"The explosion of data available on the web (social networks, blogs, press ...) upsets the codes of B2B sales. New purchasing behaviors, digitalisation of society, all-powerful customers, ultra-competition, globalization. The commercial function is now at the heart of the whirlwind of the digital revolution. » Loïc Deo Van, ByPath co-founder
Big data, inbound marketing, artificial intelligence, ... The arsenal of sales people 3.0 is undergoing a real change and is growing every day. As a real lever for prospecting and customer loyalty, these new tools invite us to rethink the commercial relationship as a whole in order to sell smarter.
To what extent are new technologies, and especially marketing tools and their optimization, transforming traditional business techniques?
In this article, an inventory of operational changes in the commercial function driven by the massive digitalization of the profession!
"Before, it was the responsibility of the salesman to go to the prospects. Today, marketing is a lever, so we provide them with leads, business contacts. Indeed, inbound marketing today makes it possible to predict the needs of customers, to target prospects because we know which customer came to visit the site, which pages he consulted and how long ... "Hervé de Riberolles, Head of International Operations, Primeum agency
Inbound marketing has deeply changed the sales people relationship with its targeted customers. Thanks in particular to sophisticated visitor tracking systems on websites, it is now possible to identify potential customers quickly and accurately, as well as their potential needs.
Reducing this new technique to a simple production and distribution of quality content in order to attract more and more visitors is a mistake. Generate quality leads, get information on the number of visitors to a site, establish an accurate profile of buyers, analyze the pages viewed and the length of visit on each or count the number of clicks on certain items are only a tiny part of the possibilities offered by inbound marketing.
The idea is to target very precisely the content offer in order to attract the good visitors, who will then become prospects and ultimately customers. As and when visits to a site, the behavior of Internet users is analyzed allowing to have a sharp knowledge of their needs. Indeed, all visitor interactions are recorded as data and collected in order to be compiled among others in CRM for sales. The goal is to attract the customer through specific content, to know it better by analyzing its fingerprint and finally to offer a service in line with its identified needs.
The concept of “lead nurturing” is to collect targeted information about visitors as they visit and interact with each other on a corporate site. The process is based on automated processes that allow the customer to progressively inform the company of its expectations. This technique, based on "progressive forms", is increasingly used to capture commercial leads. Thus, the visitor, recognized by the system, is offered at each of its passages on the site, a different form of information collection.
In view of the changes brought about by these new methods of prospecting, the business of commercial has strongly digitized. The "good salesman" must understand the problem of the customer, understand his needs, his fears and his expectations if he wants to succeed in helping him.
Nevertheless, in this quest for customer need, the behavior and attitude of the salesperson have changed. The challenge today is to capture the customer's attention, to analyze their digital information left on the internet and to be able to provide a personalized solution.
Indeed, a customer who, for example, downloads a white paper on a specific topic or subscribes to a newsletter sends a strong signal to the sales peoplel. New technologies are giving a new status to the sales professional, who now has access to much more information about the customer than in the past. It is still necessary to know how to read, analyze and rebound in the face of all the information collected by these new systems!
"Knowing how to interpret and exploit the increasingly rich data collected in the CRM to bring added value at the time of the" closing "(signature phase) of the sale is a challenge for sales people. We are touching here at a crucial point in any process of digital transformation: the necessary support for change to facilitate the adaptation of employees to new ways of working "Yann Gourvennec, Expert in Digital Strategy
It is important that salespeople use the leads generated by these new technologies. In order not to lose any business information and to take maximum advantage of the mass of information collected by the system, it is necessary that the salespeople appropriate the use of CRM and understand the issues of a well-fed customer database.
A lead can only be used in a short time, so if the salesperson does not quickly contact the customer having asked on a specific point, the conclusion of the sale is compromised. Today the salesman is over-informed and thus enjoys a new posture with customers finding themselves able to predict which company will be interested in its services. Nevertheless, to guarantee the optimization of the leads collected, sales representatives must complete the CRM in real time and in a very precise manner. Thus, exchanges between colleagues will be easier and the relevance of the proposed commercial action will be all the stronger.
New compensation systems for sales people are at the heart of their objectives, to correctly and regularly complete the CRM, the reactive tracking of "hot" leads, or to keep the customer database up-to-date. The quality of the information provided and their regularity are an integral part of the KPIs set for new salespeople who are increasingly encouraged to share their business information!