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I recently returned from one of the biggest sales events in the world, which saw more than 170,000 people, 2,700+ sessions and a Metallica rock concert as entertainment in between.

The scale of Dreamforce in San Francisco is something you can only truly understand by attending. It’s a calendar moment of the year for me, which lays out what the future of the sales profession is in a world that is changing like never before.

At the event, Salesforce, Co-CEO, Keith Block, kicked off the event by summarising the challenge for all global sales professionals, saying “nearly every company and every industry is going through an amazing digital transformation as we progress through The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” It’s up to businesses now to decide how they want to adapt or be left behind.

 

 

Here are the key things I learned from Dreamforce 2018 that can help sales professionals get ahead in The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR):

  • Sales reps need to use their voices in a new way: As sales professionals, our voices have always been one of our biggest assets, whether we’re calling a prospect on the phone or pitching in the boardroom. But as we enter the 4IR, voices are becoming important in a different way. Let’s say you have a productive meeting with a customer on the road and want to log your updates, but you have to dash to another meeting. Instead of spending time writing up an email or text, or waiting to manually enter your activity notes when you get back to the office, you will be able to use voice based Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology (such as Einstein Voice Assistant) to capture notes in Salesforce by talking conversationally to your mobile device. AI can intelligently find the relevant records and automatically update fields with the latest information, create follow-up tasks, and notify relevant colleagues. By using natural language processing it can also execute sentiment analysis on emails and notes. It notices, makes comments, recommendations, and can adjust the sales forecast. In a time when customers expect more personalised reactions than ever, this is a game changer. You can save time on the admin stuff by chatting to your AI assistant, and spend more hours with your customers and prospects consulting and selling.

  • Creating a 360 degree view of the customer is key: These days, B2B customers expect personalised interactions that they are familiar with in the consumer world. In order to do this, sales teams need to create a complete, real-time, contextually relevant profile for every single customer. It sounds intimidating, but with technology platforms we should be moving past delivering fragmented experiences and moving on to being one unified brand across departments, devices, channels and interactions. You might not think so, but customers will appreciate this personalisation of interaction with them and it will be how brands differentiate from competitors.

     

     

  • To thrive, you need to learn from each other: One of my favourite parts of Dreamforce was the opportunity to meet with like-minded global Trailblazers and learn from them. At the Quotable Sales Summit for instance, analysts discussed key insights from the annual State of Sales Report which revealed what the future of sales is and how we need to adapt for change. The key take-out for me was that although we are still in the early days of AI in sales organisations, most teams expect that it will gain ground quickly as they figure out how this new level of intelligence can boost productivity. We’ve already seen this in the launch of Einstein Voice Assistant.

Dreamforce 2018 had the best and brightest in our industry talk through their experiences and how they navigated their way through changing times within our profession, and it continues to get bigger every year.

Salesforce also has a few events closer to home that you can check out while you wait. Basecamp Melbourne is on 21 November and Connections to You is on 26 November, and both will have networking opportunities and learnings from some of the best in the sales business.

For more insights into the sales trends that are influencing the way we work download the State of Sales Report today.