Whether you like it or not, it’s hard to ignore the evidence that digital technology is transforming consumer habits. Machine learning, apps, mobile devices, automation, and more are allowing customers to get what they want whenever they want it.
How Customers Buy is Changing...
The preferences, behaviors, and expectations of B2B customers are changing rapidly, influenced by their experiences with B2C brands (think intuitive user interfaces and near-immediate delivery). B2C has led the way with mobile, omnichannel, data access, peer reviews, and on-demand support.
These new digital technologies are causing a major shift in consumer expectations, leading to a new kind of buyer. These customers are constantly connected, app native, and now, thanks to COVID, keen to avoid any face-to-face interactions.
These consumers, many of them younger professionals, now seek the same experiences in their business interactions. Increasingly, B2B buyers are being influenced by their experiences as consumers outside of work. This is coupled with increasingly complex business reality.
These influences are shaping what customers buy and how they buy it—the B2B customer is now shifting from buying products and solutions to buying experiences that generate value from the first interaction to long after the order is placed.
Companies need to ensure that they’re ready to assist their customers in new ways. This is particularly important in an environment where renewal accounts are growing, but the churn rate is accelerating, too. We are entering the age of personal commerce, where consumers co-curate their experiences with brands to reflect their preferences — and the sales landscape isn't exempt from these shifts.
Personalization, including tailored interactions and offerings, including tailored interactions that help buyers navigate their complicated internal processes and customized offerings based on their specific needs and desires.
Business buyers expect companies to understand them, anticipate their needs, and make relevant suggestions. They want offerings that incorporate feedback and iterate with changing needs.
In addition to personalized offers, B2B buyers require interactions that offer the right level of engagement across the buying journey through a combination of human and digital channels that work together. Both buyers and the customers’ end-users should be left with a positive impression after each interaction. Sellers need to consider how their customer-facing digital tools and internal sales processes deliver on this demand.
The challenge with personalization is delivering it efficiently at scale. Organizations are using automation and predictive data science to direct personalized outreach campaigns as well as the next best actions. Nearly all B2B organizations are tailoring web and other marketing content in some way, with more than half tailoring content to individual buyer profiles (e.g., IT buyer, CFO). The degree of content personalization is increasing as organizations improve B2B customer analytics. They are also increasing job specialization and collaboration across roles to bring the right expertise forward at the right time. Finally, they are utilizing sophisticated configure, price, and quote (CPQ) solutions as well as offering a wider range of contracting terms from fixed multi-year to usage-based flex consumption models in order to personalize around the customer.
Speed, by delivering frictionless buying journeys and enabling self-service. A good buying experience is one that makes the process easier – and in B2B, this requirement takes on more meaning due to the complicated, non-linear internal processes B2B buyers have to contend with. They must navigate their organization's policies, various stakeholders, and unclear budgeting and procurement processes. They expect sellers to remove friction from the process by enabling their self-education journeys through relevant and easy-to-access online content that helps them manage their internal stakeholders. They want to receive quotes faster and be able to manage to contract and ordering online. They want simpler B2B transactions to be managed through eCommerce and want a single point of contact when they need human interaction. The majority of B2B customers are more likely to recommend a vendor with a simpler process.
For sales organization, this means it’s time to make fundamental changes. . Modernize the sales operations function to be more strategic, agile, and analytical, transforming to deliver better experiences in five ways:
Reimagining the buying journey from the lens of customer experience (CX), focusing on moments that matter
Orchestrating selling motions that utilize both digital and optimal customer-facing roles to deliver the right engagement and interactions
Emphasizing the seller experience both internally and for channel partners
Doubling down on customer and sales analytics to deliver prescriptive intelligence to sellers
Modernizing the Sales Operations function to be more strategic, agile, and analytical
Five Steps to Deliver Better B2B Sales Experiences
Focusing on personalization, speed, and outcomes in their commercial workflows, reimagining interactions, and operating differently to create differentiated experiences.
Starting by understanding the customer and their buying process more deeply to design the right buying experiences, not narrowly focusing on sales efforts on the opportunity-to-order process, but also to better use of digital B2B channels.
Improving the experiences of the sales rep and partners to enable them to deliver better customer buying experiences. Fueled with data and actionable insights at the right moment of the step of the selling process.
Finally, evolving their siloed support functions to enable a Sales Operations function that brings together strategy, operations, data, analytics, and technology.
Digital sales transformation requires to reimagine the buying journey from the lens of customer experience (CX) and focus on moments that matter:
Typical B2B Buying Steps
Sources: Brent Adamson, “Win More B2B Sales Deals, Gartner.
Orchestrate selling motions that utilize both digital and optimal customer-facing roles to deliver the right engagement and interactions.
Designing Selling Motions
Emphasize the seller experience both internally and for channel partners to improve the experiences of customers.
Double down on customer and sales analytics to deliver better insights and embed them directly within the sales process along with supporting tools. integrating insights into decision-making in four key areas:
Single View of Customer through Customer Data Platform
Modernizing the Sales Operations function to be more strategic, agile, and analytical, by bringing together sales strategy with operations to support an insight-driven sales model and deliver improved seller experiences.
Sales Operations Activities Time Allocation
Achieving these goals is to require leadership alignment, new talent profiles, new ways of working with IT, a clear data vision and sales-focused architecture, and the right strategic KPIs for Sales
The current sales environment today poses several new challenges but also presents many opportunities. There are a host of new tools, technologies, and techniques available that if implemented wisely offer great possibilities for increasing sales reach, decreasing sales cost, and driving differentiated experiences. Organizations need to think of digital-first growth strategies by taking three proactive steps to launch their transformations.
As you formulate strategies for the next few years, you must understand how ready you are to operate in this new environment. You should ask these questions as they ascertain how ready you are:
The sales transformation process is a collective undertaking that requires departmental alignment, full executive buy-in, strategic planning, and consistent execution.