Businesses today have access to far more information on the products and services they buy, a long-term trend that is having a profound impact on local sales, making its success much more dependent on science than art. Selling increasingly is about being deeply knowledgeable about how digital media can help businesses acquire and grow customers.

“Articulating two or three value propositions is not enough,” said Warren Kay, BIA/Kelsey’s Executive in Residence. “Sellers need to convey much more information.”

Kay, speaking at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference, outlined how the process of sales transformation permeates every aspect of the local online ecosystem and the program for the event, which runs through Thursday at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero Center.

Kay noted presentations from Hubspot and LinkedIn coming on the event’s second day as critical sessions for those looking for insight on the massive changes. Both companies have content marketing at the center of their sales process, something Kay says will be increasingly central to selling to SMBs.

Kay noted some core principals running through the conversation about sales transformation. The first is that buyers are more informed, therefore sellers must be more informed. In addition, sales must leverage technology to become more effective and efficient. This involves content marketing, which produces a stream of inbound leads. And it involves increasingly sophisticated tools and technologies, mostly based in the cloud, that provide data to drive the sales process. This enables more understanding of what works, and what doesn’t, driving even greater efficiency. Kay told the audience to expect more on these sales-related themes throughout the conference.