Forget Predictions - Here's the Real Story of Tech in 2024

This week on Funnel Frontier: Discover will AI beat CRM in 2024, the secret sauce in B2B sales, and the KPIs you can't ignore.

This week on Funnel Frontier:

• App dev trends 2024 (AI dreams are still a thing)
• Turns out digital content feeds B2B sales
• Top KPIs to eye, if ye be selling (via Pipedrive)

Stat of the Week 

According to 43% of sales, marketing, service, and IT leaders, forecasting and pipeline insights are the most important CRM features in 2024. (SugarCRM)

Follow the App Dev money, you will find AI

There goes another corpo-coin, swirling down the AI wishing well.

According to the folks at Information Services Group (ISG), this fiscal year's hottest trend is splashing out on application development, especially those sprinkled with AI pixie dust. 

Their fresh report—gently combed together from interviews with 200 decision-makers from G2000 firms—found the following:

• AI hype never dies—the board and IT are still very, very interested. There’s a split, however, as business decision-makers find CX and data access more critical.

• App development budgets are set to increase by 4.6%, while application maintenance and resourcing will peep up 1.6% and 2.3%, respectively. 

• Right now, app budgets are split about 50/50 between maintenance and development.

• App dev & maintenance spending should increase by 2%.

Amidst this digital drama, CRM, ERP, and ITSM apps emerge as the unsung heroes, quietly meeting business needs 60% of the time while sporting “Kick Me” signs for cost cutters. 

By contrast, AI and data product apps only met expectations 25% of the time (hence the need for more dev). 

The big picture: frontline warriors crave customer smiles and data-driven delights, while the boardroom brigade fixates on their AI-powered ace-in-the-hole.  

Meanwhile, the graveyard of legacy apps lingers, haunting budgets with their spectral presence (i.e., transition costs and employee resistance to overhauls). 

A tale as old as time: future-facing ambition, pragmatic cost-slashing, and the grail of customer satisfaction…

The Week @ CRM.org

Free and Paid WordPress CRM Plugins. Ideas for turning your casual browser pit stop into a lead-generating station. 

Act! CRM Test & Review. This legacy platform’s been managing contacts since the 80s—they know hairstyles come and go, but customer data? That's forever.

Best CRM for MacOS. The finest pairings of Apples and apps, updated for 2024.

Call Center CRM Software. Your call center's as chaotic as bingo night? Maybe time to dial up one of these.

Weekly Bloom 

History of Computing: Part V. Welcome to 90s computing, a time when grunge and nerd commingled while the Y2K bug prepared to eat your homework.

Digital EXP levels up B2B sales

In the pixelated playground that is Digital Sales, it turns out that what you don't see can indeed hurt your bottom line.

A recent article from Seth Marrs, Principal Analyst at Forrester, grapples with the art of digital clairvoyance.

Marrs says 62% of B2B buyers are ghosting reps. They choose vendors based on digital content rather than a silver-tongued shellacking from sales.

But salespeople shouldn’t be sweating over their fading relevance, Marrs says.

They can still hear whispers of intent through data, decipher the runes of buying signals, and conjure up winning strategies that translate said signals into recommended actions—all without actually meeting the elusive buyer. 

The key pressure point is checking out prospective customers’ online research. 

One example: say several contacts from an organization download an e-book for the same product, then buy said product 62% of the time. 

Marrs says sales should “collaborate with marketing to… ensure any opportunities that are not ready for direct sales interaction” get “additional marketing engagement to qualify the opportunity further.” 

In the above example, perhaps offering a demo when an e-book is downloaded is the most proven way to progress said opportunity. Reps can log what works and what doesn’t to build historical data (Ahem, *cough* CRM *cough*).

Because breadcrumb trails could be a feast of sales success.

Top KPIs that sellers must heed (via Pipedrive)

Ah yes, KPIs, those pesky yet paramount metrics that sales teams chase like rare butterflies. 

Maybe it’s time to mend your net? If so, Pipedrive recently stuck the magnifying glass to those teeny-tiny KPI molecules, identifying the choicest. 

It’s a hefty list. A few notables include: 

• Monthly sales growth. It is the roller coaster ride that every sales manager buckles up for. Setting targets gives the team a carrot to chase. And when the numbers dip like a bad day on Wall Street, it's discount time because who doesn't love a good sale? How to do the math: Sales for the current month minus sales for the previous month, divided by the last month, times one hundred.

• Sales target attainment. The report card of the sales world which tells you if your team’s hitting the mark or just drafting emails for the heck of it. Whip out your calculators and do the math: current sales divided by your target times a hundred. 

• Lead conversion rate. Simply put, the percentage of leads that convert to sales—a key measure of sales effectiveness (plus food for thought for aligning marketing with sales). By the numbers: total sales divided by total number of leads, multiplied by one hundred. 

Sales KPIs, the pipers insist, are not just numbers; they're the lifeblood of sales strategy, a cryptic dance of digits and decimals that can unlock the secrets of revenue. 

Of course, there’s a CRM for that (we won’t tell you which one Pipedrive thinks you should use). 

Peek the complete guide here.

Tasty Tidbits

CRM blips from around the web

Salesforce drops new genAI tools at NRF 2024. The productivity and conversion tools run on the Einstein 1 platform, using LLMs to mine retail/customer data. They also announced Einstein Copilot for Shoppers, set for a Summer 2024 release. 

New Contact Center as a Service (CCaaS) market report released. The global report’s authors predict a CAGR of 19.28% for 2024-2029.

Halo Programs gets new CTO. The automation marketing & CRM maker appointed Marc Mandt, formerly of LeagueUSA (sold to SportsEngine, now part of NBC Sports), as well as Sony and Corby Energy.

Global tech spending to increase 5.3% this year, says Forrester. After a tricky 2023, it’s forecast to reach $4.7 trillion. Forrester’s report also predicts software and IT services will comprise 69% of global tech spending in 2027.  

Stocks of the Week

Significant Moves (01/15-01/19)

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