AI sales technology trends for 2019 and beyond

No one with any experience in enterprise IT would suggest that technology itself can boost the bottom line. Emerging AI sales technology, however, can provide a shortcut to success by delivering more leads and making more reliable predictions than sales reps can on their own. Today's sales teams rely on numerous tools to fill out the entire sales value chain, with large organizations reporting the use of 60 or more sales technologies, said Tad Travis, Gartner research director, in an October 2018 panel webinar in which analysts discussed emerging trends in sales technology. Sales force automation (SFA) handles the basics of sales execution programs, like managing accounts, deals, forecasts, sales activity recording and lead management. Then, there are components that integrate with those, such as configure, price, quote tools, master data management, marketing automation and partner relationship management tools.