?? Integrating Digital Tools into Every Stage of Your Sales Strategy

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By Frank V. Cespedes and Georg Krentzel | March 07, 2024

Digital tools powered by relevant data can help to generate customer insights, better allocate sales resources, facilitate channel interactions, and improve brand value. But, like any tool, digital systems are only as good as their users. It’s not just data, but information relevant to sales and channel partners; and it’s not just information, but management and process initiatives that translate that information into marketplace results.

Smart companies are combining human teams with digital tools like AI to improve sales productivity, quality time with customers, and transaction costs. Based on research and consulting with many companies, this article examines both sides of the buyer-seller exchange and offers examples of solutions that combine good management and digital systems.

On the buyer side, suppliers and buyers interact through web search, supplier websites, procurement portals, user forums, video conferences, phone, and in-person meetings. Buying, especially in B2B markets, is not a linear “pipeline” of prospects marching through a “funnel.” Understanding how customers navigate channels in your market and how to interact with them is now central to effective selling.

It’s the sales force that does this in most situations. Most B2B products are part of a wider usage system for the buyer. This means integrating the product or service with and within that system. Also, buyers must justify a purchase to others in their organization who are also competing for their share of a limited budget. Some of?the combination of economics, solution integration, and organizational politics can be handled online, but most buying journeys also rely on knowledgeable sales help.

On the seller side, solution selling and account management still matter, but how this is done effectively is changing. For example, the nature of customer references has changed. In the past, a seller would cite a few satisfied customers (whose satisfaction might be tied to a price discount, not product performance). Now, customers get others’ purchase and usage experience through review sites like Power Reviews and community sites like SAP Developer Network and Marketo’s Marketing Nation. Similarly, selling now means working effectively with third-party channel partners that are influential during and after the sale — or, to use the fashionable term, building and managing the relevant “ecosystem” of collaborators.

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