The Future Of The B2B Sales Profession: Adapt, Integrate And Collaborate

In the past couple of years, a major revolution has been projected in the sales department. Though this evolution came at a snail’s pace. Digitization, virtualization, and connectivity have brought revolutionary new opportunities in the B2B sales landscape. 

The advancement in business-to-consumer sales has grabbed attention in the past few years. The Internet has triggered this revolutionary change in the B2C landscape by facilitating customers with new engagement channels and plenty of information.

Now buyers can search for anything they want, wherever and whenever they want at a highly affordable price.

 

Compared to B2C, in the B2B sales landscape, this revolution appears to be less. However, we have a firm belief, appearances can be deceiving. One thing we all know, advancements in B2B sales have started rolling out.

Various technologies like EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) bright efficiency in B2B sales way before the internet came into existence. B2B suppliers and customers have a long history of communication and cooperation. From consultative selling to post-sales support, they used to cooperate without using the latest technologies like the Internet.  

However, B2B faced hard times fulfilling the demands of their customers due to an increase in expert procurement departments. Still, technological advancements like digitalization, virtualization, and connectivity are able to bring massive revolution in B2B sales.

B2B Sales Profession and it’s Future

B2B sales are nothing like before, if today we start researching and comparing the current situation of B2B sales with the 5 years back situation, we’ll find a massive and remarkable shift in the B2B sales landscape across the industry. 

The bargaining power of B2B sales teams has become more sturdy due to the transparency trend implemented in B2B. Businesses have rendered their models and made it customer-centric. 

Their focal point is now on how to improve the customer journey and make it more enticing and seamless. 

The revolution has already begun in B2B sales. Some companies are standing out in the market because they’re addressing the new challenges more efficiently. Salespeople are now being replaced with technological solutions like AI and Chatbots. 

This replacement has brought great fortune to companies since they have seen massive growth in sales conversion and increase in revenues. It means these B2B eCommerce Companies are doing something out-of-the-box since they are able to grow and manage their customers pretty well. 

Adapting and overcoming digital transformation

In the eCommerce landscape, those changes that were expected to happen in 10 years happened in a few months due to the pandemic. Since people were restricted to their homes, an increase in eCommerce sales happened massively. 

Satya Nadella – Microsoft’s CEO stated that there is no doubt that COVID-19 has impacted our lives and the business industry. However, in a recent article of Harvard Business Review, he remarks, “two years of digital transformation in two months.”

That’s pretty insane and remarkable. This digital transformation that occurred in two months was unexpected and has shaken up almost every company’s sales processes. To survive and thrive in the market, they were forced to adapt to this digital transformation quickly.

This brought various changes in B2B industries as companies started video-conferencing with their prospects and existing customers. Buyers started making business deals digitally.

According to the Future of Sales 2025 report of Gartner’s, by 2025 almost 805 of B2B buyers will start interacting with wholesalers, distributors and manufacturers through digital channels. 

To seamlessly shift on digital platforms, B2B salespeople will have to embrace new channels and tools, as well as they, embrace new ways of interacting with B2B buyers. 

Integrate marketing and sales

After the advancement and revolutionary change in the B2B industry, it’s now high time marketing and sales must be integrated now. Their tactics, tools and technology must integrate and work together in order to generate more revenues. 

It means they need to formulate an integrated experience that prioritizes customer journey and also ensures that sales and marketing departments together are working on to develop a seamless buying experience. 

They can use more automation tools used by marketing to close more deals.

To stay relevant in this highly competitive B2B industry, it’s essential to integrate marketing and sales.

Collaboration across organization

Once, you have integrated sales and marketing, it’s time to ensure collaboration. For collaboration across the company, you need tools that help you in connecting with everyone in the company. 

As the sales profession has transformed to survive in the digital era, it’s necessary to invest in resources like chat tools to easily collaborate. Salesforce, Slack, FreshChat and Twilio are commonly being acquired by B2B organizations for swift collaboration. 

Using chat tools enables sales and marketing people to collaborate with their colleagues in an effective and fast way.

Final Thoughts

The disruptive change brought by digital transformation in the B2B sales profession is too good to be true. However, on the other end of the spectrum, salespersons fear this major revolution that occurred in the B2B industry might put an end to their careers.

With the launch of AI and Chatbots in the B2B landscape, the business has become more responsive. They now prefer to use automated tools for rapid results. However, it still won’t replace the need of a salesperson, after all Chatbots are only capable of assisting on the primary level. Only a professional salesperson can handle critical situations.

Still, hundreds of thousands of B2B industries are following their traditional methods of sales. To survive in this cut-throat competitive B2B industry, it’s necessary to adapt this shift to drive sales and generate more revenues.