By Nicolas De Kouchkovsky
I’m super excited to kick off the process of updating my sales technology landscape! I’ve got the blueprint mostly figured out, and I’m now hoping to get feedback from the trenches.
I split the Revenue/Pipeline Management layer into management and instrumentation
It’s the culmination of a trend in the making for a while:
For many years, CRM was the revenue system of record. Any application added to the stack would sync back its essential data to it.
But today, many platforms — Customer Success Management (CSM); Sales Engagement Platforms; Account-Based Platforms; and Marketing Automation Platforms — have also become systems of record. Each is optimized for a specific motion, leveraging a distinct data model. Synchronization back to CRM is no longer enough for sophisticated revenue stacks supporting multiple sales motions.
Pipeline instrumentation is growingly getting decoupled from its management. A wave of new applications is pursuing the holy grail of Revenue Intelligence and becoming the end-to-end instrumentation for the revenue stack.
Consolidation is in full swing
A few mega-categories are continuing their expansion:
Sales Performance Management (commissions; planning; territory & quota management; forecasting; and revenue intelligence) with Anaplan; Optymyze; Optymyze; and Xactly Corp leading the charge.
Revenue Enablement (onboarding; training; content combining LMS and customer-facing CMS with a rich set of analytics; conversation intelligence; coaching; and team performance management) with Bigtincan; Highspot; Mindtickle; Seismic; and Showpad leading the charge.
Besides, a few vendors — 6sense, Clari, Demandbase, Gong, Salesloft, Outreach, and ZoomInfo — have been aggressively expanding beyond their original categories. Coming from diverse horizons, they are building different suites, but are on a collision course.
Workflow Automation
The insane proliferation of apps is stimulating sales workflow automation technologies. Think of it as technology to help manage technology… Options range from general-purpose automation platforms to point solutions such as lead-to-account matching or sales workspaces through sales-focused platforms with emerging specialists such as sales workflow automation technologies or Tray.io.
AI
AI is not just penetrating all categories, it disrupts them. It paved the way for the emergence of revenue intelligence, which is reinventing forecasting, historically a CRM feature.
Sales assistants are proliferating, boosted by the maturing of generative AI, transforming sales engagement, coaching, and guidance.
New categories
The ongoing consolidation doesn’t stop category creation. The SaaS world has lowered the bar to start one. This edition includes:
- Extended Reality (XR)
- Email Deliverability
- Product-Led Sales Platform, a.k.a. PLG CRM
- Ecosystem & Co-Selling Management to enable the emerging ‘nearbound’ sales motion
I look forward to your feedback!
Originally posted here:
