The Top Ten Sales Innovation Trends That Every Executive Needs to Know About Now

1. Customer relationship management systems must have a human touch to be fully effective or they will turn customers off.
2. Data warehouses and data mining will be essential to creating the Real-Time Enterprise to access information and identify key customer opportunities.
3. Understanding who the highest profile customers are and who are the least profitable should guide the sales process.
4. Sales Knowledge Management: Getting the right information to the right people at the right time so they can make the right buying decision–will be mission-critical to sales.
5. Business Intelligence, about competitors, markets, and customers will enable business to strategically plan better, identify new opportunities and change fast.
6. Wireless access to remote product knowledge on-demand will differentiate sales people who need to "get back to you tomorrow".
7. Real-time knowledge about products and services and providing that on-demand to customers over electronic personalized networks, will be the key sales weapon of the 21st century
8. Sales Business Process Transformation, where organizations' rethink and change the sales process to maximize effectiveness and innovations will be vital.
9. The capture of ALL customer data around behavior, purchasing, preferences, profiles, from All customer touch points will provide the Holistic Sales View that every organization must have access to.
10. The sales supply chain, from producer to end-user–will become increasingly web-centric, end-to-end streamlined; linking all transactions, payments, logistics, shipping, and production in one super-efficient transparent network.