Sales in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is rapidly changing. A radically reshaped landscape forced sellers to engage in new ways, on new channels, and often in new places.
It’s a challenging, transformative time for sales in UAE. While some organisations are struggling to find their way through the fog of the New Normal, others are blazing a trail with digital solutions, innovative strategies, and newly empowered workforces. Whichever side of the fence your organisation is currently on, there’s one thing that is evident: sharing information is key to creating a better future.
To better understand the trends that are driving the current sales climate, we surveyed 3,151 sales professionals in EMEA. In the UAE, we set out to discover:
How sales professionals respond to changing expectations
The evolving role of sales ops
New sales tactics and strategies to drive growth and efficiency
Here are some of the key insights from the Trends in EMEA Sales report.
The top 5 tactics for driving sales in the UAE over the next 12 months
The new climate calls for increased agility, data-driven decisions, and more personalised communication. So it’s unsurprising to see these things prized amongst sales professionals. Below, we list the top 5 tactics for driving sales in UAE over the next 12 months, as covered in the report.
1. Increased flexibility with customers
The customer is king in the new climate, and high customer expectations have led to an acceleration of digital technologies. More and more businesses have adopted AI and CRM platforms to improve customer relationships, and digital solutions like Sales Cloud are enabling sales teams to work smarter, faster and with better results.
2. Improved data quality and importance
Collecting high-quality data is half the battle, but sales organisations still need to make the most out of that information. Tableau is a data-analytics solution that uses dashboards to not only help businesses better visualise their data, but to make sense of it.
3. Simplified sales processes
Simplifying sales processes is a win/win for salespeople and their customers, and it’s become easier and easier to streamline the journey by automating administrative tasks and using CRM to surface the best leads and opportunities. Another way to remove some complexity from the process is to build custom apps designed specifically for the needs of your sales team.
4. Personalised outreach
Personalisation is one of the trendiest terms in the New Normal, and with today’s customers expecting highly personalised, highly relevant journeys, companies that are still using one-size-fits-all communications are in danger of losing sales. AI solutions like Einstein can help turn customer data into powerful insights, empowering salespeople with the right information at the right time.
5. Revised sales staff training
The shift towards selling from home – and selling on new channels – requires new skills. While some sales leaders are addressing this need through outside hiring, the majority (59%) have chosen to reskill their workforce to tackle emerging challenges. Our report shows that 86% of salespeople have new responsibilities at work – effectively becoming sales 2.0. Upskilling and reskilling programmes like MyTrailhead are one of the best ways to avoid layoffs and address the skills gap.
Digital transformation is turbo-charging sales in UAE
Sales in UAE is being rapidly reshaped by digital technologies. In fact, 79% of salespeople say that their digital transformation has accelerated since 2019.
According to sales professionals in EMEA, the top technologies that are driving sales today include:
video-conferencing tools
Artificial intelligence (AI)
mobile sales apps for employees
CRM systems
sales prospecting tools
Thanks to the move towards remote working and the Cloud, today’s sales professionals can access all of these tools simply, quickly and straight from their mobile phone.
The future of sales in UAE
Digital technologies and agile workforces are empowering sales teams in the UAE. Moreover, new strategies, data-driven methodologies, and evolving roles are leading sales ops towards exciting places.
Our report shows that 96% of UAE salespeople say sales ops is becoming more strategic. So it’s clear that leveraging good data is the key to thriving in today’s sales landscape. With a world of information now at the fingertips of salespeople — who are suddenly free to work from anywhere, at any time — the future of sales in UAE looks bright.
Read more about how sales professionals are evolving to face the future, download the 4th Edition of the State of Sales report today!
For more insights about the current state of sales in the UAE, check out the complete country profile in Tableau!
