Customer Experience Insights

Digital Capabilities Improve Sales Team Productivity

Written by Victor Esquivel | Sep 10, 2020

The capacities of the sales team are finite by time and availability, in principle a person can be available an average of 8/6, which limits their productivity, digital channels can exponentially increase the performance of the sales team. A modern and versatile platform will allow you to put vital information at the fingertips of your sales team so you can reach more customers and close deals more efficiently, all without having to increase your current talent pool.

Through a B2B eCommerce, sales executives will have immediate access to detailed product information, which may include manuals, videos, technical specifications and other sales resources, all accessible online and from any type of electronic device, therefore, They can dedicate more time to sales management, doing it from a more consultative approach, which will generate larger and more complex opportunities or new businesses, thanks to the fact that the platform will save them a lot of money since they will not have to enter phone orders, Excel, email or others.

Some of the steps in which a B2B platform can support the sales team are:

 

  • New Customer Segments: if your sales strategy is B2B already today, implementing an eCommerce will make it more efficient and in turn will allow you to expand sales to B2C or you could target new industry verticals with personalized content and special offers of products.
  • Satisfy the Smaller Clients: in the traditional B2B client management model, small clients are quite an issue, since they take time but of course the margin they generate individually is very little, which in the end hurts the overall margin of sales, with a B2B eCommerce you can make profitable customers who place small or infrequent orders by moving all the commercial management to the online channel, this will have the advantage that it will allow sellers to concentrate mainly on key accounts.
  • Reconnect Inactive Customers: Many customers will return once they discover that you offer easy to use online shopping.

Now, probably one of the biggest challenges to improve the productivity of the sales team is the generation of demand, that is, as we attract new and good customers, how do we achieve this?

To achieve this, companies with a B2B sales model must have the ability to generate convincing experiences attracting customers through a variety of contact points such as:

  • mobile devices
  • electronic procurement or eCommerce systems
  • digital markets or marketplaces
  • social networks.

But how do you create a compelling experience?

Here is the million dollar answer, through an eCommerce platform that can provide unique experiences for the buyer and agile tools for the seller.

Next, we will describe some of the key capabilities that an eCommerce must have that will allow you to improve the productivity of the sales team:

 

  • Customizing Experience:

Ability to generate platforms tailored to the client by intelligently showing the content of the site, guiding the buyer through the catalog according to their interests, this will also be a tool for sellers to manage their accounts more efficiently.

  • Optimize Prices and Offers:

Presenting the best prices and offers to consolidate customer loyalty, at the same time that the conditions negotiated with each of the customers can be respected, this is a difficult challenge to handle without a platform that can generate personalized sites per customer.

  • Product Recommendations:

Intelligent search engine functionality that can leverage site and buyer data to provide recommendations that allow customers and sellers to discover products, which in turn will help increase sales.

  • Reveal New Business Ideas:

The ability to program custom sites by customer will allow the company to have a more detailed understanding of business performance with detailed reports, automated anomaly identification, input analysis by business and customer segmentation capabilities, all of this will allow to identify new opportunities.

  • Custom Navigation Buyer:

Deliver relevant content, targeted offers, and product recommendations, which will help turn casual users into loyal brand advocates.

  • B2B purchase management tools:

They allow you to stimulate spending by giving B2B buyers (customers / sellers) the opportunity to upload SKU's lists, negotiate online quotes, and establish lists of products that are frequently purchased.

  • Inventory Availability:

Show the availability and inventory of products by location giving buyers (customers / sellers) the information they need to order with greater peace of mind.

  • Flexible shipping options:

Buyers (customers / sellers) can choose how, when and where they want to receive or send purchases using an order management functionality.

  • Experiences adapted to Mobile Devices:

Offering an optimized experience according to each screen size, which allows customers to overcome the traditional challenges of making purchases from mobile devices, this also benefits sellers since they can access the platform from anywhere.

  • Multiple Payment Options:

One of the biggest challenges of eCommerce are the payment options, for this it is necessary to be able to offer multiple options ranging from bank transfers, credit card, credit and financing, among others.

 

In conclusion, there are a lot of features of B2B e-Commerce that will essentially help you improve the productivity of your sales team while improving the customer experience, now, you are probably wondering: how can I assess these characteristics of the ecommerce platforms available in marketing ?, to facilitate this process we recommend downloading the questionnaire that will allow you to evaluate the platforms.