These technologies will change how you engage healthcare professionals (HCPs) and provide optimal patient support. Sales technology is pervasive in sales culture and increasingly affecting sales’ go-to-market strategy. According to a recent Gartner survey, more than eight in 10 senior sales leaders believe effective use of technology is important for meeting revenue targets. So, it’s no surprise that 7 in 10 sales organizations planned to increase their sales tech spend in 2022. “Adopting innovative uses of emerging technologies and practices provides organizations with a competitive edge,” says Dan Gottlieb, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. “It enables the organization with new capabilities to influence the core priorities of an organization: pipeline generation, seller execution and account growth.” New sales technologies have the power to significantly affect the function through the coming years, but in many cases have yet to be productized for sales organizations. Chief executive officers and senior leadership must recognize, prioritize and respond to these disruptive changes to determine the best course of action. No. 1: Multimodality By 2030, sellers will only manually enter information into applications if they so choose. The days of begging sales teams to enter data is over. Multimodality provides multiple methods for ‘salespeople’ to log activities other than entering them through a keyboard into a CRM. These technologies all interface with CRM technology and encourage frontline sellers to capture CRM data. For example, sellers could tap their phone, call, or even chat with a CRM while an AI system takes down their inputs and fills in the required information. No. 2: Generative AI By 2025, 30% of outbound messages from large organizations will be synthetically generated. Content is increasingly important for sales, considering HCPs expect hyper-relevant and personalized experiences. And it’s hard for sales teams to keep up. With generative AI, sales teams will never have to beg for content again. Generative AI produces content (like images, video, emails, presentations and data sheets) typically created by humans, and does so without direct human bias through either an augmented approach but still ensuring compliance within our highly regulated industry. Although AI can help to ensure the right content is available for sellers, pharma companies must still ensure that content is easily accessible, in the right place, at the right time. No. 3: A mix of augmented and virtual realities By 2025, 80% of all interactions will occur in digital channels. The metaverse – a collective virtual space, created by the convergence of virtually enhanced physical and digital reality – will fundamentally change collaboration, engagement and connectedness. And the core technologies of the metaverse, like avatar fronted conversational AI technology (CAIT), augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), will be critical sales channels to use in HCP engagement, meetings, product demonstrations and sales training. CAIT enables HCPs to engage with the industry ‘on-demand’ and provides patient support, AR layers digital experiences over the physical world. VR enables you to enter into a unique digital place and participate in activities such as meetings, training or design reviews. This computer-generated environment enables collaboration and encourages engagement. No. 4: Emotion AI By 2025, AI identification of emotions will influence 30% of the messaging a HCP receives. Emotional intelligence is important, particularly for salespeople who need to “read the room,” which is hard to do in virtual environments. Cue emotion AI, which analyzes, processes and responds to emotion based on four core components: Natural language process-based phonetic and text analysis, which includes sentiment analysis in conversation and the ability to find patterns and trends. Computer-vision-based facial expression analysis, which looks for patterns and trends in response to stimuli. Audio-based speech analysis, which detects a combination of emotional states with facial and muscle movement. Biometric and other sensors (like heart rate) to analyze behavior. By 2024, emotion AI will influence approximately half of the online adverts buyers in our communities see. This technology reads faces and determines what communication will work for a given HCP. These applications of emotion AI will change the way our sales teams engage with HCPs. And by extension, will also change sales enablement. No. 5: Digital Twin of the Customer The market for digital twin enabling software and services is expected to reach a global revenue of $150 billion by 2030, up from $9 billion in 2022. What if you could test programs on your HCP customers whenever you want? A digital twin provides a dynamic virtual representation of the customer created from digital and physical interactions to emulate and predict behavior. The digital twin takes in data from personas and runs tests for sales messaging, sales process, marketing campaigns, and notes what works and what doesn’t. Unlike a simulation, a digital twin is dynamic; it’s constantly receiving data and can update its findings, enabling analysis in real time as new signals come in. No. 6: Digital Humans By 2026, 50% of HCPs will interact with a digital human in a buying cycle. The salesforce of the future is a hybrid of humans and machines. Digital humans that engage with customers will fundamentally change who sells and how they sell. The use case for digital humans isn't about replacing humans. It’s about streamlining and optimising the teams of human sales professionals by enabling HCPs to access 100% compliant and consistent information and data 24/7, and the digital humans taking on tasks that humans don’t want to do, such as promoting legacy brands, dealing with MSL FAQs and much more. Dan Gottlieb is a Sr. Director Analyst in the Gartner for Sales Practice. Contributor: Jordan Turner Ian Welburn is Founder and CEO of Ecoutai Limited.