In a remote market in Wuhan, patient zero was admitted for what would be known as one of the deadliest viruses that would claim millions of lives, across the globe. As this blog is being penned, the virus, in many parts of the world, hasn’t receded yet. The economic shortcomings of the situation have been massive and continue to filch.
Simultaneously, paradigm shifts in businesses ensued in the form of virtual commerce. B2B saw a heightened impact as traditional CJX or customer journey experience processes upended. With the economy and businesses facing massive disruptions, achievements were stunted beyond recognition.
The situation, however, did bring innovation along with it, where the ethos of buying shifted from the physical face to face to the virtual platform. Modern sales and revenue leaders began facilitating buying decisions online while maximising value and eliminating the unnecessary. Modified human attitudes and behaviours forced organisations to respond, leading to alternative opportunities. Company leaders now wanted to create adaptability and resilience in business through the virtual platform that could also be avant-garde and long-term.
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” Arundhati Roy, Financial Times
To create profitable growth in the new world, sales engagement strategies had to be reimagined with adaptability running in the forefront. Now, even predictable patterns would be unpredictable. Modern engagement systems used informed data to build relationships, unlike traditional selling systems where decisions were driven by intuition. A new sales engagement strategy meant virtual growth enablement and revenue orchestration by defining customer needs and expectations, with roadmaps designed for an eventual return to normalcy.
“We’ve witnessed stunning shifts in customer interaction volume, types and transactions. The timeline for developing relationships with customers is now significantly compressed. As customers navigate these uncertain times, demonstrating empathy through digital channels has become the new standard of engagement.” Dawn Anderson Senior Managing Director, Global Lead, Customer, Sales , Service, Accenture
Digital engagement is the new default. The pandemic caused a spike in digital usage, and corporate investment shifted to digital experiences where companies began to mirror new ways of working. As a result, basic digital expectations of the customers would also be transposed, and will continue to rise even post-pandemic.
Leveraging opportunities presented by disruption
Evident digitalisation is a direct product of the disruption and as indicated above, will inevitably be followed post-crisis as well. Still, Gartner has put together some pivotal factors that must be adopted by sales leaders, in order of their intensity to fortify their sales engagement strategy. The outcome also indicates that there should be a constant multi-functional alliance between departments such as operations, sales, enablement and marketing for the designing, deployment and workability of the strategy.
Scalability
Starting up a new product or launching a new venture, by itself, can be challenging. With the pandemic, you have nothing less than an uphill struggle. Yet, with a potent customer journey experience, sellers can overcome the challenges of saleability through hyper-personalised offers, driven by insights. They can also build cohesive relationships to create successful go-to-market strategies.
Besides, there is no single solution for every B2B query – all of them have their own unique set of opportunities and challenges that have to be addressed. Therefore, sellers must deliver deeper, while understanding theneed to scale, which is imperative in a pandemic situation. More targeted touchpoints must be gathered to deliver experiences, contributing to customer satisfaction. While scalability and flexibility were always seen as part of the sales lifecycle, we can say that its true meaning was realised only during the pandemic. Relationship-based interactions have taken precedence over mere transactions thus making exceptional and forward-thinking customer engagement models through the digital imperative.
Dynamic data and insights
Customer needs can no longer be addressed with just internal data. It must be a combination of both internal and external to make fully informed business decisions with a 360-degree view of the customer even at the first point of engagement. For successful B2B sales, sellers must reflect on the latest data insights while identifying new growth opportunities and driving fresher revenue streams.
Customer health and management becomes extremely crucial to prevent turnovers. This can only be achieved through data and insights, which are valuable resources to understand customer gaps. The entire organisation must maximise visibility and transparency while putting all the pieces together and delivering experiences that matter. As a business, you must embrace innovation and growth along with personalised customer attention to achieve your objectives during and after the pandemic.
Future-proof your platform
Dramatic shifts in the digital engagement platforms, and the demands for monetisation, require unprecedented agility in enabling platforms to exceed the needs of the customer. Digital fluency is a turning point – however, this puts power directly into the hands of the customer allowing them to dictate relationships. Sellers must respond accordingly while demonstrating that they have leveraged the capabilities of the digital platform to its fullest, during these uncertain times to effectively meet customer demands. Launching new market propositions, addressing product and service challenges with absolute agility are supreme to convince the new buyer that insistence can be achieved pandemic or not.
