Despite remaining mostly shielded from recession, the Indian market is feeling the impact of global headwinds. Economic uncertainty and increased demands from value-conscious customers are lengthening sales cycles and adding additional layers of approvals to close deals. This impacted overall sales targets and revenue growth in the past year; highlights the fifth edition of the Salesforce State of Sales report. The report surveyed 7700 sales professionals worldwide, including 300 from India.
The report points out that salespersons in India are looking at new growth strategies to increase sales in a year likely to be dotted with highs and lows in terms of customer sentiment. Improved collaboration, omnichannel selling, and focusing on better using or modernising tools and technologies lie at the heart of these growth strategies.
State of Sales report: Top growth strategies to increase sales in the next 12 months
1. Improve cross-functional alignment
Cross-functional alignment will be the most important factor driving growth in the coming months, as per the Indian respondents. Seamless inter-team collaboration eliminates siloes, increases overall productivity, and reduces the cost of servicing customers through their journey. This is key to greater customer trust, loyalty, and improved sales. Consequently, sales reps are working closely with different departments to have more valuable customer interactions and close deals faster. 
Tip: Looking to improve cross-functional collaboration within your organisation? Adopt a unified CRM platform that democratises access to data and streamlines workflows across teams. And increase sales productivity by 29%.
2. Adapt to hybrid and virtual selling
Sales deals continue to be closed virtually, or use a hybrid approach that combines virtual with in-person contact. 
Accordingly, salespersons will continue to hone their hybrid and virtual selling approaches to focus on hyper-personalisation, greater engagement, and interactive self-service.
AI and automation-centric tools are vital to creating efficient, omnichannel sales funnels. As per the report, the top tools used by sales teams and organisations in the past year include:
Investing in such toolshelps streamline sales processes, increase efficiency and enable sales reps to meetcustomers where they are.
3. Optimise product packaging – go green
As climate change and business impact on the environment come under scrutiny, sales professionals are using green credentials to inform their growth strategy. In fact, 37% of products launched in India in the last three years had an ‘all-natural’ or ‘ethical recycling’ claim, as per a Mintel report.
The other focus area is product packaging. The Indian government has made the use of plastics of a minimum 120-micron thickness compulsory. Coupled with growing awareness of packaging waste, sustainable packaging is a crucial element in increasing sales. Sales organisations can look at driving innovation and investments in new packaging materials such as organic fabrics, corn starch, paperboard, recycled cardboard, etc.
Tip: Invest in a trusted platform that can analyse carbon emissions, quantify sustainable efforts and evaluate environmental impact across the entire ecosystem.
4. Improve training on tools and technologies
Though essential to increase efficiency, companies must reconsider the number of tools they use in selling. 
To overcome this and equip reps to succeed, salesleaders must provide training to reps to efficiently use existing solutions.
Tip: Opt for a feature-rich, unified solution that eliminates the need for multiple standalone tools, and lowers IT costs by 25%.
5. Modernise tools and technologies
18% of respondents said that inadequate technology/tools are the reason they are leaving their present job. Outdated technology and legacy software lead to data siloes, cost overruns, and reduced employee productivity. Organisations must focus on providing their sales teams with modern tools and solutions to attract, engage and convert customers efficiently.
Tip: Invest in AI-powered sales automation solutions which offer access to customer data inreal-time.
6. Target new markets
As digitisation paves the way for agile operations, entering new markets becomes a low-risk growth strategy. With first mover advantage, companies can quickly find and convert quality leads and drive sales. Lead generation, revenue intelligence, and demand forecasting solutions can inform data-driven decision-making for such companies, making it easier to focus, adapt, and sell.
As the Indian economy’s consistent performance and encouraging macro numbers spell hope, salespersons will continue to explore ways to maximise value and efficiently meet changing buyer expectations.
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