What I Learned About Sales Technology In 2023

In 2023, sales technology companies caught AI fever like the rest of the world. Sales use cases represent an enormous opportunity for AI disruption, which forced funding-strapped vendors to invest in AI despite limited funds. Vendors added key technologies such as insight-to-action engines and cadence capabilities to round out their platforms, setting the stage for a new, unified sales technology category.

Sales buyers, intrigued but not convinced of consolidation value in 2023, refined their tech stacks but prepared to take advantage when it materialized in the future. The blogs I’ve written over the course of the year plot the happenings in sales technology from the perspective of someone who believes in the potential of sales technology but is also a skeptic. The blogs below represent my perspective on the year and what it means going into 2024:

• Time To Track Sellers Like Athletes. This is a foundational view to help show how sales technology will benefit sellers the way that it’s benefited athletes. This year showed progress, but even more will happen in 2024.
• Beyond The Hype Of Generative AI For Users Of Sales Tech. While generative AI has been a major talking point, the value it delivered in 2023 was limited. In 2024, as the hype of this technology dies down, the true value will emerge.
• Revenue Operations Is The Key To Winning Today’s B2B Adventure Race. Buyers engage with sales and marketing, so expect companies to align their interactions. While this is discussed by many, very few companies do it. Technology is helping to progress interaction alignment and will continue to do so in 2024.
• Is Your Tech Stack Confusing Your Sellers? Help Is On The Way. The spending spree on sales technology from 2020 to 2022 provided many solutions but created confusion as sellers struggled to adopt them. Consolidation will start to clear this up in 2024, leading to value that sellers understand and adopt.
• Conversation Intelligence Is The Key To Unlocking Sales Productivity. After a deep analysis of conversation intelligence capabilities, conversation intelligence technology will be foundational to generating unique insights and efficiency in the future. Capabilities will increase substantially as generative AI helps make it easier to derive insights from conversations.
• Clari’s Acquisition Of Groove Is A Milestone For Revenue Tech. While M&A was limited in 2023, Clari’s acquisition of Groove was the most important of the year, as it created a full-featured solution that can compete as a unified platform in 2024.
• Apollo And Mediafly Funding Signals Renewed Interest In Sales Tech. Funding was scarce in 2023, but these two companies got an enormous boost that provided the cash influx needed to compete in 2024.
• An Overview Of The Current B2B Revenue Conversation Intelligence Landscape and Conversation Intelligence For B2B Revenue Drives AI-Generated B2B Insights. While many vendors added conversation intelligence capabilities, it’s clear that very few invested to create advanced features. This will change in 2024 as companies expand their conversation insights capabilities.
• What Google’s New Spam Protection Means For Sales And Marketing. B2B sales and marketing teams got a scare with Google’s spam requirements announcement. A reversal quickly followed, as Google will only focus on personal accounts, which makes this a nonissue for 2024. Smart revenue teams will proactively address this and use next year to prepare, since spam protection is likely to expand to B2B soon.

Next year promises to be exciting, as consumers are more willing to share data in return for increased value. Large vendors will release new capabilities that better leverage their unified platforms. Connect with me on LinkedIn to hear my perspective on the sales technology market in 2024. It’s going to be a fun year.