What are the biggest business applications trends for 2023 and beyond?
Some are the same as they’ve been for a few years now: cloud, digital transformation, etc. All good. These will be “trends” until adoption across the business world equals 100%.
Some sound a little out there: influencer marketing in B2B (are we ready for Tik Tok dances pitching CRM solutions?), blockchain for B2B (have we learned nothing from FTX and other houses of cards?).
And some are downright exciting, like low-code development, expansion of 5G, and AI-fueled chatbots (maybe not this last one… are you listening, Sydney?).
Finally, there’s one that should be on the list for anyone serious about driving more sales (and is B2B really, truly about anything else?): quote software, either standalone or as part of a larger CRM/sales/marketing solution.
Yes, we’re a sales quote software provider and so, yes, we’re biased. But here are two simple reasons – connected to two 2023 trends – why this biz app should be at the top of the list for trends to follow and tools to adopt for business success in 2023.
Professional sales proposals (& the cloud)
Quote software empowers your reps with the ability to make professionally designed quotes in a few minutes. Imagine if every proposal leaving your business looked as if it was created a design agency, replete with your brand palette and imagery.
Additionally, with a unified set of sales proposal templates you present a unified front to prospects and customers alike. It’s all about consistency in look, feel, and messaging, and a centralized collection of reusable proposals makes consistency a given across the board, no matter which rep might be sending a quote to which customer.
Let’s tie this into the other trends predicted for 2023: Obviously, a sale quote template is not an example of “AI in action,” but it does enable you to create a repeatable process that saves time and money. Also, with your quote software tools in the cloud (another trend), you can create, send, and manage quotes from anywhere.
Product and pricing configuration (& digital transformation)
The product and pricing configurator in your solution is (or should be) a clear-cut example of one of the most critical biz app trends of the last ten years: digital transformation.
Products and pricing have typically been stored on spreadsheets or deep in databases. To include this information in a proposal, sales reps often had to find the spreadsheet or PDF, search the document, and then copy/paste (or worse, manually type) information from it into a sales quote. There are myriad opportunities for error in this process.
More dangerous to a business is that most reps–to save time–will store product and pricing documents locally and often be giving information to clients that’s outdated or otherwise inaccurate. (We can’t count how many sales managers we know that have been forced to honor outdated pricing because that’s what made it into the quote).
But quote software makes adding products and pricing as easy as drag and drop. Reps use one of the aforementioned sales quote templates, and then add APPROVED products and APPROVED pricing to the quote–all while staying in the same biz app.
Less manual labor, less opportunity for error, better looking quotes, higher close rates: those aren’t biz app trends for sales–they’re timeless.
