Today I'm talking about sales, sales process and the sales environment and the business environment. Do we all think of it in certain ways as we've always experienced walking into stores, online even, walking into a car dealership? Things are changing very rapidly now and in the near future.

I want to go over a couple of the things that are changing, and have changed, recently. Really to my entire surprise is how fast those changes are about to take place. Now, it's important, of course, that we understand and adapt to the changes that are already taking place. The changes that are in the near future are even more awesome.

The average consumer today researches his information to make a purchase. Over 50% of them do this before they even have any interaction with any sales associate. Now, think of that. That's a whole lot of difference between what it was in the past, but it also means that the sales associate has a very different purpose today than in the past. In a couple of years, it's expected to be over 80%. Are you ready?

The biggest thing this means is that the salespeople really need to be interacting with potential consumers before they ever become the consumer for your product or your company. That is, doing things on social media. In fact, even if it's not the exact same customer, the understanding and what's going on plus the idea that they may be captured within the sales research process, along with that more mobile devices today are used than desktops, and it's expected to be 80% in the very near future.

93% of people doing research on mobile make a purchase. Think of that in terms of how important it is then to be on mobile, given it's the dominant search criteria today, and that 93% of those people are going to make a purchase after doing that research. How do you become aware of their search and use it? First, how do you make sure that everything you have, your web site and everything else, is mobile-friendly? It's a lot different than just making slight changes in the size and positioning of the interface.

Now, one key point to make is what should you do if you have sales associates, particularly if you're in a store? You've got a store or storefront. For your sales associate, one of the best things you can do, make sure they have mobile devices with them. They can facilitate. Help the customer do research. Obviously, if you hand the customer something to do research with and talk to them about it, you have a much better chance of making that sale in your store than a competitor, providing you have a good story or a good store.

Now, with all the information, cloud-based and now we see artificial intelligence being used. Yes, today, artificial intelligence is already being used in many of the apps that you have on your phone. What does that mean? It means they're adapting to your decisions and your process, the way you click and the things you do, such as your location. Yet, with all the data that's being gathered right now, and tons of information and data being gathered, from everything that you visit, everything that you click, the searches you do, et cetera. How far will it go? Today, companies are using approximately 12% of that data so far. This is a huge set of business opportunities.

Now, you might think they are using so little because the data's so overwhelming, but it's not that. Some of the things that basically the technology is catching up with the data, but it's catching up incredibly fast. I went just this past couple of days, to the Digital Summit in Philadelphia, and it was amazing, some of the things that were discussed there. They also had one of the sponsors was IBM's Watson, and it was interesting to see that and how it's related and how it's actually being used by individual companies.