Top B2B Online Takeaways and Tips

Last week I attended B2B Online in Chicago, which brought together some of the top thought leaders across the B2B market. This event was filled with leaders in manufacturing, distribution, professional services, and tech coming together to rub elbows, share best practices, and collaborate on some of the most pressing topics in B2B!

There was so much to take in in 3 days that I wanted to put together a recap of the top topics, tips, and key insights from the conference that everyone in B2B should know.

1. Driving Digital Transformation & Getting Buy-in

Be the innovator and shaker, but do it with business outcomes in mind.

Depending on where you fall in terms of digital maturity, it's super important to know how leadership views the idea of digital transformation. Start with aligning your executive team on what "Digital" or "Digital Transformation" means to them. You'll find that every leader has a different definition.

Think in terms of actual business outcomes and customer impact. Identify what's working in and outside of the industry to drive new outcomes. How can you better support your customers and drive ROI for the organization? Develop a roadmap that includes quick win initiatives to start driving impact upfront (like improved search functionality online). Engage with business stakeholders and make them a part of the planning so the organization is aligned and excited to engage throughout each initiative.

Samer Shehadeh gave some great pointers alongside his panel (pictured below). You don't need to invest billions of dollars to go digital. Bring in the right talent in your organization, people who truly understand digital as a positive disruption. Jam Khan followed with one of the best points of the conference.

"It's not whether or not you should digitally transform, your buyer has already transformed. They're buying digitally, engaging digitally...do you have the capability to serve them." - Jam Khan

2. Data & Analytics Underpins Your Success in Digital

So many sessions mentioned Data & Analytics that it really should have had its own sessions. The quality of your D&A program will determine your ability to do almost anything worth doing.

• Clean Data: Having a strong D&A program with quality information is key to getting accurate insights and delivering impactful results. Get everyone in the org aligned on the importance of data quality and set standards for what's expected of them.
• Personalization: If you want to deliver a truly personalized experience, you need to start creating ways that data can be processed and deliver an experience that's relevant to that customer. That includes marketing content, empowering Sales to support customers, improving the eCommerce shopping experience, and much more.
• Automation (RPA/AI/ML): Data sits at the center of it all. There was a lot of talk about AI, but don't use a technology just because it's a bright shiny object. Most automation can be accomplished through RPA. Focus on the outcome you're trying to achieve, and then work backward.

3. OmniChannel: Meeting your customer where and how they want to be met

Omnichannel means you meet your customers where they want to meet and how they want to be met. Think about the different buyer journeys and develop a unified experience.

Most customers start their search online. Make sure your products/services are easy to find and easy to buy. Some customers will want to buy without ever talking to anyone. Make sure they can sign up, get credit, buy your products, and even get recommendations on products they should consider buying that similar customers bought.

The "Synchronizing Your Business for a Successful and Consistent Omni-Channel Experience" panel dove deep into this topic. They reframed the crowd's definition of Omni-channel and made it simple to understand. Create an Omnichannel strategy by first understanding what your customers need.

Create a unified customer experience across all channels. Ensure brand messaging, customer communications, content, and product experience are the same across all channels.

Create a connected experience. Customers starting online are more willing to interact with you across multiple channels when they can pick back up from where they left off. Give salespeople all the tools they need to serve their customers, like real-time insight into what that customer was shopping for and their in-cart items.

Create additional points of engagement for customers that deliver value for them and insight for you. Jamie Samide , VP of Marketing at Beacon Building Products, presented on "Putting the Customer First To Generate Value & Increase ROI" where he shared a great video of the new Beacon Pro+ mobile app that engages with customers outside of their buying cycle for insights, order tracking, order templates, past orders tied to jobs, and so much more.

Consider what your customers need and find a way to deliver it better than they asked. You should be offering instant business credit across all channels before your customers turn to your competitors who are.

4. Will Amazon Destroy Traditional Distribution?

The great debate! Brian Beck and Andy Hoar injected some much-needed humor into this conference around one of the biggest driving forces of digital in B2B. In this heated and comical debate, they discussed the real impact of Amazon in B2B. Both sides made incredibly relevant points. Between this session and the others centered around Amazon and marketplaces, there was a wealth of information available. Here are my key takeaways and thoughts:

• Amazon offers a digital experience that very few in B2B can match. Selling on Amazon and other marketplaces gives you access to new clientele. Sell to customers on Amazon and convert them to buy directly from you.
• Amazon has validated that B2B buyers want a digital buying experience that meets their needs for digital self-service. Create a self-service channel(s) to better serve your customers.
• Your customer wants to be able to search for what they need in a B2C-like experience. Leverage eCommerce, Search, PIM, and Instant B2B Credit like Credit Key at the point of sale.
• Continue to develop a unified experience with eCommerce, Sales, and In-store to offer value that Amazon can't today.
• Find and fill their gaps for customers such as product/industry expertise, personalized search, value-added services specific to your customers' needs, shipping bigger packages, providing purchase-specific recommended add-ons that they will need for the job they are doing, and more.
• Finally, if you fail to evolve, you will not make it.

5. Planning for Change with Change Management

Digital Transformation is no easy feat! To avoid delays or failed initiatives, you need to align the whole team. It's time to break down the siloes and engage stakeholders across all levels of the organization. Change management is essential to ensure that digital transformation initiatives are successful. Failure to plan for change results in going over budget, missing milestones, project delays, losing current and future customers, and complete failure.

Here are the top tips I took away from the speakers:

1. Engage with team members from every business unit that touches on your initiative. Research shows that when employees understand their role in that initiative or how it'll impact them, they are more engaged and enthusiastic.
2. Create a steering committee with members from each business unit to ensure you are thinking through the impact on each of them. This will prevent you from missing gaps in your plan and maintaining buy-in across the org.
3. Assess the current state of the organization and identify gaps through organizational readiness assessments to analyze the anticipated level of change resistance, create a roadmap for change that outlines the steps needed to reach the desired state, and implement and manage change at every level of the org.
4. Some of the tools that can help you manage change are communication plans, coaching plans, employee training plans, resistance management plans, and focus groups.

Final Thoughts...

This was one of my favorite conferences to date. We had 60+ conversations with organizations looking to offer Credit Key, with industry leaders naming us "the market leader in B2B. Conferences like these are critical to keeping up with and staying ahead of market trends. If you're not already, follow Brian Beck & Andy Hoar and subscribe to their Unwebinar series. Special thanks go out to Ryan Kulp and the whole team at Worldwide Business Research (WBR) , B2B Online , and all of the incredible thought leaders who took the time to share and collaborate.

And a final thanks to Credit Key for sending me; and to my team- James Wallen , Caroline McQuade , Kinan Alhoch , and Ben Gunderson for an enjoyable time; and the rest of our CK team who supported us in our preparation.

#b2bonline #b2bsales #leadership #dataanalytics #changemanagement #omnichannel #personalization #b2bpayments #b2becommerce #digitaltransformation