TechTarget: How A Millennial Workforce Benefits Sales Teams, CRM
The millennial workforce have a reputation for being impatient, shortsighted and difficult to retain. However, they have important skills that can be put to good use in modern sales teams, show the attendees at the Accelerate 2018 business growth summit. Marquee speakers for the Accelerate conference were interviewed by TechTarget at the event taking place 5-8 March at the Snowbird Ski Resort in Utah.
The Sales World Needs to Keep Pace with Millennials
Sales managers who don’t keep up with the millennial workforce are at risk of getting out-paced, said Alli Gentile, Pearson’s VP of Sales, during Accelerate.
This is not a disengaged workforce and it doesn’t lack drive, shows Katie Azuma, VP of global business development at Infor. “As leaders of these organizations, our success is dependent on their success,” she said. “We really can’t win in our market, we can’t win the hearts and minds of our customers, unless we provide a work environment and the respect and trust that goes along with that to our peers and our colleagues,” added Katie.
Millennials, Masters of the CRM and Digital Sales
Millennials are masters of the CRM and of digital sales tools, which allows them to more easily conect with a highly tech-savvy B2B customers audience, added Cliff Condon, Forrester Research’s chief research and product officer.
Millennial sales reps do use the phone at crucial stages in the deal cycle, adds Codon. They default to digital channels not because they eschew the phone, but because they speak to customers the way customers want to be spoken to.
“Some of the traditional channels, such as phone and email and even face-to-face, are really fatigued,” Condon said.
The Accelerate Business Growth Summit
Cliff Codon, Katie Azuma and Alli Gentile were among 40 speakers at the Accelerate 2018 business growth summit in March, the only business conference exclusively for executives who use Artificial Intelligence. 300 sales and marketing executives attended the conference, which had three respected keynote speakers:
- Legendary fighter Sugar Ray Leonard
- Bestselling author Michael Lewis
- Noelle Pikus-Pace, silver medal olympic athlete
The presentations from Accelerate18 speakers will be available during the XANT Sales Leadership Summit in April. During this virtual event, anyone who signs up will be able to watch the speaker sessions online, on demand.