The future of sales is forecasted to be a permanent transformation of sales strategies, processes, and resource allocation, shifting from a seller-centric to a buyer-centric orientation and from analog to hyper-automated, digital-first customer engagements.
The pandemic is just one of several seismic shifts that marketing teams have been navigating. Consumer expectations are evolving. The number of decision-makers who are actively involved in purchasing decisions is increasing. Buyers are becoming more receptive to self-service interactions. As the world awakens to a post-pandemic environment, businesses must ensure that virtual selling is as effective and profitable as in-person selling. This requires a change in marketing tools, a shift in skill sets, and operations transformation from silos to an integrated sales program.
This, in turn, needs a close integration of sales and marketing, embracing digital transformation, and a dynamic, agile, and highly effective content strategy.
Also Read: Navigating The Uncertainty in Today’s Marketing Landscape
Using content to transition from engagement to trust
There is no doubt that the B2B buyer experience has shifted, especially given that most B2B technology buyers are millennials. Analyst reports and industry rankings are less important to these younger buyers than previous generations. These new buyers place a premium on experience, preferring free trials, demos, and user reviews. Marketing teams must equip sales teams with customer-centric and experiential content that fosters customer trust. With alignment across content and sales teams, a personalized content engine integrated into a sales enablement tool can be exponentially more effective, ensuring that every customer contact point is an opportunity to communicate value and ROI.
Delivering content that is relevant to the evolving buyer’s journey
B2B buyers are looking for a vendor who will act as a trusted partner both initially and on an on-going basis. Providing generic marketing materials to sales reps is ineffective and a potential waste of time, but it also represents a significant missed opportunity to communicate value to various parts of an organization and develop multiple champions within complex buying teams. Content is critical for demonstrating value, differentiating oneself from competitors, and communicating that the organization is just as invested in the customers’ success as they are. To develop internal advocates from customers, work to develop a holistic approach to interactions that takes into account the following:
- The company culture and values of a customer,
- The ease with which the solution or product can be integrated into existing systems and processes
- The data and metrics required for each member of the purchasing team to become a champion,
- Whether industry-wide or internal, unique pain points can be resolved in a singular manner (and how).
Commitment to customer success contributes significantly to the establishment of valuable new and ongoing relationships. Indeed, customers who believe the information they receive from a vendor will aid them in their purchasing task are nearly three times as likely to purchase a larger deal with less regret.
Also Read: Four Strategies for Boosting Customer Retention
Cohesive organization
Too frequently, content marketing operates as a separate entity within a larger organization. According to Gartner’s ‘B2B Buying Journey & its Implication for Sales’ report, only 25% of organizations will integrate sales, marketing, and customer experience by 2023. Savvy businesses recognize the latent opportunity to align departments and ensure that all departments share goals, metrics, and approaches. When planning for 2022, 35% of CMOs identified marketing alignment with other functions as their top priority.
Future proof with tech
Without a doubt, even with the best intentions, ensuring that the organization’s technology stack works cohesively presents its own set of challenges. Often, sales teams rely on legacy CRM systems, while marketing teams gravitate toward cloud-based solutions, requiring both teams to prioritize familiar technology over unfamiliar ones. If the entire organization cannot be consolidated into a single CRM, then data sharing across a data lake or warehouse becomes critical – and profitable. Sales and customer satisfaction increase when sales teams have access to recommendation logic and use historical and industry insights during customer engagements. This shared data used to create and manage content and provide customer facing teams with data-driven insights, will boost customer engagement and sales.
Sales and marketing integration and alignment lead to successful B2B sales organizations. To maximize efficiency, effectiveness, and revenue, sales organizations must take a holistic approach to content, communication, and customer engagement.
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