It’s a fairly straightforward task to look around at the world of business today and identify a few key trends; it’s another matter entirely to predict the trends of the future. But that’s exactly what media and marketing guru Richard Laermer strives to do in his new book, 2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade (McGraw-Hill, 2008). In it, Laermer, CEO of RLM PR, offers his predictions on future trends in sales, media, technology, and more. Here’s a look at his take on three sales trends for the next decade:

Out with the bad customers. These days, businesses generally subscribe to the theory that it’s cheaper to keep a current customer than it is to acquire a new one. And while that’s certainly true if you focus on the acquisition side of the equation, organizations are going to start taking a harder look at the customer side of the equation in the future. Take Sprint, for instance. Last year, the phone giant dropped about 1,000 subscribers when it discovered these customers were calling its customer service department 40 to 50 times each month, often with problems unrelated to Sprint. Sprint realized it would never make these people happy and they were costing the company a lot of money so they sent them packing. “Good customers use goods and services at a rate that provides reasonable revenue,” says Laermer. “Bad customers make demands and consume resources.” We’ll see more and more companies making the distinction – and giving their bad customers the boot.

Sleep will reign again. Every sales professional knows they’re supposed to be getting seven or eight hours of sleep a night, but really – who has time to sleep when there’s so much work to be done? Volumes have been written about how sleep deprived we are, but so far the news doesn’t seem to be getting us to bed any earlier. That’s going to change, says Laermer. Sales professionals – and, indeed, the business world in general – are going to realize they are more insightful, more creative, and more productive when they are well rested. “It remains to be seen just how long it will take corporate America to become fully aware of the connection between sleep, creativity, and a potentially tremendous boost to the productivity of the knowledge base,” says Laermer. But he adds there are “encouraging signs” that a sea change in our sleep habits is on the horizon.

We’ll return to real, thoughtful communications. In this era of text messaging, blogging, and email, we’ve become lazy in our communications. We tend to dash off notes without proofreading them. We tend to use generic catch phrases like “seamless solution” and “superior service” that sound good but don’t really mean anything. Why do we do it? Because it’s easier and quicker than taking the time to think, write, edit, and edit again until our message is clear, compelling, and precise. There’s going to be a backlash against today’s generic, rushed communications and it’s coming soon. The future of sales will demand that reps put thought, care, and creativity into every message they compose.