A Tunnel With No Light or A Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

The Marketing & Sales Functions Within The New Digital Normal

Today’s world is totally different from where we all were only back few months ago! During the past 3 months B2B players and leaders have totally shifted the way they were addressing employers/employees relationships, supplier and clients research and catch. And you know what? The new way is definitely sexier that the previous one! The change has happened and there is no way, at least to me and the ones I’ve been talking to, to go back to the old “normal”. 

Digital transformation has taken the lead and is either about being able to adapt business models and way and conducting enterprises or being left behind in a world that is now moving fast towards a digital future. B2B and B2C leaders have been caught unprepared, somehow, by the digital adoption speed, from the consumers/clients side, missing the point that is all about “mirroring”. What you want, search, track is, when you change your shoes from provider to consumer, what your digital clients are looking for. In other words, let’s stop thinking too much and start listening more accurately.  

The Unique Opportunity Within Digital Transformation 

Instead of being afraid of changes let’s embrace the change and leverage on its unique characteristic, which is, engage proactively with your customers being them businesses or consumers. 

For years we have seen businesses, more their marketers, creating stereotypes or avatar of “heroes”, get the consumers to adopt them and finally give the consumers what the businesses wanted them to ask.  The journey was: “Brand to Awareness to Emulation Desire to Want/Purchase”

In this new normal, leveraging on the digital transformation wave, we have a chance to listen to our consumers, businesses or consumers, understand what exactly they want and give it to them. I’ve been advising property developers and conducting market studies and researches for many years. Most of the time, I’ve seen developers designing, selling and building what they had in mind not what their purchasers were actually looking for. 

Businesses that are able to leverage on the current digital shift to create values for their customers, will, at the end, be the winners in building their own value. I’ve found an extremely interesting article on this topic in INSEAD website, click here to read it. The authors, in a very appropriate manner, have identified three main technological shifts which assisted businesses to “leverage on technologies, build competitive advantage and achieve profitable growth” 

Engagement: Everything Starts With The Art of Listening  

In the past while “Marketing” mostly drove the market’s attention towards “The Product” providing content, messaging and all the “shouting” needed, “Sales” owned the customers and the dialog/relationship with them. Once the customer was caught in the net, Sales had to cook it till ready to buy The Product. 

Pulling Marketing and Sales outside their respective boxes, we shall now see the latter listening to the customers first, passing over the message to the business owner and, from there, down to Marketing which shall become an integral part of Sales through a full automation of the initial communication stages. Where in the past sales personnel were investing huge amount of time in looking for customers and nurturing and finally convincing them, the new “Digital Automated Normal” sees Sales moving on a 80% already convinced prospect. 

I’ve been public speaker for many years and one habit I’ve always had, has been and is to understand where the pain points are for my audience and doing my best to address them, or at least offer different views which might be opening their eyes. 

Listening, understanding and offering solutions is how this new function of “Sales/Marketing/Sales” shall be addressing the market in future, doesn’t matter which service or product are you dealing with.

Creating Positive and Unique Customer Experiences 

“Give them what they want” should be the inspiring principle behind future success stories. Think about how painful is, nowadays, the following process: “research – find – evaluate - decide to buy – receive - find out the unexpected – complain – resolve the issue”. If all of this could be resolved by giving our digital shoppers a dashboard where to find all the possible, or at least most of, solutions. Customer experience must be there, it has to be the most pleasant possible and, above all, has to provide real solutions!

The following it’s a “personal experience” (bad one) case study story. Eight months ago I decided to purchase a small drone, roughly USD500, through an on-line famous e-commerce shop. Received the drone one week before expected, very good experience! Unfortunately the drone had some technical issues. I immediately contacted the e-shop and have been re-directed to the producer as the e-shop told me, we are only in charge of e-sales and do not have technical assistance. After that I’ve been in touch with the producer for almost 6 months and my issue has not yet been resolved! The morale is, do not treat your customer as a rubber ball as it might be getting out of your control and producing unexpected results which might be damaging your brand or reputation. I will never recommend to anyone to purchase a drone from this brand! 

Communicate a truthful message, maintain what you promise and give your customers a positive experience, they will follow you forever!

The Digital Transformation Pivot

I’ve been studying and analysing and studying numbers and data all my life and I know how important they are towards the “hunt for solutions”. Data-powered or based solutions can only give positive out-comes. The issue here is that the private sectors, all around the world, keep on doing their best to track and obtain raw data which, unfortunately, most the time are not available.  

Big-data, their collection and consequent dissemination are the strategic and critical factor to a better future. The New Normal “Sales-Marketing-Sales” tripod stands and lives on data collection and their analysis. Starting from the top, governments, till down to the end users data need to be collected and read to make the whole process simple and easy as it should be. This appear to be the biggest obstacle in terms of adoption speed as the top will need to make the first move. Let’s wait and hope this digital marketing pivot will be made available sooner than later.

The article which originated this further analysis of mine, go here for the full content, highlight four basic steps to be walked through in each of the three digital transformation shifts above.

#1 The Where To Play: mapping the B2B procurement and supply-chain interactions and solutions adoption process. Digitalize the mapping and the direction is the correct one!

#2 The How To Win: Innovation and Customer Experiences addressing the needs with an “omni-customer” digitalised mindset.

#3 The What To Do: speedy problem solving solutions are a must! With nowadays innovation speed there is not past or present but only future. The window of an opportunity becomes narrower every hour.

#4 The Who To Win With: The Game’s Name has changed, no more R&D (which is still needed but not anymore in a strategic and lone way as before) but EDT & TM or experience development team managed by transformation experts.

Understanding The Most Valuable & Available Asset, Focus On It “Beginning to End”: People

Technology and the digital transformation which goes along with it, without a dedicated support by any organisation’s people are totally useless. People are the one generating the pain, finding a solution and buying it. The process is a journey that goes back and forth in this way “user-provider-user”. If the marketing/sales and, somehow, business model can be adapted to this new reality then, all the chances of being successful are there. 

Are businesses all around the world having alternative options? The reply is, digital transformation and its full adoption are no more an option but a must is a business wants to remain successful and thrive in the years to come. 

Welcome to The New Normal!

About the Author

The opinions expressed in this article are solely of the author, Dr Daniele Gambero. He has been an expatriate to Malaysia from Italy, since 1998 and has more than 35 years of real estate experience. He is the co-founder and group CEO of REI Group of Companies, the deputy president of the Malaysia Proptech Association, international sought-after speaker and bestselling author. 

He can be reached at: [email protected]