Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder of Selling Power magazine, brought up a great point during his afternoon session at SugarCon today; and one that despite years of harking from industry analysts continues to fall by the wayside as sales forces struggle with the next generation of consumers.

Whether it’s manufacturing, high-tech, telecom, or financial services, sales forces must turn their focus outwards and center on the perspective of the customer. To that end, CRM software can be “seductive,” Gschwandtner said, with forecasts, pipelines, and reports blinding a sales manager to the reality of how his or hers’ company is interacting with the consumer.

Tying back to Paul Greenberg’s earlier presentation on CRM 2.0, there’s a renewed focus on customer experience management (CEM), which when taken as a whole with sales management, compensation management, and CRM, will define the new benchmark by which future sales forces will be measured, and by which customer’s expectations will be driven.

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