Best Practices Series

Velocify

MEGA TRENDS
IN CRM:

VoltDelta

Top
Executives
Predict
2015
Trends

PAGE 22
2015 WILL BE THE YEAR OF
THE HIGHLY OPTIMIZED,
PROCESS-DRIVEN SALES FORCE

PAGE 24
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
DRIVES 2015 CONTACT
CENTER STRATEGY

Parature, from Microsoft

PAGE 25
KNOWLEDGE IS THE KEY
TO FUTURE CUSTOMER
SERVICE SUCCESS

One of the great things about starting a new year is that you get to look at an unpainted canvas before you and imagine what will be painted over the course of the next 12 months. And as many professional athletes and performance psychologists will insist, what you envision happening will heavily influence the actual outcome of results.
In the follow pages, several top executives have taken on the challenge of making their predictions for the top trends in 2015. Interestingly, most took a somewhat longer view, citing research about the explosion of connected devices and the Internet of Things, the continued shift to mobile devices, and need for industry-specific solutions.

Infor CRM

PAGE 26
CRM IN 2015: DRIVE
HIGHER USER ADOPTION
FOR BETTER ROI

Clicktools

PAGE 27
ADVICE FOR 2015:
Think Journey, Not Process.

Bloomfire
PAGE 28
2015 TRENDS

As you read these forward-looking essays, you’ll get excellent insight into the priorities of the executives who wrote them and the context of what is currently shaping their views.
Maybe next year we’ll ask them for a follow-up and see if their predictions played out as they envisioned.
Bob Fernekees
VP/Group Publisher, CRM Media
Information Today, Inc.
SILVER SPONSOR

SPONSORS

Bob Fernekees,
222 N Sepulveda Blvd.
El Segundo, CA 90245
888-843-1777
sales@velocify.com velocify.com 1717 W. 6th Street, #100
Austin, TX 78703
Phone: (877) 483-2777
Email: info@bloomfire.com www.bloomfire.com Parature, from Microsoft
13625-B Dulles Technology Drive
Herndon, VA 20171
Phone: 877-GO-PARATURE email: sales@parature.com www.parature.com Poole, UK | Phoenix, US
Phone (US): 1-800-774-4065
Phone (EMEA): 0800 0432587 sales@clicktools.com www.clicktools.com

3750 Monroe Ave. Suite 4B
Pittsford, NY 14534
Phone: 1-866-436-1169 www.voltdelta.com 8800 N. Gainey Center Dr.,
Suite 205
Scottsdale, AZ 85258
Phone: 866-898-2378 crm.infor.com twitter.com/inforcrm

Group Publisher
212-251-0608 x13 bfernekees@destinationcrm.com Adrienne Snyder,

Eastern/Midwest Account Director
201-327-2773
adrienne@destinationcrm.com

Dennis Sullivan,

Western Account Director
800-248-8466 x538 dennis@destinationcrm.com Produced by:
CRM Media

WP22

Sponsored Content

January 2015 | CRM Magazine

2015 Will Be The Year of
The Highly Optimized,
Process-Driven Sales Force

By Nick Hedges, President & CEO, Velocify
Sales organizations will experience major changes in the coming year, most of all in the way sales reps handle their day-to-day activities. As big data, analytics and social networks reach maturity, applications built on these increasingly solid foundations will become much more effective and user-friendly, changing the workflow for the person doing the selling. 2015 will be the year that the benefits of sales technologies extend from sales managers to sales reps, allowing individual sellers to focus more on communication and engagement and less on manual tasks and administrative processes. The transformation of selling based on new tools will be felt throughout sales departments in 2015, and it’s impossible to predict where the greatest changes will take place. However, there are a few innovations that I think will be especially transformative in the coming year:
1. AUTOMATED COACHING ADVICE
THAT SALES REPS ACTUALLY LISTEN TO

Most sales technologies have been designed to give sales managers insight into the performance of their teams, which managers use to guide individual sales reps and set overall goals and priorities. However, we have recently started to see more applications and
CRM systems provide direct coaching to sales reps — on which lead to follow up with, when to reach