In an era of rapid digital transformation, it’s crucial for manufacturers to modernize their sales processes to ensure they’re meeting buyers’ needs.
The relationship between buyers and sellers continues to evolve as technology facilitates the majority of communication. Gartner reports that 80% of the interactions between buyers and sellers will occur through digital formats by 2025.
Businesses can no longer reliably count on quarterly golf outings, or taking a spin through the old rolodex, to close a new book of business.
Modern sellers need to be equipped with powerful tools that help them prioritize and target the accounts that will make the biggest impact.
A modern sales process will help your teams work smarter, cost less money, and bring in more revenue. Let’s take a look at two quick ways any manufacturer can modernize their selling process.
Gain Deeper Insights into Buying Teams
Modern buyers are doing tons of research. They’re searching terms, reading your website, and checking out industry news. But the problem is that most of the research they’re conducting — up to 70%, according to Forrester — is done online and anonymously.
In addition, modern B2B buying teams are often made up of up to ten different people, sometimes more. If your sellers aren’t reaching buyers during that 70% of research being done anonymously — and gaining visibility into the entire buying team — then they’ll miss crucial revenue moments.
To give your sellers a better chance of winning the deal, you need to uncover the entire buying team and understand which personas are driving the decision.
Using a combination of data enrichment, intent signals, and persona mapping, your sellers can unlock a complete picture of their target accounts — and even uncover key contacts they didn’t know existed.
This powerful combo also helps to overcome hurdles where one buying unit stonewalls your efforts, while another is actually actively searching for a solution you offer.
Modern sales organizations understand the entire account they’re targeting, the makeup of the buying team, and the level of engagement with each member of that team.
Get into Deals Earlier for a Better Chance of Winning
Even if you have a complete picture of your target account’s buying team, one of the hardest parts of the modern selling process is understanding when to reach out. Working off a static account list and calling each one at regular intervals is unlikely to move the needle.
Sellers need to avoid wasting precious time calling and reaching out to accounts that have no realistic chance of buying. Some of the reasons a buyer might not be ready include:
- Recently signed a contract with a competitor
- Not in the right stage of the buying journey
- No budget remaining
To increase the efficiency of your sellers, ensure they’re able to enter a conversation with a buyer at the right time. For instance, a whopping 60% of buyers only want to speak with sellers during the Consideration stage.
Prioritize your selling activities around real-time data on buyers who are interested in your services. Using the right technology, your teams can get a quick snapshot of which buyers are researching critical terms, visiting key webpages, and engaging with your content the most — all before they’ve finished their morning coffee.
Getting into deals at the right time isn’t only key for outbound efforts (emails, calls, campaigns to a buyer), either. Your teams need to be able to handle inbound requests (buyers reaching out to you) in a timely manner as well; otherwise, they risk losing out to a competitor that responds quickly.
With only so many hours in a day, and finite resources to support a certain amount of sellers, your teams can use technology that helps them respond any time of day or night. Just because your top salesperson is taking a well-earned vacation doesn’t mean a lead should sit in their inbox and slip through the cracks.
Technology can help your teams automatically respond to a buyer who’s interested in learning more and serve them relevant content, refer them to an available seller, or even automatically book a meeting for when that top seller gets back from the Caribbean.
Timing is everything. With the power of AI, you can eliminate the guesswork and arm your revenue team with the data and visibility it needs to push deals forward and boost revenue performance.
Conclusion
A modern sales process leverages real-time data and insights to truly understand their target accounts and give sellers a leg up through timely outreach. Manufacturers who don’t modernize their process risk missing out on new deals and churning existing customers.
Use the right technology to modernize your sales process so your team can know exactly where and when to focus their efforts.
