Digital sales
Digital sales that are so popular in the B2C sector are still quite new to industrials. However, B2B buyers already expect a comfortable Amazon-like experience. And since the pandemic, the demand for online solutions is only growing. In this article, we want to highlight the benefits of applying digital tools in B2B sales and marketing.
Before going to the tools and benefits, a couple of numbers to prove the need for B2B digitization. According to McKinsey’s research, 70% of B2B customers are ready to do remote purchases of over $50,000, and 27% would spend over $500,000. This means that the idea of e-commerce being only for inexpensive and fast-moving items is no longer valid. Further, according to Accenture online sales are now equal to 21% of total B2B sales, this number is expected to reach up to 29% by 2025. Leading companies set the pace, and others should quickly pick up in order to not be left outside.
So, what are the key benefits that industrials would see with sales and marketing digitization? Those are increasing sales-stuff efficiency, growing sales opportunities, and improved end-to-end customer journey.
End-to-end customer experience
With easy shopping processes in their lives as B2C consumers, B2B buyers expect a similar experience from their vendors. End-to-end customer engagement means creating a holistic digital environment with tools applied at each step of the sales process. This may include user-specific content after login, online catalogs with personalized recommendations, product and service configurators, chats or calls with experts, how-to videos. Companies may substitute long manual customer onboarding processes that involve tons of paperwork and multiple touchpoints with the instant and secure few-clicks registration process.
Increasing efficiency
Automation of processes and touchpoints can help reduce the time that salespeople spend on managing accounts. What can be automated:
- Customer service. By automating certain processes, companies can make the interaction of their customers with them much easier. For example, chatbots available 24/7 can answer many common questions. Online self-service opportunities increase customers’ satisfaction and loyalty while reducing in-person visits expenditures.
- Administrative issues, such as sending invoices or approval workflows can be automated with robotic process automation (RPA) tools and save sales departments lots of time.
New sales opportunities
Digitization can provide various opportunities for growing sales. For instance, by using customer data systems and analytics, companies can understand customers’ needs better and create tailored offers; it is also possible to identify accounts that have the potential for growth even if current bills are not big. Such focused sales and marketing efforts can produce better results than general campaigns.
To increase cross- and upsells, companies can introduce personalized recommendations. Another way to personalize sales is to create branded, customer-specific shops integrated with clients’ procurement portals.
Moreover, since automation makes the outreach less expensive and more simple, businesses can target small customers, which they would previously avoid due to low return on investment.
What makes automation successful
With all the benefits that digitization may bring to the B2B sector, reports of McKinsey and Accenture show that most of the industrials still delay the transformation and struggle to provide a mature digital experience to their customers. One of the main reasons for that is the lack of implementation capabilities.
At ISDK, we have solid experience in helping B2B companies with their automation plans.
Among our projects are chatbots, Air Cargo Booking platform, omnichannel solutions, and more. If you are looking for an implementation partner, feel free to contact us to discuss your project.
Many companies don’t have the right resources in-house to plan and execute new strategies, they also might struggle with finding the right partners for implementation.
