The Future of B2B Sales
The future of business-to-business sales is digital transformation and strategies that focus on the buyer.
The way B2B sales are done is changing a lot because of new technologies, changing buying habits, and the long-lasting effects of global events like the COVID-19 pandemic. Gartner study shows that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between buyers and sellers will happen online, and 60% of B2B sales organizations will switch from selling based on experience and gut feelings to selling based on data.
Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) and sales teams face both problems and chances because of this change. Businesses need to change their strategies, methods, and how they use their resources to focus more on the buyer and adopt hyper automation and digital-first engagement if they want to do well in this new environment.
The Way B2B Buyers Are Changing
B2B buyers today are becoming less trusting of traditional sales methods and want more self-service choices. In fact, 33% of buyers want to buy something without having to deal with a seller. These changes are especially clear among younger people who make decisions. For example, Millennials are less trusting of salespeople than older groups.
B2B purchases have also become more complicated, with an average of 11 different people having a say in each choice, and sometimes as many as 20. When buyers are uncertain and the situation is complicated, it can have a big effect on the result of the sale. A study by Gartner found that when B2B buyers are moderately to highly unsure, they are 30% less likely to make a purchase and 42% less likely to make a good deal.
Key Strategies for Sales Organizations That Are Ready for the Future
CSOs and sales leaders should pay attention to four main areas if they want to do well in this changing environment:
1. Making Friends with the "Everywhere Customer"
Business-to-business buyers now expect to be able to interact with suppliers through a variety of channels, such as digital platforms and self-service choices. Companies that sell things need to create unified lines of commerce that focus on buyers instead of products. As part of this, a strong B2B digital commerce plan should be put in place, along with a website that can be used as a full-fledged, self-service sales channel in addition to other channels.
2. Helping People Make Hard Buying Decisions
As people spend less time talking to each other in person, sales teams need to find new ways to get people to buy. Companies shouldn't make sellers the main source of information. Instead, they should train them to be "sense makers" who help customers find their way through and make sense of the huge amount of information that's out there. This method can help buyers feel more confident and less unsure about their decision to buy.
3. Making Digital Skills, Better
To be successful in a digital-first selling world, sales teams need to quickly improve the digital skills of their sellers. This means getting better at two main things:
a) Virtual customer engagement: plan and prepare for pre-sales calls and use best practices during meetings to have useful and interesting conversations with customers during virtual sales interactions.
b) Virtual seller enablement: steps to help sellers in a virtual sales setting with things like sales skills, training delivery, and onboarding.
4. Making a plan for the future of sales technology
CSOs need to spend money on tools that help their sales teams get the most out of AI-based solutions. This includes finding parts of the sales value chain where AI can make things better, like replacing educated guesses with AI solutions that can reliably pick up on buyer actions and signs. It's also important to spend money on digital tools that make the buying experience better, like good audio and video equipment and dependable platforms for remote meetings. This will allow you to interact with customers in a useful way.
Hyper-automation, digital scalability, and artificial intelligence are all coming together.
Three major technological trends are coming together to shape the future of business-to-business sales:
1. Hyper-automation: Using AI and machine learning to automate routine sales tasks and processes so that buyers can focus on more important tasks.
2. Digital scalability: Giving sellers new digital skills and tools to help them become digital-first sellers and change the way sales training is done.
3. Artificial intelligence: switching from making decisions by hand to making decisions automatically using algorithms. This helps align sales channels, methods, and sellers' skills with what customers want.
Gartner thinks that there will be no separation between sales processes, apps, data, and analytics in five years. There will only be one idea instead: AI for sales.
The Part CSOs Will Play in New Sales
As B2B sales change, CSOs need to switch from being in charge of buyers to being in charge of sales. For this change to happen, you need to focus on digital sales platforms and making decisions based on data instead of just gut feelings and experiences. These things should CSOs do:
1. Come up with plans for how to keep customers interested across all important channels, such as digital and self-service options.
2. Make sales teams help customers make difficult buying decisions by guiding them through information and giving them faith in their choices.
3. Put money into teaching the sales team digital skills so that virtual selling can work well.
4. Make a technology plan that supports sales processes that are highly automated and run by AI.
B2B sales will be digital, based on data, and focused on the user in the future. Companies that can adapt to these changes by using new technologies, getting better at digital skills, and working on making it easier for people to make complicated buying decisions will do well in this new environment. Now is the time for CSOs and sales leaders to start making systems that can change to the needs of the "everywhere customer" and use AI and data analytics to boost sales.
B2B sales organizations can change how they do business to meet the changing needs of modern buyers by focusing on these key areas and welcoming the coming together of hyper-automation, digital scalability, and artificial intelligence. People who can make it through this change will not only make it through the fast-changing world of B2B sales, they will thrive in it.