This includes sales engagement technology, new emerging categories in the space, key drivers that have contributed to the rise of sales engagement platforms, today’s technology leaders, an inside look into sales engagement stacks and the accelerating growth and change poised to disrupt the marketplace.

According to the report, today’s sales leaders name sales engagement as their top priority. Sales engagement is such a high priority that 90% of sales leaders plan to invest in technologies and methodologies to help their sellers engage more effectively with prospects and customers.

They are focused on the quality and volume of sales reps’ engagement with buyers, as they look to drive higher conversion rates and larger average deal sizes.

Over the last few years, technology vendors have responded to this interest by creating applications that enable sellers to deliver high-quality sales engagement at scale.

The report shows that, until now, only a handful of startups have played an outsized role in developing innovative products and driving adoption, primarily with early adopter sales organisations.

The report provides an understanding of the changing sales engagement market and gives sales leaders the insight required to get ahead of the latest marketplace trends. Among the report’s findings are three market observations:
  • Sales engagement technology is spreading from sales development to the entire sales organisation.
  • More traditional sales organisations (not just early adopters) are evaluating and purchasing technology to support their sales engagement efforts.
  • Large technology vendors, such as Salesforce, are entering the space with products like its Einstein High-Velocity Sales Cloud.
"Sales engagement is set to become a multi-billion dollar market, thanks to a number of critical factors," says Craig Rosenberg, chief analyst at TOPO. "The most important factor is that entire sales organisations are starting to adopt sales engagement tools."

"Today, the technology has a relatively small footprint in sales, but that promises to change as the major SEPs continue to add features and functionality designed specifically for closing sales reps," adds Rosenberg.

In addition, TOPO says it recognises that the two dominant players in the sales engagement platform market were considered in most evaluation cycles.

According to TOPO, with Salesforce recently announcing its sales engagement platform product, the category not only becomes validated but with its massive distribution channel, promises to accelerate customer adoption of sales engagement platforms.

"Given these dynamics, we expect to see accelerating growth in the sales engagement market," says Scott Albro, CEO of TOPO. "Sales leaders have a clear top priority: better engagement with customers. So it’s no surprise that sales engagement platforms have become a top investment priority." 

For more information, visit www.topohq.com.