Trends. They’re everywhere. And sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a trend and a fad. What are some anticipated trends of 2017? Well, it’s believed that artificial intelligence will continue to diversify in functionality beyond making killer suggestions on Netflix, such as making it easier and more efficient to better understand and aggregate your sales funnel and the prospects within it. We reached out to various Sales Experts to find out what they feel we’re going to encounter on the road ahead.
 

Here’s what they had to say:

Nothing necessarily new but an ongoing trend of making sure you differentiate yourself from your competitors. The world is becoming more gray every day. The only sustainable strategy is competitive differentiation.

– Peter Gould, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Communitech, @PeterGould

In 2017, I believe Digital Sales/Social Selling will become more of a strategic priority at Exec Leadership levels within progressive companies, as digital transformation continues to accelerate, but modernizing go-to-market strategies needs to catch up.

– Brian Lipp, VP of Sales at Sales for Life, @lipp_brian

AI – making the sales process more efficient. So sales efficiency tools will likely be a big player in 2017 as we look to help reps manage their time better.

– Kim Walsh, Head of Enterprise Sales at HubSpot, @KimWalsh

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) to help organizations better understand their customers, relationships, risks and opportunities.

– Tim Davison, Vice President, Enterprise Client Development at Morneau Shepell, @davison_tim

I think Account Based Selling will continue to gain traction (or to many, come back to life). In most technology sales environments, inbound lead generation has taken precedent with sales teams following up with leads in the order they come in. While lead gen is still a crucial function of marketing, the explosion of Account Based Marketing has allowed many sales teams to take a step back, identify the companies or accounts they truly want to target (their Ideal Customer Profile or ICP) and coordinate personalized efforts throughout the buying journey from Marketing to Sales to drive revenue.

– Adam Brophy, Manager, Business Development at Uberflip, @AdamBrophy7

Account Based Marketing (ABM) continues to be a buzz term for demand generation. With ABM, how we communicate the right message to the right contact in the right way (or channel) will be even more important. Marketing and sales professions will be looking at how they can expand their efforts at these target accounts. How will CRM and MAP support this? In 2017, we anticipate the tools and systems to more closely support account based marketing processes so that sales and marketing can strategically market to each of the appropriate contacts better.

– Marlene Keay, Senior Manager, Business Development at Virtual Causeway, @marlenekeay

Account based selling will continue to increase in popularity. Everything old is new again, when I started in sales we just called this enterprise sales. The goal is to identify a set of potential customers and do what is necessary to win their business. This also means more targeted outreach and messaging. Account based selling is for large organizations that often have multiple decision makers.

– Mark Elliott, Co-owner of Venture Accelerator Partners, @markeelliott 

If you haven’t already, check our two other posts in this year’s expert series blog – The Experts: B2B Sales Tools of 2016 and The Experts: New Marketing Tactics for 2017.