In my previous blog post, I have referred to the way that digitalisation is affecting Sales and that it is high time for sales organisations to review “analogue” approaches, in order to be more successful in this new era.  Today, I’m going to share some ideas on how this may be achieved.

Primarily, we need to remind ourselves that in this information-overloaded world, what eventually is going to differentiate us in the eyes of a potential or existing customer is the quality of our digital content and not the quantity.  As always, what the clients want is to be understood and to solve their problems, but they also expect to be educated, to feel special and to know beforehand about new product/service opportunities and offerings.  Webinars, videos, white papers, infographics etc. are powerful tools in the hands of marketing, only if their content is relevant, credible, and transparent adding value throughout the phases of their buying journey. 

With regards to social media, companies are increasingly investing time and money, to attract customers, communicate with them and monitor the way that they behave online.  According to recent research from Alamaki and Korpela (Digital transformation and value-based activities, 2021), most B2B buyers believe that social media channels are less important, as there is too much information and therefore are considered from many of them a waste of time, but at the same time are perceived as useful for networking and getting up to date with business trends.

 I believe that we need to take seriously into account these findings and to adjust our social media strategy accordingly.  Moreover, we need to constantly remind ourselves that face to face meetings with customers are the main social selling opportunities, so they must be exploited in more productive ways.        

Last week we also talked about how this new digital world has “nurtured” networks and “ecosystems” that are replacing the traditional customer-supplier relationships.  In modern B2B sales we are not talking any more about stand-alone transactions, but about complex interactions between companies.  This means that the role of non-salespeople from our organizations (specialists) as value creators is becoming more and more important in this new environment.  Hence, as salespeople we need to be rapidly shifting towards becoming value facilitators, by adding non-sales experts in sales meetings that will have their one special role in creating value to the customer.   

Finally, we need also to invest in the on-going training and education of our sales organisations, in order to be able to face all these challenges.  To my eyes, this is the most important action that we must take or else we will just be “analogue” salespeople trying to sell in a digital world.