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to sustain success to adapt to the changing ways of communication. Broadly speaking in the B2B space, almost 70% of B2B buyers are millennials; millennials who grew up using technology for convenience, research, communication and more.
Have you noticed your buyers are more informed before you get to meet them? Buyers want to know more about the human side of the business and the individuals they might invite in to work with them. By hiding your team away in lieu of showcasing the corporate image only, you may be creating friction in the early stages of the buyers journey that is easy at this stage for the buyer to remove; they’ll simply remove you from their ‘reading list’ and research activity.
Ask yourself here, how can digital be used to give permission and ability for our sales team to build their networks and influence at an early a stage in the buyers journey as possible?’
Go slow to move quick! Efficiencies that digital can bring support scale, more rapid and effective decision making and improved competitiveness; you can be in Japan for a meeting hosted in London online via the power of Teams, Zoom or one of the many digital communication platforms meaning you may be able to meet the entire buying group (who by the way are conducting over 70% of their buying research independently of your sales rep!) and create more meaningful relationship quicker, and digitally. You may also be able to share quickly and follow up with impactful resources and content that support the buyer’s journey to aid in their independent research without forcing the prospect on to the phone to a meeting of no consequence because the buying group aren’t there in person!
Have you considered how a digital sales process can actually help buying decisions? You may have seen changes not only in the process but the numbers of people now involved in a decision?
The scope for digital interaction It’s expected that 80% of interactions in a B2B space will be via digital means when we get to 2025. Even for a slower industry to adopt to digital innovation of the sales process, this figure will not deviate so drastically. Assuming a huge deviation of 30% from overall B2B statistics, this would still suggest that half of interactions in the lubricants industry will involve digital platforms and communication. Are you prepared?
Even “sell through” can support digital transitions
Even for the sell through market, digital should be used to add value to end user and channel partner, showcasing the brand power to build know, like and trust and support brand recall, product knowledge and engagement, making your channel partners’ life much easier too!
Consider how the affinity to your services would be from the channel partner if you were to provide digital assets to support them in their endeavours in communicating to end users? Access to chat bots, case studies, online product demonstrations and more would all support a value adding proposition.
Customers are looking to self-serve and for your commodity product range there is huge opportunity to support end users in their journey to self-service, freeing up the time of the sales professional to focus perhaps on more complex, key account opportunities.
Rob Taylor and Steve Knapp
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LUBE MAGAZINE NO.173 FEBRUARY 2023
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