When it comes to the world of sales, GenAI is making a pronounced impact. Research by SugarCRM reveals 80% of sales and marketing leaders will use AI, including GenAI, to maximise the value of their CRM in the next five years. Complementing this, McKinsey research shows companies that do invest in AI are seeing a revenue uplift of 3 to 15% and a sales ROI uplift of 10 to 20% so far. 

The bottom line is, GenAI is here to stay and sales teams are poised to benefit from increased adoption. Used effectively, GenAI enables sales teams to do more of what they are meant to do – sell. 

Using GenAI can reduce administrative load, increase personalised selling, create optimised pricing, address customer concerns and lengthen lifecycles. 

Those that don’t work to integrate AI into their business operations will see themselves at a competitive disadvantage with reduced efficiencies and missed opportunities.  

So, how can you start integrating GenAI into your sales function?

Steps can be as simple as using GenAI to help write emails, input data and create proposals. More sophisticated use involves using GenAI alongside other systems like CRMs to pull and analyse data for tailored recommendations. 

Here are 5 ways you can use GenAI to improve selling. 

5 ways you can use GenAI to improve selling 

1. Take over administrative tasks

Your best sales reps usually have specific skills they hone in on whether it be amazing presentations, perfectly written emails, or an excellent phone manner. 

GenAI can help your entire sales team lift their game by helping create emails, proposals and pitch decks to the same high standard, every time. 

When it comes to phone calls, GenAI can help write scripts and create guidelines to discuss specific customer objections. 

Not sure where to start? Start small, use a tool like ChatGPT to finesse an email, or write the perfect opening for a proposal. 

More than this, GenAI integrated into your CRM can automate busywork like inputting customer data, creating manual tasks for other reps and organising meetings. 

Reducing administrative tasks will give your sellers more time to actively sell, a dream scenario for every sales leader. 

2. Deliver more personalised experiences  

GenAI can help deliver the personalisation needed to elevate customer service, and nurture leads to build the depth of relationship required to close deals. 

Reps can use data to create personalised and original content that resonates with each lead or segment. For example, you may have a segment of customers who prefer to short emails with specific information about one product use case.

A targeted approach boosts engagement and conversion rates. Conversation transcripts can also be analysed to identify opportunities the sales team may not have thought of or had time to consider.

3. Addressing customer queries

GenAI can help address customer queries in a number of ways. First, GenAI powered chatbots can interact with prospects right at the early stage of their journey. 

Reps can use GenAI-powered search functions from their CRM to offer fast responses to customer concerns from finding the perfect case study to send to answering a technical question. 

Once a customer converts, GenAI-powered helpdesks can help customers troubleshoot issues, sometimes proactively, to help reduce churn. 

4. Optimise competitive pricing

Price optimisation can be difficult for sales teams to get right. Many reps operate solely on instinct without the time or resources to back decisions with data. 

GenAI can help ensure prices are designed to drive sales and revenue. It can perform data analysis to identify customer patterns that affect the price point for a product or service. 

Fast competitor research that assesses market share, pricing strategy, and product positioning can also be conducted.

GenAI can pull data from around your business to create predictive analytics that forecast the effect of different pricing strategies on sales and revenues. Analysis of data from various sources can be used to adjust prices in real time based on market conditions and customer behaviors. 

5. Lengthening customer lifecycles

Across the funnel, GenAI is poised to help sales teams optimise their processes to drive productivity. It can identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks and suggest ways to address them. 

Beyond the initial sale, GenAI can help with ongoing relationships with customers. Customer data can be assessed to determine when and how to communicate with existing customers and which customers to approach regarding upsell opportunities. This is important since it tends to be easier to sell to existing customers than to bring in new ones. 

When it comes to closing, GenAI can identify the best negotiation strategies and approaches to improve the likelihood of a conversion. 

AI-driven sales strategies  

Technology-backed sales processes can help sellers be more proactive and less reactive. Using AI correctly can help sales teams reduce administrative load and use data to send more effective recommendations about products and services leading to higher ROI. 

If you’re interested in learning more about sales transformation download our whitepaper, CRO Update: AI and Digital Sales Transformation. 

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Preparing for this year’s list of future channel trends has been an immersive experience, to say the least.

In 2019, I was able to talk to 497 companies one on one about their channel strategy and programs, including 130 of those face to face. I received 78 briefings from the technology companies that are inventing new ways to automate and scale indirect sales. I also had the honor of speaking (over 40 times) to tens of thousands of channel professionals globally and participating in countless webinars and podcasts. Finally, I was able to share channel data and insight 129 times across the 54 global channel magazines.

Added to this, we acquired the amazing SiriusDecisions company a couple of days into 2019 and added it to the collective wisdom of 675,000 consumers and business leaders around the world that we collect through rigorous and objective surveys.

To sum 2020 up in simple terms, we are seeing a monumental shift in how buyers acquire products and services and how companies are reacting with their go-to-market and routes-to-market strategies. Over 80% of my time is spent in the technology industry, where 64% of all dollars flow indirectly. That is US$2.26 trillion (with a T), if you are keeping score.

2020s Trends

1. Indirect Sales Will Shrink Every Year For The Next Decade

We are watching several buyer trends in this area. First and foremost, 73% of B2B buyers report that buying through eCommerce, web direct, or marketplaces is very convenient. Consumer trends, such as direct to consumer, are starting to shift into business. Brands are developing the capability to sell and fulfill directly to consumers, and this will extend to their B2B buyers, as well.

The cloud and emerging technologies such as AI, automation, and the internet of things (IoT) are growing quickly and carry lower indirect percentages than some of the legacy technologies they are replacing. For example, after 20 years, software-as-a-service is still stubbornly sitting below the 30% mark for indirect sales with no signs of change. Salesforce is recruiting 250,000 new partners in the next four years and has effectively shut down its reseller program.

The $2.26 trillion of indirect technology spend will continue to grow, but grow more slowly than direct sales causing the 64% split to drop each year for the next decade.

2. Marketplaces Make Their Mark

Forrester is predicting that 17% of the $13 trillion in B2B spend will flow to marketplaces by 2023. While some of these marketplaces are indirect (e.g., Amazon or Alibaba), most of them will be run by big tech vendors (e.g., Microsoft, AWS, Google, Dell, Salesforce, or IBM).

I foresee 20 “super” marketplaces taking a sizable share of this marketplace revenue and creating a whole new set of tech jobs (such as marketplace SEO, community managers, and ecosystem strategists).

3. Channel Leaders Contemplate A Trifurcated Channel Model 

For 38 years, the channel has been synonymous with resellers and transacting partners. Programs have been anchored on precious metal (gold/silver/bronze) pyramid schemes, and the partner journey has been predictably linear from recruitment to onboarding, incentives, co-marketing, and management. In 2019, we saw Microsoft announce that 7,500 new partners were joining the program each month. What it didn’t announce is that 80% of those partners are nontransacting.

What is a trifurcated channel?

–> With buyers spending 68% of their journey digitally before speaking with a salesperson (direct or partner) and an astounding 71% of them reaching vendor selection after a digital-only journey, brands are wising up to the importance of getting in front of customers early and often. Creating an “influencer channel” made up of affinity partners, referral agents, affiliates, advocates, ambassadors, and alliances is critical to success in 2020, and the program will need to serve these early digital influencers in a nonlinear fashion.

–> The traditional “transactional channel” doesn’t go away. In fact, those partners that have spent years on the “long-tail” list may actually find a home somewhere else in the program that has, up till now, only pushed them to resell. Tweaking channel data management, automation, insights, onboarding, incentives, co-selling, and co-marketing will determine winners and losers here.

–> Because almost every company in every industry is thinking about or actively converting to a recurring, subscription-based model, a new “retention channel” is starting to take hold. Knowing that the customer journey never ends in a subscription scenario and that brands will need to re-earn a customer’s business every 30 days, partners that can drive adoption, ongoing customer experience, and the ability to upsell and cross-sell become critically important. These partners appear as consultants, integrators, adjacent ISVs, accountants, digital agencies, etc.

The prediction from a few years ago about millions of shadow channels entering the market came true. When looking through this trifurcated lens, more than 80% of these (potential) partners will show up before or after the sale, and channel leaders need to break the transactional channel mold.

4. Channel Professionals Become Ecosystem Professionals

In an Accenture survey, 76% of business leaders agree that current business models will be unrecognizable in the next five years — ecosystems will be the main change agent. Reading the annual reports of the Fortune 500, it is becoming abundantly clear that every company is becoming a technology company, such as, for example, the legacy manufacturer of forklifts that integrated IoT sensors in its product and now delivers thousands of data points per second to construction companies, architects, and others in the value chain. The company has partnered with AWS, Google, and Microsoft and is busy building a tech partner ecosystem.

One of the most common things I talked about with the 497 companies in 2019 was the idea of the expanded channel Venn diagram including influence, transactional, and retention type partners and how to manage them all with one program. The average program has 90 different elements, and implementing it across transacting and nontransacting partners is surprisingly easy. Partners of all types (transactional and nontransactional) need to be found and recruited, onboarded, educated, trained, incentivized, motivated, loyal, and have the tools necessary to support/promote your product or service from a sales and marketing perspective.

The program needs to be automated, flexible, scalable, and anchored on self-service. The effective use of technology tools is no longer optional — ecosystems don’t run on spreadsheets.

5. Emerging Tech Is No Longer Emerging — It Is Here

In 2019, we saw many of the emerging tech categories that we have been watching for years turn into multimillion dollar revenue streams for partners. 2020 will be the year of switching early adopters into an early majority for technologies such as IoT, AI, automation, 5G, advanced security, and blockchain.

The fastest-growing subindustry in the technology space has been RPA, or robotic process automation. RPA blends workflow automation with AI and software bots and has become one of the foundational tools of digital transformation. One of the leaders in the Forrester Wave evaluation on RPA was UiPath, which grew 5,614% to become the fastest-growing software company to $100 million in revenue in history, with 70% of the opportunity flowing through partners. (It eclipsed previous holders of the title: Microsoft, Salesforce, and, most recently, Slack).

To get an idea of the size of the emerging tech ecosystem, Forrester is currently watching 800,000 firms globally — all potential partners of those brands that are looking to influence a particular set of buyers.

6. New Channel Tech Companies Emerge In Ecosystem Space

The channel software tech stack from 2019 included 106 companies that were broken down into six categories, including partner relationship management, through-channel marketing automation, channel incentives and program management, channel data management, channel enablement, and channel finance.

In 2020, we are seeing several moves toward channel software that supports transacting- and nontransacting-type partners. From a functionality perspective, support for resellers, managed services providers (MSPs), referral partners (affinity, affiliate, advocate, ambassador, digital influencer, etc.), alliance partners, ISVs, consultants, and shadow channels is a necessity. Attribution, which has traditionally been in marketing domains, is quickly becoming a critical skill for channel professionals growing a trifurcated channel.

In 2019, we saw M&A activity such as Impartner acquiring Amplifinity, Loyaltyworks merging with Incentive Solutions, 360insights acquiring MTC Performance, and E2open acquiring Averetek, as well as some pure ecosystem technology plays by Impact, WorkSpan, and Crossbeam, along with early-stage companies Apideck, TidWiT, and P2P Global.

7. Partner Experience (PX) Will Catch Up To Customer Experience (CX)

B2B channels are in transition — from a tiered, resale, and fulfillment function to a more fluid indirect ecosystem of affiliates, advocates, alliances, and referral partners. Upward of 70% of global revenue comes from third-party channels, and partners play a key role in shaping the customer experience. But most organizations have been slow to make the link between partner experience and customer experience.

A strong 43% of global B2B marketing decision makers rank improving customer experience as a top priority in 2019, while 39% are looking to improve the partner experience. We predict marketing decision makers will rank improving partner experience on par with improving customer experience in 2020, and both will rise to more than 50%.

Brands are wising up to the notion that customer obsession also means partner obsession and are looking for channel organizations to deliver.

8. Channel Account Managers Turn Into Community Managers

The average channel program will grow the number of partners by 10X in five years, and 80% of these new partners will be nontransacting partners. The complexity of finding, recruiting, and managing these new partners, each with their own unique set of business practices, target markets, value proposition, and culture, will be daunting. We estimate that there are over 600,000 partners worldwide when you include broader technology channels such as IT, telecom, print, pro A/V, etc. This doesn’t include the millions of companies that are converging into the tech services space from far and wide.

The small- and medium-sized business channel, which makes up over 90% of these firms, is significantly influenced inside its own chosen communities. For example, if you were to look at the MSP market, you would find 31 distinct communities that highly influence the 50,000 MSPs globally. Targeting these 31 communities is a manageable and, for many vendors, profitable market.

Communities offer a smaller group of like-minded people (perhaps even competitors) who share similar experiences and challenges, have the ability to collaborate, and help improve decision making. The feeling of belonging is strong, as well as the affinity of membership. There is a feeling that communities are more democratic, as they are built by the membership, and participation is encouraged and celebrated.

Brands will create mini channel chiefs (or community managers) for each part of the channel Venn diagram they want to succeed in.

9. Superconnectors Pave The Way To Channel Recruitment

Channel leaders are struggling to find ways to expand recruitment across many new partner types without making significant investments. Superconnectors provide a gateway to diverse partner ecosystems and play a key role in guiding vendors to maximize their visibility and influence in front of these new channels.

Leveraging online resources, a brand can easily map out a channel ecosystem based on a particular buyer role, subindustry, geography, sector, size, segment, partner business model, or solution specialty. Mapping what partners read, where they go, and who they follow is a key activity in understanding the makeup of the influencer communities and, more importantly, the top 100 superconnectors in any particular niche.

As I listed out in detail in 2019, the global channel community reads a total of 54 channel magazines, listens to 64 podcasts, belong to 24 associations, participates in vendor and distributor communities, and follows thought leaders to over 150 channel-related trade shows per year. If you collect all of the speakers, board members, contributors, digital creators, consultants, analysts, and media professionals and scored them on visibility, you would have a stack-ranked list of the most influential people.

You then need to meet the top 100 superconnectors, educate them enough to be dangerous (to the point that they can explain to others what you do and how you are differentiated), and most importantly, get them to endorse you (unprovoked) across their platform(s).

10. The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) Takes The Channel Reins — Beyond The Org Chart

In the technology channel, I estimate that there are 10,000 vendors that publish a channel program and actively support it with personnel and technology. When we ask about organization structure and reporting lines, we still see about 80% of partner organizations that are siloed.

Even if the reporting structure is directly into sales or marketing, the channel organization usually employs its own channel sales, marketing, operations, and finance teams that report to the channel chief and don’t collaborate much outside the silo. In the partner-obsessed world where partner experience is paramount, attribution is a key measure for the majority of partners and nontransactional programs become ubiquitous; the ability of a channel organization to succeed on its own is becoming improbable.

Ten years ago, organizations looked at their direct sales and marketing organizations and (correctly) decided to pull them under a single leader. To reduce the friction and put responsibility in the right buckets, the CRO focused on the entire cycle from top-of-funnel activities to customer success.

In the 2020s, organizations will start to break down silos and get the channel integrated into the entire customer cycle. This means neutral compensation, strict rules of engagement, and a cultural DNA that squashes channel conflict.

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A lot has changed in the 25-plus years I have spent in the technology channel. New technologies, partner business models, shifting demographics, expanding communication vehicles, and most recently, new technology buyers with different psychologies, behaviors, and journeys have created a whirlwind of change for vendors, distributors, and partners alike.

The one constant is the complexity of finding, recruiting, and managing thousands of partners globally, each with their own unique set of business practices, target markets, value proposition, and culture. We estimate that there are over 600,000 partners worldwide when you include broader technology channels such as IT, telecom, print, pro A/V, etc. This doesn’t include the millions of companies that are converging into the tech services space from far and wide.

Channel partners know that to be successful, they need to carve out a niche — whether that be by line of business, by industry (and, increasingly, by subindustry), by size of customer, geographically, technologically, and by business model. These six vectors are not mutually exclusive, and buyers of technology are looking for a match across all of them.

Partner programs are going through a major change, as the number of nontransacting partners entering the market far outweighs traditional resale-type partners. Selling through the channel is rapidly changing to selling to and with partners.

Cutting through all these changes and finding the ideal partner profile can be a daunting task. The channel is highly diverse and incredibly decentralized. As someone who previously cofounded a company with the aim of bringing them together, I can assure you it isn’t easy!

Most vendors make the mistake of focusing too much on their own communication vehicles inside their domain. Partners continuously point this out to vendors in their advisory councils and repeatedly mark communication and collaboration as top inhibitors to selling more.

The magic behind finding, recruiting and nourishing a top performing channel boils down to three simple questions about partners:

1. What do they read?
2. Where do they go?
3. Who do they follow?

If you were able to ask all 600,000 global technology service companies (with an average of eight people at each) these three questions, you would learn that there are 56 channel-facing magazines around the world, 150-plus trade shows, numerous vendor and distributor communities, over a dozen associations and peer groups, and countless thought leaders who blog, run social media groups, host webinars and podcasts, and participate widely across the media and show landscape.

Understanding influence across this massive ecosystem is important for vendors. Some partners rank visibility and community involvement highest on their criteria for partnership, even higher than product, pricing, or margin potential.

The SMB (small- and medium-sized business) channel, which makes up over 90% of these firms, is significantly influenced inside its own chosen communities. For example, if you were to look at the MSP (managed services provider) market, you would find 31 distinct communities that highly influence the 50,000 MSPs globally. Targeting these 31 communities is a manageable and, for many vendors, profitable market.

With Google and numerous ratings sites at their fingertips, why do partners choose communities?

During this time of growing electronic ubiquity, the need for trusted and expert sources of information has increased significantly. The amount of competitive choices for products and services, combined with vast information on the internet and endless buzz through social media, has created a scenario where cutting through the white noise has become one of the most important skills.

Communities offer a smaller group of like-minded people (perhaps even competitors) who share similar experiences and challenges, have the ability to collaborate, and help improve decision making. The feeling of belonging is strong, as well as the affinity of membership. There is a feeling that communities are more democratic, as they are built by the membership, and participation is encouraged and celebrated.

Who Starts These Communities?

How Do These Communities Interact With Their Followers?

A dizzying array of new marketing vehicles have popped up in recent years. Traditional media such as magazines and events are very important in communicating to a community, but new media allows innovative ways to extend and enhance the message. From webinars, podcasts, vodcasts, blogs, tweets and LinkedIn and Facebook groups to virtual trade shows, community groups are using as many as 30 different marketing vehicles to drive collaboration within the group.

The challenge with these marketing vehicles is different than in the past. The main inhibitor to effective marketing used to be money; today, it is effective content and delivery. Many of the vehicles I mentioned above are free or cost very little compared with traditional media. Keeping content fresh, relevant, and abundant takes dedicated resourcing and should stretch beyond the marketing department.

Media savvy executives who can keynote an event, tweet about it offstage, promote the message through a podcast, do a media interview, and then write a blog about it later on represent the new model for the future. Messaging that would have required triple-checking through legal a few years ago needs to be sent out just in time and delivered consistently.

Be visible every day.

Community members have very effective personal spam filters. Anything that doesn’t add value to the community will be rejected and have a negative result for the vendor behind it. Selling to a community will be ignored and likely get you kicked out.

Beyond the human requirements of personal interaction and belonging, communities provide tangible benefits to all involved. Unfiltered information based on common experience will always trump random white papers and case studies posted on the internet. The give/get relationships within a community inspire openness and, in most of the communities I have seen, a level of bluntness that is refreshing.

Key Advantages Of Communities

What Is The Future Of Communities — And Why Now?

As information overload continues to flood the channel, communities will continue to form and grow, adding value to members. For example, we have grown from 10,000 software firms a decade ago to now over 175,000. I predict that this number will hit 1 million by 2028. What happens when a big chunk of these firms decide they need a channel?

Specialization will continue to expand as well, driving more need for these groups and subgroups. There is an upper limit to the size of a community where the point of diminishing returns kicks in, the point where coordination of the group and the generality of messaging outweigh the benefits listed above.

Smart communities will organize subgroups before the fringe members go off and launch a competing community. The permutations and combinations of geographic, technology, industry, line-of-business, solution, and business model specializations are endless.

Are you saying I should join thousands of communities?

No. Without some level of focus, you would stretch your organization too thin and not add value anywhere. For every firm I have worked with at Forrester, there are a manageable number of communities full of their ideal partners.

The future of the channel account manager will transition to community managers in order to support the diverse partner ecosystem. With millions of potential partners flooding into the marketplace, those that can find, recruit, manage, and nourish partners at scale will determine future winners and losers.

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