were built from a command and control perspective with little
thought given to the salespeople who had to use it. Technology should be used to produce
insight, involve senior management in the decision process, empower users (such as
salespeople) and to create value for customers. Technology makes securing information
easier and informing customers more effective and timelier. The role of the sales professional
is changing to accommodate the use of new technology; CRM will provide for higher
productivity, improved customer service, and better sales results if the CRM system is truly
adopted by sales.
The introduction of CRM systems to sales forces, originally intended to empower sales
professionals to be more involved with higher sales functions, such as the prioritization of
opportunities and relationship development, has had just the opposite effect. Traditional
CRM shackled sales people with the onerous task of becoming the primary data entry point
for customer information. As you know sales is evolving based on industry consolidation,
and the resulting larger accounts require more sales attention. Managing these larger
relationships requires the use of more data, greater analytical sophistication, and more
interpersonal skill. Given changing demand for sales skills let’s discuss the integration of two
new approaches to sales, as the function quickly transforms to support a broader and more
important role for sales professional.
Sales 2.0 Vs Sales 3.0
Sales 2.0 is the next step in the evolution of sales professionals. Sales 2.0 has focused on the
integration of technology and a new found focus for sales adding value through
understanding a customer’s business and introducing new solutions and ideas to resolve
business issues. This is very different from the information dissemination function held
previously. It requires new technical skills a different mindset.
Sales 3.0 is evolving, and at its foundation integrates Artificial Intelligence, or machine
learning with human understanding to create customer and sales insight. “Augmented
Intelligence”, or this combination of machine intelligence with human understanding in sales
will mean improved effectiveness of the sales team based on CRM, yielding performance

3. data on group tendencies. It will also mean better targeted customer solutions based on past
purchase history. Sales 3.0 will mean better directed sales efforts, improved sales planning
based on customer history and better presentations based on insight.
Today sales professionals are required to assume different responsibilities because the job has
changed. In the past sales
professionals were in large part communicators and seen as executors of tactical plans. They
were asked to provide a steady stream of information throughout the sales process. Today,
according to The Conference Executive Board, 57 percent of the sales process is complete
before the sales representative is called, and while there are differing representations of that
number, the evidence is clear that sales professionals are no longer the principal
communication link to customers. Today sales professionals are required to perform a variety
of functions leading to a much more important level of customer support.
Sales 2.0 is a term used to describe an enriched sales activity. Sales 2.0 typically refers to the
inclusion of sales force automation (SFA) technologies, and sales operations to improve
levels of sales performance, but in this text, I will describe
Sales 2.0 as a change in the way sales professionals manage process, as well as relate to their
customers. Sales 2.0 can be explained best by describing its attributes. In an article in Selling
Power Magazine, Gerhard Gschwandtner describes the attributes of Sales 2.0 as follows:
“Sales 2.0 is about acceleration, collaboration, professionalization, accountability, and
alignment. Exploring each of these five tenets of Sales 2.0 helps us to understand how the
sales function is evolving today.”