Why (and how) your Sales Experience must wow buyers to drive revenue
Introduction
While B2B buyer behaviours have progressed, most sales practices are lagging. In today’s competitive market, sellers need to wow buyers not just with their products and/or services, but throughout the buyer journey, in order to drive revenue. In this brief, we explore the shifting expectation of B2B buyers and what organizations can do to amplify the sales experience they deliver, and win more business, fast.
The era of virtual sales
There’s no denying it: we’re in a pivotal era. New ways of working and living have emerged, powered by technology, due to the global pandemic. As individual consumers, we’ve become accustomed to the convenience of transacting online and relying on the endorsements of community and social platforms for confidence in our purchasing decisions. And in B2B, it seems that almost overnight, we’ve shifted from in-person selling to virtual sales and an anytime/anywhere work environment that never sleeps.
B2B buyer habits and expectations have also changed. Gartner’s recent ‘Future of Buying Journey Report’ demonstrates how sellers' influence over buyers has shifted, with buyers spending far less time in direct contact with vendors, with 67% of their time spent on independent research through digital channels and internal consultation. And as the first generation of digital natives move into key decision-maker roles, the reliance and expectation of digital-first buying will only increase.
The reality is, buyers want and expect the buyer journey to be easy, to reduce buyer overwhelm or indecision (it’s a thing), and to be confident they are making the right business decision; and to be successful, sellers need to enable that.
Sales practices are lagging
However, sales methods haven’t necessarily changed when it comes to engaging buyers or enabling them to buy. Winning at virtual selling is more than switching to Zoom, and sellers must stop assuming live meeting practices transfer 1:1 to virtual settings. Sales teams continue to grapple with finding and influencing the right stakeholders; developing sales materials that provide competitive differentiation, and understanding buyer intentions when buyers spend just 17% of the entire buying process in direct contact with vendors.
Traditional static documentation and clumsy proposals (often littered with mistakes) neither position sellers as market leaders nor invoke confidence from the ever-expanding group of decision-makers who want to ensure they’re making the correct buying decisions. This ‘old way’ of selling simply doesn’t cut it anymore - especially in a competitive market with a precarious economic outlook - and for organizations to win and grow revenue, they must address this “buyer-seller gap”.
A sales experience puts your customers at the center of your sales process
Customer experience (CX) is a motion that many industries have recognized as a game-changer for some time, with the understanding that an excellent customer experience (that encompasses every aspect of a company’s offering) will deliver improved retention rates, better brand credibility and more new business referrals.
But sellers often miss that creating a world-class CX experience, one that drives high net retention, starts with the buyer experience (the time that the buyer engages with a brand before they become a customer), and is a crucial element of that relationship with
Modern selling is 24/7— anywhere, anytime, and continuous— based on the experiences you create and the steps you take to engage, impress and empower buyers on their journey. Deals are won (or lost) in the days and weeks after your live conversation, as buyers make decisions and sales teams are left in the dark. Fragmented buying experiences (think multiple emails with multiple pdf attachments, to multiple stakeholders) drive a further wedge between the buyer and the seller, and sales cycles stagnate with little insight as to why. This “buyer-seller gap” impacts visibility into the virtual sales cycle, damaging pipeline predictability, and ultimately revenue.
In order to wow buyers, win brand credibility and deals in a competitive market, sellers must build and amplify the sales experience.
In a competitive market, buyers are often overwhelmed with options and crave confidence in their purchasing decisions, just as we do as consumers. Crafting a sales experience that is memorable for your buyers, and meets the expectations of the buying committee (without necessarily knowing who they are) with highly relevant sales content, can demonstrate the value of your products and services so that you stand out against the competition, long after your pitch has ended.
This approach engages and empowers buyers on their journey, equipping them with the information they need to be confident in their purchasing decisions, and enabling them to purchase quickly and easily, instead of navigating through cumbersome procurement processes.
Buyers choose to work with brands that demonstrate value, and that starts with their buyer experience. By focusing on the sales experience, sales teams can wow buyers with an engaging, seamless buyer journey that instils confidence in your products and/or services.
Buyers and sellers both win through the sales experience
Adopting an effective sales experiencealsoenables sellers to streamline their efforts, eliminating dog work so they can focus on what they do best - selling - and has been demonstrated to increase win rates and reduce sales cycles. By simplifying the buyer journey you’ll also simplify the sales process and improve productivity with less time spent on admin with tasks that are automated and easy to scale. When it's done well, a seamless sales experience raises the bar for everyone, delivering a consistent experience to every buyer, and one that’s fast to execute for sales teams.
Your sales experience should empower your buyer to become your greatest advocate, enabling them with the information and data they need to influence the six to ten people involved in most buyers' decisions. And when you enable your buyer with what they need, they become the most powerful member of your sales team, driving deals forward faster.
Buyers are the ones who close deals. Empower them.
Hallmarks of a memorable and effective sales experience that wows buyers and drives revenue
Two-way, responsive communication driven by the seller
Relevant and personalized sales content and materials that respond to your buyers' requirements, and reflect the quality of your brand
Content that engages the buyer such as video, dynamic pricing, ROI calculators
Information that can be easily accessed and shared as the deal progresses, in one place, rather than scattered over multiple emails
Pricing that is transparent, and preferably interactive, so your buyers can model scenarios suited to their budget and needs
Tools that enable the buyer to buy, such as esign and digital payments
Automation that saves both seller and buyer valuable time
Insights into buyer behaviour that help your sales team to win more deals
Five recommendations to wow buyers AND drive revenue
Organizations putting buyers at the heart of their sales experience in this new era have benefitted from increased win rates, shorter sales cycles and productivity gains from their sales efforts. Not to mention driving a better brand experience that wins credibility from both prospects and customers.
For companies wanting to win consistently in the virtual sales era, we have five recommendations:
Too much or too little content will both be ineffective in progressing and closing a deal. Buyers expect to be enabled with the right information to make an informed decision based on their business needs. Evaluate if the quality of your sales content is representative of the quality of your products and brand?
Also, consider how you are engaging your buyers towards the end of their purchasing journey - this is where most sales teams lag. Their focus is to impress the buyer during the sales call, but what happens next? The buyer receives multiple pieces of content in the follow-up, leaving the buyer to determine what is truly relevant and what should be shared with the buyer committee. What can be improved so your buyer has exactly the right content so they can be confident in their decision, and you can close deals faster?
Your buyers are the most important part of your sales teams. The internal sales process is critical, but listening to your current and future customers is the foundation for building a memorable sales experience. Your future customers will let you know what is meaningful to them, but your current customers can help you improve your sales interactions.
Gain valuable feedback by surveying your current customers. Look at support cases and other touchpoints for recent comments. Conduct customer interviews with your most passionate customers to get their input on how to improve your sales experience.
Price transparency is becoming increasingly important to the sales experience, but many businesses still hide pricing behind a lead form or sales rep. How transparent are you about your pricing? Can prospects find what they’ll pay for your product within a minute? Price transparency has other benefits to the sales experience as well:
Businesses value efficiency. It’s more efficient to be clear and transparent with your pricing vs. going back and forth with a buyer.
Tiered pricing sets the business relationship on a foundation of trust, as you’re giving your buyer options vs. a single price, often viewed as an ultimatum.
Clear pricing shows confidence that your product or service is worth what your clients will pay for it.
(For more on best practices for presenting your price and tapping into buyer psychology, see our Pricing Playbook.)
When mapping out your sales experience, identify what your buyer needs to make a considered decision, fast, and act on that in an asynchronous world. How can you make it easy for them (and you) to transact business?
There are many tools on the market that can elevate your buyers’ experience through interaction and personalization. Customers love personalization - it makes them feel special because you’re tailoring the purchasing process to their unique needs.
Identify what is important to your buyer (eg. pricing, demo’s, ROI) and adopt tools that support your sellers in wowing their audience.
Your buyer’s experience is the key to your sales success. These tips will help you attain a memorable sales experience that will wow buyers, drive revenue and improve sales efficiencies.
About Qwilr
With Qwilr, your sales team can unlock revenue, add speed, and drive deals forward with visibility into the pipeline. Qwilr makes it easy to create differentiated, visually compelling sales and marketing collateral, at speed. You can deliver a memorable, faster buyer experience that drives revenue by combining content, price quotes and sales transactions into a single, mobile-friendly webpage. It’s the ultimate productivity boost for sales and marketing teams, with automation, analytics, code-free design and collaboration capability, all in one platform. And, because materials are always on-brand, your marketing team will love it, too.
Qwilr was founded in 2014 in Sydney, Australia, and has 4000+ customers around the world. We help sellers around the world improve win rates, reduce sales cycles and improve productivity efficiencies while wowing their customers, every day.
Want to learn more?
Book a demo to find out how Qwilr can enable your sales teams to close the buyer-seller gap, with compelling collateral that improves sales efficiency, predictability and velocity.
