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One of the things we find ourselves talking about a lot with clients who are doing their 2016 planning is, when you're looking at everything from the 30,000-foot level, what are some trends that are coming to the forefront in marketing and sales? So today, I'll be talking about trends in sales, but first, Kathleen has some predictions for marketing.

THE CONTINUING RISE OF MOBILE

Audiences are increasingly becoming mobile. If you did not already know then there is an awesome little data point to support this, which is that in May of 2015, it was the first time that mobile search traffic exceeded desktop search traffic. First time ever. Analysts expect it to simply continue going in that direction. The days of desktop search being dominant are in the rear view mirror, and there may not be any such thing as a desktop at some point.

I don't think so. (My eyes aren't that good.) However, Kathleen's point does stand.

The reality is that things are going mobile. In the conversation she had with a client's board earlier this week, what she said to them was, "You should start thinking about a mobile app for your organization. You don't have to do it tomorrow, you don't have to do it in the first quarter, but in 2016 you really need to look closely at if your audience is primarily going to be connecting with you using a mobile device, how can you make the content that you're creating more easily consumable on mobile? How can you make the user experience better on mobile? Begin to budget for that. Maybe you build your mobile app in 2017 but you're going to need to start to find the funds for it next year."

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND DATA

For sales, I predict business intelligence is going to become much, much more important in the world of both sales and marketing. Little facts like, "Most sales reps, four out of five of them do not have business intelligence on prospects before they call these prospects." These might be an inbound lead or somebody that converts on a forum. Not sharing that information with the sales team and making it available to your either business development team or your business development rep or the sales person; whoever is following up on that inbound marketing.

Having a real understanding of the business intelligence and the data, using data, big data, little data, medium data – even micro data! – to drive your activities is going to be a big deal in 2016.

Kathleen feels like sales is one of the last holdouts that isn't using big data – sales management might be but sales reps not so much.

I think that, predominantly, most sales reps ignore the inbound leads that they receive from marketing because they are, percentage wise, there's such a small fraction of the leads that they're working that they're able to ignore them. That's going to change next year. That is absolutely going to change.

But Kathleen wonders if they're operating in their comfort zone? A lot of people that go into sales do it because they like other people, they're good with other people, they like to talk, they like to interact, they're competitive and they like the chase of sale but they're not analytical types. They're not number crunchers, they're not natively comfortable in a spreadsheet, necessarily. I'm talking about the rep now, not the manager.

She thinks maybe there's a tendency to shy away from all the data because that's not where they're most comfortable. They're most comfortable going out and shaking hands and having conversations.

Just because somebody is social doesn't make them a good sales person. I think that the reason that they shy away from it most often is because it brings accountability that they don't want to accept or have in their world, so it's much easier to tell stories and talk about leads and, "I just had lunch with so and so," and, "This one's coming up this quarter," and really shy away from this business intelligence. Typically the people that are managing these people or owning the businesses, they never had this intelligence, so they don't know to ask for it. They don't know to use it to measure.

THE MOVE TOWARD VISUAL CONTENT

Kathleen's second prediction or observation – probably a better word for it – is that content is becoming increasingly visual. We're in the content or the inbound marketing world, so everybody always talks about blogging. When people think about blogs, they think about written articles. The truth is that so few people are comfortable expressing themselves in written form. The majority of people, around 60 or 65 percent, are visual learners; not necessarily people who like to learn by reading.

She also thinks things like cartoon format videos and explainer videos – such as PowToon – are going to come into their own. A PowToon, just for you guys, it's actually a software platform that helps you build those.

I agree that this kind of content is easier for the audience, but harder for the content creator. With text-based blogs, you don't need a graphic designer.

Kathleen agrees and disagrees. It's hard for companies to create this content, but they do have the talent in house. The problem is that person does not tend to be the content creator, and they're not used to pulling that person in. The other reason it's hard is that they can't get out of their own way because we all are so used to talking in our own jargon that it's very hard for us to see the forest through the trees and figure out how to communicate in a way that a fifth grader could understand.

This is something we do a lot in our content marketing workshops. We say, "If you had to define Google to a five year old, how would you do it?" We all default to, "It's a search engine." Really, the answer to the question is, "It helps us find answers to our questions." As marketers we stink at being able to distill information that way and I think most companies have that problem when they're talking about their own products and services.

REVENUE TEAMS

For sales, I believe that revenue results are going to become more important for marketing and sales together – that the idea of creating a revenue team. We're a ways from this in most organizations but recognizing that the way things are bought today is a marriage of activities, typically performed in a marketing department and activities performed in a sales department.

On this point, Kathleen and I agree!

CONTENT OVERLOAD = PICKY AUDIENCE 

Kathleen's third prediction/observation is that content overload is causing audiences to become pickier. There is a lot of talk out there about something called the "content saturation index," and you look from industry to industry and talk about marketing jargon. The CSI, the content saturation index is, in your industry how much are the companies that operate within that industry producing content?

Because of this, it can be extremely difficult to stand apart and to stand out and to build a following because people have so many choices. It's like your typical marketplace of supply and demand. The supply is overwhelming. On the demand side, consumers of our content have the opportunity to become very picky about what they consume. They can't read it all. What does that mean for anyone? There are very few industries left where content creation is rare, let's say.

You are going to have to take more risks. You're going to have to create content that is truly different. In my opinion, what will make you the most effective is if you have content that has a strong point of view, that is a little bit controversial, maybe that is funny.

"CONTENT OVERLOAD MEANS YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE MORE RISKS AND CREATE CONTENT THAT IS TRULY DIFFERENT."

Audiences are becoming pickier. This is human nature. You can no longer rely on the channel to deliver results for you. You've got to rely on the content, the message, the position, to deliver your results. So get out of your comfort zone in 2016 and don't be boring. In fact, our webinar this is on exactly that. How to tackle the tough subjects.

INBOUND SELLING & SALES TRAINING

My next trend is, you're going to hear a lot about inbound selling. The inbound sales methodology works whether you're producing inbound leads, outbound leads; the inbound sales methodology not exclusive to the inbound world. 

That ties right into my next one, which is sales training. Sales training is going to have a huge shift in the upcoming year. It's going to radically change from that to what I would call more micro-instructional in teaching. I think that you're going to see sales training is going to be radically different. You're going to see things being offered up for free that maybe you had to pay for earlier and in past years. I think there's going to be a real disruption in the sales training world.

FINAL PREDICTIONS

Kathleen's last marketing prediction/observation is that video and live streaming are where it's at. If you haven't checked out some of the apps that have come out this year like Periscope or Meerkat or Blab, you need to check it out.

Finally, I think that the role of the sales manager is going to become more and more important next year. Your sales are going to become their own little, mini marketers in they're going to be forced to produce content or contribute to the production of content on places like LinkedIn. As prospects and buyers are looking at companies and making decisions as to who they want to work with, they're going to look at what that company is producing. They're going to also look at what the sales rep is producing online, and I think that it's going to take a savvy sales manager to be able to navigate and motivate sales teams and recognize how they can contribute to content production and how marketing has to work within them.

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