Gartner has highlighted key technologies that sales leaders can embrace to enhance buyer engagement at the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference.
The technologies on this list prioritize real-time collaboration, provide assistance in influencing consensus, and leverage digital tools to guide purchases, Dan Gottlieb, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner Sales Practice, said.
Although buyers prefer a purchase experience without sales representatives, they also acknowledge the value of interactions with sellers during the buying process. This presents a compelling opportunity to explore new digital engagement methods.
The top technologies for sales leaders
AI-Sales Email: Gartner predicts that within the next two years, 30 percent of outbound messages from large organizations will be synthetically generated. Generative AI will be increasingly utilized in sales to create highly personalized emails using CRM data and prompts engineered by sellers. These tailored messages align with the buying priorities of multiple buyers.
Visual Collaboration: Visual collaboration tools provide a shared virtual canvas for sellers to tell stories, co-create content, and annotate with buyers. These tools facilitate the exploration of complex solutions in real-time, offering an interactive and visual experience that showcases client understanding. Gartner predicts that visual collaboration applications will become central to 30 percent of meeting experiences by next year.
Virtual Reality (VR): VR technology creates computer-generated 3D environments that immerse users and respond to their actions. In sales settings, VR enables real-time 3D virtual meetings in the Metaverse, providing a digital-first selling experience. Buyers can learn about products and engage with peers in this immersive environment.
Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs): DSRs serve as consolidated vendor microsites and project management hubs for buying teams. They offer a unified space for buyers to access vendor assets and information, streamlining interactions and improving customer experience. DSRs also support customer retention and collaboration, leading to better lifetime value for vendors. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80 percent of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels.
Workstream Collaboration: Workstream collaboration products like Microsoft Teams or Slack provide conversational workspaces through persistent group chats. Sales leaders can leverage these platforms to set up dedicated channels for the buying process, answer questions in real-time, and facilitate dialogue with buyers.
Conversation Intelligence: Conversation intelligence utilizes AI to analyze interactions between buyers and sellers, delivering relevant insights to enhance the quality of these conversations. It can suggest the next best action and improve sales playbooks. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 75 percent of B2B sales organizations will augment traditional sales playbooks with AI-guided selling solutions.
Visual Configuration: Visual configuration allows buyers to interact with a visual representation of a product, aiding in customization and solution exploration. Sellers can guide buying teams through real-time customizations, making this technology valuable for requirement building.
Interactive Demonstrations: Interactive demonstrations enable buyers to directly interact with synthetic data within digital products. Sales teams can create personalized product tours and walkthrough experiences on their websites or within digital sales rooms.
Narrative Automation: Narrative automation utilizes AI to conduct relevant research on companies, such as financial metrics, and converts it into valuable sales content assets. This technology improves seller confidence in sales engagements by providing strategic narratives that can be distributed to executive buyers, enhancing account coverage.
