Gartner® Report: Innovation Insight for Digital Sales Rooms

The shifts that have been caused by the pandemic are nothing new to us by now. Market uncertainty is certain to continue and virtual selling is the new normal. To support a better customer centric buying experience, digital sales rooms (DSR) have emerged as a standard part of virtual selling.

Pitcher is recognized as a Representative Provider for DSR in the recent Gartner® report: “Innovation Insight for Digital Sales Rooms to Support Virtual Selling and Customer Experience”.

How will digital change B2B sales?

Digital sales rooms are, and will be, so prominent that Gartner predicts that “by 2026, 30% of B2B sales cycles will be managed through digital sales rooms, which will then be used to manage the customer life cycle. By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.”

Key findings from the Gartner report:

• “Buyers increasingly want a seller-free experience and to drive their own unique buying journeys”.
• “When buyers encounter a need for assistance, sellers and buyers need a means to collaborate digitally during the buying process”.
• “A better customer experience means that buyers should be able to choose if, how much and when they interact with sellers.”
• “Sellers need to be able to understand and track buyer engagement through the process”.

Recommendations by Gartner

In the report, Gartner recommends the following points, to name a few:

• “Create a virtual selling experience that enables buyers to drive their own journey through the deployment of digital sales rooms (DSRs).
• “Ensure that DSRs are comprehensive by evaluating vendors with capabilities that will allow for a completely digital sales process and, at a minimum, capabilities for bidirectional content sharing and collaboration through integration with collaboration and messaging tools.”
• “Develop a better customer experience for your buyers/customers by understanding the relationship you have with them through the use of analytics such as engagement analysis, conversation intelligence or emotion AI.”

Strategic planning assumptions

• “By 2026, 30% of B2B sales cycles will be managed through digital sales rooms, which will then be used to manage the customer life cycle.”
• “By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.”
• “By 2025, 60% of B2B sales organizations will transition from experience- and intuition- based selling to data-driven selling, merging their sales process, sales applications, sales data and sales analytics into a single operational practice.”
• “By 2025, 50% of B2B sales organizations will record 75% of conversations with buyers.”

So, we can expect that fully virtual selling will continue to grow and also hybrid (which is a combination of digital and face to face) selling.

Gartner states: “DSRs provide a secure way to do business either completely digitally or with seller assistance (see Figure 1). DSRs are not digital commerce platforms, but they do link to digital commerce to allow customers to complete the buying process digitally if desired.”

Being customer centric is not a fickle phase, but a permanent feature of the new selling regime.

In fact, “43% percent of all B2B buyers desire a seller-free sales experience — a preference that climbs to 54% for millennials. Many customers prefer to do the majority of their buying process without speaking to sales” says the Gartner report.

The technologies (digital content sharing, collaboration tools, web conferencing, secure portals and digital commerce) have been around for a while, although combining them into a DSR setting is a developing trend.

Gartner says: “The combination in a secure portal or persistent microsite is what makes DSRs unique. In a recent Gartner sales enablement survey, 23% of sales leaders indicated that they had included DSRs in their budget for 2021”.

What is a digital sales room?

“DSRs are privately formed for a vendor and a customer to collaborate digitally, from lead right through the customer life cycle. Persistent micro-sites include internal/external collaboration, embedded video conferencing, buyer engagement analytics, sentiment and emotion analysis, as well as links to digital commerce platforms. Customer-facing resources include marketing, sales and customer success to collaborate with the customer, creating a consistent customer experience.”

Buying patterns have indeed evolved, as buyers now “spend an average of 15% of the buying cycle time reconciling different information sources, often from the same supplier but within different channels (see Elevating the Value of Sales Interactions, Gartner).”

A buyer using a DSR means they can collaborate better with the supplier, and establish a more engaged relationship:

“DSRs enable buyers to have a better customer experience through collaboration with the supplier. They create a secure and personalized environment for buyer and seller to work together in a coordinated fashion during different stages of the buying journey and post-sale. Essential capabilities include a tailored, persistent microsite for the life of the customer’s relationship with the organization, personalized portals, bidirectional content sharing, collaboration tools and web conferencing.”

“Equally important is the use of call scheduling, conversation intelligence and buyer engagement analytics. More advanced capabilities such as complex deal negotiation, e-signature, emotion AI, configure, price and quote (CPQ), and a link to digital commerce are emerging and will be needed to complete a full DSR.”

Why use a digital sales room?

The benefits of a DSR are many, but some that Gartner have defined are:

• “Collaboration and communication: All buyer and seller communication is captured in one location for multiple buyer and seller resources throughout the life cycle of the relationship. Information can be easily tracked and buyer engagement analyzed, thus providing insights and machine learning (ML) capability to make recommendations that will further the relationship.”
• “Tailored experiences: Selling organizations can tailor experiences for each buyer while giving the buyer the freedom to choose from the spectrum of a seller-assisted to a wholly digital and seller-free experience.”
• “Selling at scale: Use of DSRs enables sellers to provide a tailored experience for many buyers without extensive resources and management.”

Also:

• “Collaborative buying process to exchange ideas and comments across multiple devices: DSRs allow sellers to intelligently coordinate and support multiple individuals within the buying group. This also brings transparency into the process and gives higher visibility for the buyer groups.”
• “Conversation intelligence and emotion AI: These analytics will track the engagement and sentiment of the buyer group and should feed into the ML algorithm of the lead, opportunity and forecasting objects in the sales force automation (SFA).”

We’re sorry, the access to download this report has now expired. We hope you enjoyed this blog nonetheless! 

FAQs

How will digital change B2B sales?

Digital sales rooms are, and will be, so prominent that Gartner predicts that “by 2026, 30% of B2B sales cycles will be managed through digital sales rooms, which will then be used to manage the customer life cycle. By 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels.”

What is a digital sales room?

“DSRs are privately formed for a vendor and a customer to collaborate digitally, from lead right through the customer life cycle. Persistent micro-sites include internal/external collaboration, embedded video conferencing, buyer engagement analytics, sentiment and emotion analysis, as well as links to digital commerce platforms. Customer-facing resources include marketing, sales and customer success to collaborate with the customer, creating a consistent customer experience.”

Why use a digital sales room?

The benefits of a DSR are many, but some that Gartner have defined are:

• “Collaboration and communication: All buyer and seller communication is captured in one location for multiple buyer and seller resources throughout the life cycle of the relationship. Information can be easily tracked and buyer engagement analyzed, thus providing insights and machine learning (ML) capability to make recommendations that will further the relationship.”
• “Tailored experiences: Selling organizations can tailor experiences for each buyer while giving the buyer the freedom to choose from the spectrum of a seller-assisted to a wholly digital and seller-free experience.”
• “Selling at scale: Use of DSRs enables sellers to provide a tailored experience for many buyers without extensive resources and management.”

Gartner, Innovation Insight for Digital Sales Rooms to Support Virtual Selling and Customer Experience, By Melissa Hilbert, Varun Agarwal, 17 January 2022.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation.

Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.