For sales leaders contemplating how to react, taking care of their people and customers must be a top priority. Even as they manage that reality, sales leaders also need to adjust how their organisations sell in the face of new customer habits and trying economic times. In many ways, the changes in customer behaviour are an acceleration of digital trends that were in motion before the pandemic hit. We are at a digital inflection point, where B2B tech sales operations will look fundamentally different from what they were before the pandemic.
Current situation picture - McKinsey interviewed 3'600 B2B decision makers in April 2020. Here 3 take outs
The shift in spend - While companies are generally reducing spend, a sizeable number are increasing or maintaining it. Quoting: "53% of large B2B companies expect to increase or maintain the programmed corporate expenses". This thread of optimism carried through across sectors, with those in pharma, medical products, technology, and media expecting the greatest increase in spend, while travel and global energy and materials expected the least.
The shift to digital - B2B companies see digital interactions as two to three times more important to their customers than traditional sales interactions. this is similar to what we’ve seen in the B2C environment. Live chat, for example, is an option that delivers speed, transparency, and expertise
The move to remote selling - Almost 90% of sales have moved to a videoconferencing (VC)/phone/web sales model + more than half believe this is equally or more effective than sales models used before COVID19.
What should be your focus for effective sales?
In a nutshell: There is a great deal of uncertainty, but we are seeing plenty of signals that indicate an acceleration of previous trends: omni-channel selling, inside sales and tech-enabled selling (quoting BCG - Leading Sales Through the COVID-19 Crisis ) Extended answer:
The obvious - Traditional B2B marketing techniques such as events, conferences, meeting, trade shows and summits will not be possible for the foreseeable future.
Strategies
With customers working from home, they will spend more time online, so it may be time to shift to a digital marketing model. Some examples in the follows
Webinars - this may be an opportunity to migrate live events to digital ones such as webinars, online discussions and virtual community building. Good rules for a successful webinar organisation include: a/ Define a specific (compelling) topic to cover with a specific crowd you'd like to invite (e.g. the future of HVAC system for EV car manufacturers). b/ The shorter the better. People tend to lose attention in a 2 hours webinar. Keep your webinar within 30 min if possible. c/ Actively invite people to join (e.g. on Linkedin). d/ Involve associations and field experts to rise the level of the event (e.g. for the automotive event, I invited the Electric Auto Association - the oldest EV organisation in the US). e/ Publish your event on platforms like Eventbrite or Evensi. This will allow participants to get a slot notification on their calendar + the event will be visible to a large crowd.
Account Based Marketing (ABM) - Outreach is the only way to guarantee direct targeting must-win logos that matter to your business. This is one of the reasons Account Based Marketing is such a trending topics over the last few years (Google trend report over the word "account based marketing" ). Instead of casting a wide net with their lead-generation efforts, marketers using ABM work closely with sales to identify key prospects and then tailor customised programs and messages to the buying team within target accounts.
Up-sell existing customers - Sales can double down on existing customers to drive product adoption and land up-selling and cross-selling opportunities. The key role here is called Customer Success Manager and his duty is to follow up to ensure that customers are getting maximum value from the product, and ultimately becoming a power user the brand. Customers who use products more extensively are "stickier" - they stay with a company longer - and tend to buy more. Customer Success Management creates value along three dimensions: X - Volume expansion - e.g. adding more units or transactions Y - Up-sell Expansion - e.g. constructing a "price lineup" of good-better-best offerings encourages customers to migrate to higher-value product tiers Z - Cross-Sell Expansion - e.g. Workday offers products to manage complementary processes such as HR and finance. The customer barrier to adoption of each successive cross-sell is lower.
The Covid-19 pandemic poses a major challenge in the short run, but it also offers the opportunity to transform the sales organisation. This will help companies come out of the crisis stronger.
About Holborn Consulting
Holborn is a Sales advisory boutique in London, specialised in supporting high-tech firms in the B2B market development.
Credits: Crunchbase, Forbes, BCG and McKinsey.
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