Bringing the acquisition of new customers into the digital age
Acquiring new customers in the digital age
Digital wins: Acquiring new customers
A lot has already happened before you become active in the acquisition of new customers. The prospective customer already has a clear idea of which software solution she needs to support her team even better in their day-to-day business. Necessary interfaces, implementation effort and costs: she has already informed herself in detail about all of these points online before contacting you directly as a provider. This makes her the ideal customer for any sales force! All the more annoying if the opportunity is missed in the end. But that's exactly what happens every day. Leads suffer from excessively long response times from the sales team, have to endure unspecific initial meetings or simply get stuck in the lead pipeline. If you want to do better, you need to create transparency about the digital customer journey of potential customers and apply this knowledge consistently. Where do you stand in terms of digital customer acquisition?
What level of transparency have you achieved?
The days of lengthy sales processes to acquire new customers are over. Even with complex products or services, interested parties expect a quick way to close the deal. After all, they urgently need a solution to their problem and once the contract has been signed, there is usually a time-consuming implementation phase. There is therefore no room for delayed decisions and discussions in a continuous loop. It is therefore up to the sales team to make the right offers right from the start and to remove all possible hurdles on the joint path to closing the deal. Conversation Intelligence supports the team in driving the opportunity forward with every touchpoint
The future of B2B sales is hybridsays consultant McKinsey & Company
- B2B decision-makers are using more and more channels to interact with potential suppliers (in 2016 there were 5, today there are 10 on average).
- E-commerce has also overtaken face-to-face sales as the most effective channel in the B2B sector.
- Over 90% of companies are convinced that their current sales model is more effective than before the coronavirus pandemic.
- Digital self-service remains an equally relevant channel alongside direct and remote interaction until the deal is closed and beyond.
- Digital (62%) and hybrid sales teams (60%) are growing significantly faster than inside (27%) and field teams (11%).
The challenge for B2B sales teams is to start the first appointment with the best possible preparation. What information has the lead already consumed, what offers have they already received from marketing? This is the only way to ensure coherent communication that creates added value. Even if leads are already interacting directly with a salesperson, they continue to use digital information channels in parallel. From a sales perspective, the information from all channels must merge to form a picture of the customer journey in order to successfully acquire new customers. The decisive factor here is how well you use the possibilities of Sales 4.0 for this purpose.
Sales 4.0
Analyzing needs, identifying relevant offers and addressing potential customers as quickly as possible: Sales 4.0 describes the use of digital methods for precisely this purpose. Information from various sources must be collected, linked and evaluated for this purpose.
5 impulses for the digital acquisition of new customers
Full digital transparency about the behavior of potential customers: This goal can be translated into sales practice on the basis of several points:
1. marketing and sales alignment
Marketing and sales must know and accept their interfaces and responsibilities. Instead of local optimization on area-specific key figures, they must work towards a common goal: Acquiring the most attractive new customers possible.
2. consistent customer data
The two areas share correct and up-to-date customer data as a basis for all activities. The CRM system serves as a single source of truth. From the first digital interaction, all relevant information on the touchpoints is recorded across all channels.
3. evaluate interests in a targeted manner
What conclusions can be drawn from the information on the behavior of leads about their needs and interests? The better a team can read the digital traces, the more effective the strategies for acquiring new customers will be.
4. derive strategies for acquiring new customers
Who in the team talks to the lead and when? And about which topics? The measures for acquiring new customers must not be a coincidence, but must result logically from the previous analyses. A functioning lead scoring system sets the pace for the organization and coordinates the interaction of the various channels.
5. working with the database
Customer needs change, as does the preference for certain communication channels or the mix of customer segments. The organization must therefore continuously analyse the database. This allows overarching trends to be identified and translated into necessary organizational changes: Your B2B sales strategy is constantly evolving.
With these principles, decision-makers ensure that their organization is well positioned for digital customer acquisition. But there is another aspect to this: high-quality data and networked systems make it possible to automate certain sales activities.
Do you use your information for more automation?
Manual processes still prevail in many areas of sales. Notes on slips of paper, quotations in the form of text documents or tables - all of this reflects a lack of standardization and poorly developed software support. There is no question that this does not meet the requirements of digital customer acquisition.
However, we see that in addition to experience and personal intuition, the data-driven component is also becoming increasingly important in sales: Art meets science in sales. Similar to what is already practiced in marketing today, sales can also benefit greatly from modern IT tools when acquiring new customers. Particularly in the areas of quotation preparation, order management and post-sales, system support can relieve salespeople so that they have more capacity available for their core tasks: Understanding customer needs in direct discussions and building functioning relationships.
