An executive wants to know where the company is and where it's going. Tactically, they still need the important numbers so they can run the business, but in general they're looking for trending information that enables them to better understand the market their company services to better determine where they should make large, long-term investments in the sales department.

It's exciting to see how sales technology is adapting the roles of salespeople. You have cities like New Orleans now offering full, wireless connectivity, vendors releasing new reporting tools. It's challenging the way salespeople conduct business, and forcing them to respond to customers quicker and more efficiently than before.

Will my information be secure in a hosted environment? Will I have access to it? Who will own it? Will competitors be able to view my customers? These are important questions. Imagine—would you put your company's financial data on the same server as that of your competitors?

The integration of sales and marketing has the potential to affect the account executive the most. Instead of entering information many times over, you're leveraging information already acquired by marketing, but companies are still trying to connect the dots and there is still of lot of work to be done with this business process.