By Jim Lundy
There were two conferences this week and both of them focused on predictive.
At IT/Dev Connections and Executive Insights, predictive was one of the major themes. At Dreamforce, the battle cry has also been predictive, and it starts with ClearSlide and Salesforce.
ClearSlide Goes Predictive
ClearSlide, who was just featured in our breakthrough report on sales communications, announced that it is adding predictive lead scoring. While the offering is not shipping, ClearSlide is offering previews here at Dreamforce. For enterprise buyers, the big takeaway is that the consolidation of sales enablement tools is happening. Sales engagement suites mark the shift, but within the Salesforce ecosystem, there will be many ways to enable predictive lead scoring. For Clearslide, this gives them an edge over others and it will put pressure on standalone lead scoring providers such as Infer and Lattice.
Salesforce: Heading Toward Predictive Selling
Salesforce is making a bold move—one toward what we are calling predictive selling. It announced SalesforceIQ for Sales Cloud and SalesforceIQ for Small Business. While neither offering is completely predictive, Salesforce is starting where most solutions start: with recommendations. This puts them squarely in competition with a partner, Qvidian, which has offered its pioneering Sales Playbooks for years.
Microsoft and Cortana Analytics
Microsoft also wants in on the game and is trying to position its Cortana Analytics Suite as a go-to option for predictive lead scoring. The only observation we have is, how long will it take to put Cortana to work? The benefit to this suite, however, is that you can use your voice to get the data you need.
There is much more going on at Dreamforce, but one of the biggest takeaways from this year is that enterprises need to start evaluating how to make their sales process and their sales tools more predictive.