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The pandemic has turned many certainties and practices upside down in recent years. In B2B sales, it has robbed sales teams of the basis of their work virtually overnight: meeting in person with the decision makers on the purchasing side!
There has indeed been a certain return to meeting in person, but “the good ol’ days” of countless trade fairs, workshops, networking events and daily appointments on location will not come again. The McKinsey study “German B2B decision maker response to the COVID-19 crisis” reveals that in future no more than only 20 to 30 percent of all B2B buyers even want to communicate personally with sales and marketing staff. Around 90 percent expect that remote communications channels will remain a permanent thing and think that they function at least just as effectively or even better than traditional sales channels. And even 95% of B2B buyers stated that they want to make purchases in self-service. Spending $ 50,000 or more is allegedly not a problem.
What are the reasons behind these preferences of B2B buyers? Three main ones mentioned are:
- Easy scheduling, simple planning capability
- Savings on travel expenses and time
- Greater efficiency
The overwhelming majority of customers from companies and agencies thus demand digital approaches from B2B sales. They want to be able to inform themselves digitally about products and services, prefer to communicate digitally and are prepared to make purchases on self-service platforms. In this context, sales over and above the annual radio budget of an average local or regional advertiser are definitely possible.
Salesteams setzt diese Erwartungshaltung unter Druck, denn welche Sendegruppe verfügt beispielsweise bereits über einen elektronischen Shop? Gleichzeitig bieten sich hier aber sehr viele Chancen für die Zukunft. Bisher wurden Sales-Aktivitäten meist proaktiv von der Vertriebsabteilung nach dem Push-Prinzip ausgelöst. Nun wollen Kundinnen und Kunden Kaufimpulse nach dem Pull-Prinzip selbst veranlassen.
These expectations are exerting pressure on sales teams because what broadcaster already has its own electronic shop, for example? Yet, at the same time, this is precisely where there are a number of opportunities for the future. In the past, sales activities were usually initiated proactively by the sales department following the push principle. Customers now, however, want to initiate buying impulses themselves in accordance with the pull principle.
What needs to be done now to utilize this pull principle for one’s own company? First of all, the customer journey of the company’s clientele should be examined in as much detail as possible and documented. What actually goes on in the three sales phases of Presales, Sales, and Aftersales needs to be known. It is then assessed whether all touch points of these customer journeys could potentially take place digitally. The company’s website, presence on social media, and sales staff on LinkedIn, Xing, Facebook, YouTube and more must be adapted to the new more extensive need for information. Are white papers, blogs, articles, pricing information available as downloads?
All communications channels between external and internal contacts and partners can be analyzed. Are the standard video conferencing tools available to everyone and do they know how to use them? Potential and existing customers may perhaps want to use scheduling software to set up video calls with their contacts in sales, product management and campaign management.
Customer portals are often well-suited for digital communication with existing contractual partners . As far as the company is concerned, customer portals can just as easily be used to put confidential information and specific offers proactively on the platform as well as any data relevant to an order such as contracts and even invoices. Customer can access information, place orders, or ask questions per chat function – for example, regarding the details of specific projects - at any time whenever they feel like it and have time.
An online shop may sound strange to radio marketers. But if customers are prepared to spend a lot in self-service, this is an idea that should also be considered for selling audio advertising. Market research can be used to ask customers what they think about this. And, this may possibly be a soft gateway to being able to book only certain service packages or seconds in a last-minute auction. In private radio, in particular, ready-to-book packages for radio advertising, special forms of advertising or events are very common. I am thinking here of traffic or weather report sponsoring, second packages with the right to postpone or shift a campaign, ticket prize draws or party DJ packages.
Anyone worried about revealing prices to all and sundry – including the competition – can make fast and uncomplicated purchasing of these kinds of offerings available only to existing customers, for example, on their own customer portal. When it comes to repeat orders from existing customers, it truly makes sense to offer self-service options!
Naturally, other platforms that offer the automatic or programmatic sale of your advertising inventory are also tools important to digital sales. In other types of media, such as DOOH, Display, Video, Addressable TV or movie theaters, trading between DSPs and SSPs is already everyday practice. Even advertising in print magazines and daily newspapers can be purchased from agencies in the meantime without any contact to the publisher’s sales team. Radio still has a long way to go here, but the goal is clear.
Some station managers are bound to run into initial resistance from their own sale force when implement these kinds of digital strategies. Objections such as “But our regional customers still want to meet up with me personally” or “Radio advertising without in person sales is in need of too much explanation” are sure to be heard. My recommendation is two-fold:
1. Check what is actually behind the objections. Is the team afraid of becoming superfluous at some point or losing influence? Which (regular)customers are among the 20 to 30% who continue to prefer personal contact to all other communications channels with B2B sales staff? Do we already have enough information material that easily explain our products and services so that customers can “educate” themselves?
2. Address and work through the points above. It is not about taking points of contact with customers and good personal relationships away from the sales team. Quite the opposite. It is about establishing new – digital – contacts and adequately and satisfactorily meeting modern customer needs.
This transformation processes require the meeting of several conditions to be successful:
- Staff skills – continuing education in digital technologies and strategies being the key word here
- Knowing what the customer wants – market research and a CRM system that is maintained with excellence and can be analyzed and which everyone at the company from the receptionist to the events department uses can be helpful
- Attention to all touch points in the customer journey
- A digital strategy for the entire sales division
- The courage to venture along new paths and the resilience to stick with the process even if individual ideas don’t catch on immediately
The sales department can seek help from external sources for its endeavor to become a more digital B2B sales and marketing division, but the company’s own marketing department must necessarily be involved. Marketing has long been concerned with automation. Further experiences of colleagues, for example, with digital purchases of media or with social media platforms can help. Together, they need to determine which processes need to be re-structured together – from lead generation to customer loyalty and who can impact the customer’s purchase decision and how.
Yours, Andrea Anders
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