I was recently a guest speaker at the Sales Leadership Conference organized by Dr. Karen Peesker, Co-Founder of the Sales Leadership Institute, a department at the Toronto Metropolitan University (formally Ryerson University) in Toronto, Canada. The conference was hosted by the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University (Formerly Ryerson University) in collaboration with HEC Montreal and Ivey, funded by SSHRC, IT World Canada, Microsoft, DHL, Rogers, RBC, CPSA, and other community leaders. The conference goals were to bring university professors, students, industry leaders, and academicians to share their learning programs, identify gaps and requirements to advance the sales profession and most importantly, tackle a vision for the future of sales. The strongest theme of the conference was the business imperative for advancing digital literacy, data literacy and ensuring that technology was firmly embedded in all sales learning programs. Digital literacy is best defined as an individual's ability to find, evaluate, and clearly communicate information and knowledge through using diverse digital platforms.

SalesChoice Inc., an award winning AI SaaS Sales Platform is expanding its USA market coverage as it enters its Scale Up Plans in the Guided Selling and Responsible AI Market place. This is the amazing story of what made a veteran Silicon Valley sales leader join SalesChoice. The global artificial intelligence software market is expected to experience massive growth in the coming years, with revenues increasing from around 9.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 to an expected 118.6 billion by 2025, according to the market research firm Tractica. "We wanted to ensure we recruit only talent that can see beyond where we are today in Sales Enablement and can help guide our customers to a more productive top line revenue growth realization. The reality is B2B Sales Productivity is rapidly declining and CRM systems, have in many cases been empty and unproductive vessels of incomplete or inaccurate data. Our software is uncannily simple where every move you make on opportunities or accounts, determines your odds, like in chess. AI gives Sales professionals an edge that we have never had before, by blending Science and Relationships into a stronger formula that no longer focusses only a segment of sales but on the entire journey. We wanted to go beyond just forecasting or predictions to enable sales teams end-to-end. Accordingly, we had to ensure that we recruited strong sales talent that were passionate about the changes with AI Enablement, and also have been in the trenches in both mid and large enterprises with robust CRM operational experiences and valued fact based leadership, something I deeply learned from my Xerox Leadership experience. We found these leadership skills in Steve Levy who recently joined our Sales and Marketing Leadership Team to advance our USA market coverage in the Silicon Valley," says Dr. Cindy Gordon, CEO and Founder, SalesChoice Inc. Steve Levy, Strategic Advisor and Silicon Valley Scale Up Leader, shares his story: The journey to SalesChoice for me started three decades ago in Redwood City, California.

Artificial intelligence's (AI's) impact on the big data landscape is unfolding in quantum leaps. International Data Corporation (IDC) says that worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics will grow from US$150.8 billion in 2017 to more than US$210 billion in 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 11.9%.1 Large data sets and deep learning, a sub-set of AI, have recently emerged as the hottest tech trend with such tech giants as Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. This accelerated interest in AI, in turn, will lead to a plethora of new risks, where the emergence of these new predictive models to make business decisions will increasingly come under the risk management accountability of the chief financial officer (CFO) or chief risk officer (CRO). The Internet of Things and AI are being woven into business practices and processes at an ever-faster pace and are set to disrupt every business and every industry. We've already seen the impact of credit scoring on financial services, and insurance firms evaluating customer risk profiles based on credit transactional history or payment history.

A new directory released Tuesday invites businesses across Canada to participate that much more easily in one of the country's fastest-growing industries. Developed by ITBusiness.ca parent company ITWC, industry advocacy organization the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA), and marketing analytics software firm SalesChoice Inc., and launched on Dec. 12 to coincide with Technicity, ITWC's Toronto-based smart cities conference, the directory provides Canadian businesses with a one-stop shop for all of their artificial intelligence-related needs by helping them connect with AI companies, influencers, resources, and researchers in one convenient place. "New business models are evolving so quickly, it's hard for organizations trying to commercialize their ideas to keep track of the IT community skills and expertise," ITWC president Fawn Annan said in a Dec. 12 statement. The first project released as part of the organizations' Canadian Artificial Intelligence Initiative, the AI Directory was launched in tandem by ITWC and SalesChoice in Toronto and by CATA in Ottawa on Tuesday, with the latter's president and CEO John Reid hosting a series of videos on Facebook Live. "CATA is trying to drive a conversation among Canadians to help them fully understand the impact of artificial intelligence," Reid told ITBusiness.ca.

RelationEdge Overview RelationEdge is a CA, HQ company with offices across the USA in: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, LA, NY, San Diego, Irving, San Francisco and Seattle. They specialize in implementing technology solutions that are simple to use, but provide powerful information that drives their clients' business to higher performance levels. Their methodology is based on business process engineering and sales management, employing a process first, technology second approach to solve their clients business problems. Their passion for helping clients better market, sell, and service distinguish them from their competitors. The Business Challenge RelationEdge's rapid growth has resulted in over 70% yr.