What to expect from digital selling practices in the next few years?
Four key trends are impacting digital selling practices in the next few years. According to Altimeter (Altimeter, The 2020 State of Digital Selling) we expect:
- 1. Sales enablement tools bridging more and more cross-functional teams for better alignment around the customer. The digital selling tech stack will give sellers more agility in process execution to match unique, unpredictable buyer needs, and an increase in adoption is expected as a result.
- 2. New operations teams and leadership roles will unify teams and practices: chief revenue officers and revenue operations teams will grow, with marketing and sales reporting to the same leader.
- 3. Digital selling will become even more data-driven and analytical, with a cultural shift in the digital transformation: a close relationship between digital selling success and a strong data analytics culture.
- 4. The roles of sales and marketing will shift. As sales become more digital and data analytics-focused, with inside sales moving to marketing and sales taking a stronger role in lead prospecting, the value of a marketing-qualified lead will be diminished.
We’ve looked at how sales enablement solutions like Pitcher are changing and how they are holistically and collectively supporting the constant shift, prioritizing both consistency and personalization in the customer experience.
But first, let’s start with a quick definition.
What is digital selling?
Digital selling is the process of using a variety of digital channels and assets to sell a product or service. Digital selling makes use of multiple digital channels (think: email, social media, Google Ads, LinkedIn, and more), and brings together many elements across the organization, aiming to create a better overall customer experience.
How can a sales enablement stack support key digital sales capabilities?
Sales and Marketing Alignment and Skills Development
The key aspects include managing and aligning the marketing, sales and field sales teams, facilitating personalized coaching and training to maximize individual skill sets and tracking customer behavior and interactions through the funnel.
Asset Creation and Automation
Sales enablement apps combine content creation, curation and distribution into a single platform, ensuring consistency and allowing reps to select the most appropriate materials for each interaction. Sales reps have access to all insights, communications and materials shared with the customers throughout the sales journey.
Lead Distribution and Nurturing
Assigning the right leads to the right sales team is a critical task, especially where long response times may lead to a drop-off in sales. Sales enablement apps allow leads to be centrally evaluated and distributed to sales reps according to their individual capabilities and capacity.
Lead Conversion, Tracking and Insights
Sales enablement solutions provide a “one-stop-shop”, allowing sales teams to effectively engage audiences, review prior conversations and analyze how the buyer has independently interacted with personalized marketing materials, helping them to accurately gauge their readiness to purchase.
Ongoing Marketing and Sales Teaming
When it comes to gathering, storing, and accessing key customer data within the team, a sales enablement stack is valuable for handing over customer accounts (for example, from a business development team to an account management team) in a seamless manner, without the risk of vital information being lost.
Customer Success
Post sale, sales enablement tools play a vital role in continuing to monitor customer satisfaction, adoption, and engagement, which are key to customer success, customer referrals, and building an advocate community.
As digital sales models develop, they will bring with them a range of new challenges. Addressing these challenges and ensuring customer success therefore requires a comprehensive and innovative digital solution – easy to use, more centralized and better personalized to the individual needs of buyers and customers.
Digital selling FAQs
What’s the best digital sales strategy?
The best sales strategy (whether digital or traditional) will adapt to your target audience. It’s not a one size fits all. It’s important to use a variety of channels and include those that your customers use – be where they are! This can include social media marketing (both for B2B and B2C) and creating engaging digital content that you show your prospects. Importantly, track what content and tactics work for you and what doesn’t.
Using a digital content management system, for example, as a part of your a sales enablement solution will help make your team more efficient and save you time, plus create a consistent customer experience.
Why is digital selling important?
Today, we are used to operating more in the digital space, and this goes also for B2B sales. If you cannot be with your prospects face-to-face, then being able to connect digitally with your customers and show them engaging digital content is key. Digital selling removes any barriers between your company and potential customers. The best digital sales tactics also facilitate brand and company-related information to be easy to find and up-to-date, on sales enablement platforms, used by their sales team.