Jeff Bezos is a genius. If you don’t know who that is, he currently runs the web giant Amazon as its founder and CEO. This company has been growing rapidly since it was first founded and moving into multiple different markets as it has acquires the likes of Whole Foods and diverged into home devices such as the well-known Artificial Intelligence device Alexa.
One of the strongest areas of sales that Amazon has moved into is suggestive selling. The amount of data collected each day by the company is monumental and they use this Big Data to their benefit at every turn. The analytics available to them can track users’ purchases and predict purchases they may want to make or repeat in the future. Obviously an individual salesperson isn’t capable of such a detailed response to customers’ purchases however it shows perhaps a trend that more salespeople should be moving towards. Meeting the needs of customers is something that all successful companies have to do, as a salesperson you are looking to first find and then fulfill these needs on an individual level. The key to this fulfillment is knowledge.
Amazon has the advantage of tracking each of its consumers on a large scale and then applying that big data to individual sales situations. This can easily be translated to one on one situations by gathering knowledge of the prospect and applying it to what you offer them in the sale. Amazon has become a giant in many industries because of its ability to gather information and use it for suggestive selling, individual salespeople should apply the same basic premise to their sales opportunities.
Cameron Suorsa 
dulayre1 
difalcolm1
Great post! I love how you used Amazon (a business everyone should be familiar with) as an example to help convey the importance of knowing your customer segments and recognize their needs and pains. Being able to understand this aspect of your customers and clients is key. Good work!
While reading this I thought of how this Big Data could be used for other areas involving the sale. The supply chain analyst would benefit from this knowledge. It could greatly influence how they operate and increase their efficiency.
Using predictive data to target customers with products they might want is an excellent sales technique. Now the amount of data companies collect could be unethical, however reviewing past purchases and predicting future ones is a necessary sales tactic in today’s digital age. We have learned to always do background research on a potential customer, and reviewing big data is just that.