Top 5 Trends of B2B Sales Industry in the Digital Era

By Mr. Saahil Goel, CEO and Founder, KartRocket

In the flourishing Indian e-commerce landscape, the B2B industry is slated to grow 2.5 times. Empowered with digitalization and bigger ticket sizes, we can expect it to touch the 45 Lakh-crore mark. Consequently, it doesn't come as a surprise when we see massive disruption in the industry. Be it - 'AI algorithms' and 'Big Data Analytics', or the 'Last-mile delivery' startups and the likes.

The immense opportunities further beget stiff competition, making it paramount for the market players to gauge the latest trends and technology, and adapt to them proactively. Without further ado, let's discuss the emerging trends in B2B sales to adapt further and ensure growth, expansion and profitability.

GOING MOBILE 
Any business which is not readily available on its customer's fingertips cannot be expected to remain relevant for long. Mobile phones are the current sales channels that have reshaped the global economy. Mobile applications are perpetually the need of the hour for both buyers as well as sellers, regardless of the nature of the business. It is all how conveniently accessible the business is. Giving your customers a 24x7 on-the-fly access, going mobile is the edge you need in the competitive dynamics of today. While a mobile-optimized website or app is simply the starting point, one needs to think outside the box and disrupt the status quo. Paying close attention to the feedback, optimizing the content for mobile, investing in podcasts, stealth geo-marketing, and enterprise messaging, amongst other alternatives are some of the ways B2B sellers can close more deals.

THE IMPORTANCE OF QUALITY CONTENT
From establishing thought-leadership, building a robust and loyal online community, to endorsing your business and its expertise, content plays a critical role in the burgeoning digital landscape. For drawing more sales, think of interactive videos, white papers, podcasts and more. In fact, the sales and marketing team must synergize their efforts and come up with well-crafted sales-enabling content that not only expresses the company's agenda but is also evident and precise. Readers today are perpetually racing against time and are quick to judge whether the content is useful to them or not. The focus should always be on the big idea and its benefits for the audience.

QUALIFYING IS A COST-CUTTER 
As many as 61% of the marketers surveyed by the 'B2B Technology Marketing Community' admitted that generating high-quality leads is their biggest challenge. In B2B sales, given the higher ticket sizes, time is money, and therefore, it is vital for the players to generate the most qualified leads. The interaction that goes into exploring interests and business potential is time-consuming and blocks the pipeline for the quality prospects. Strategically crafted content has emerged as one of the key ways for companies to solicit qualified leads. Social selling (elaborated later in this list), further opens new grounds for businesses to general well-prospected leads. There is only one rule of thumb in this pursuit - ascertain what your prospects think about the product/service, and analyse their needs and motives to pitch your offerings in the best way.

DIY TREND
The DIY feature enables you to create your website, giving your customers direct access to your products and offerings. In less than three minutes, you have your cloud-based marketplace. The B2B e-commerce platforms providing this service ensure a ready CRM, along with other digital marketing assistance tools, and more. DIY platforms have enabled thousands of SMEs in creating their marketplaces and succeeding after that. Given the boom in B2B marketplaces, one should anticipate further growth of DIY e-commerce platforms.

GETTING SOCIAL 
B2B businesses can create a buzz on various social networking sites and can leverage the same momentum for driving in more sales. Confirming the same, salesforce.com further revealed that 73% of the sales people that have utilized social-selling, ended up outperforming their peers. While Facebook helped 43% salespeople secure new clients and leads, LinkedIn topped the charts with 65%.

With social media platforms becoming an integral part of our lives, B2B sellers can understand the unique personality traits, interests and motives of their prospects, and accordingly fine-tune their pitch to close the deal. The interactions further provide them with real-time feedback which is important in upgrading the service quality or value proposition. Owing to the same, leading social networking sites like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all expecting more involvement of B2B sellers. The DIY platforms of today further allow businesses to direct social media users to their website page seamlessly.

While this is merely a roundup of the top 5 emerging trends in the ever-expanding and growing field of B2B sales, one should always be on the lookout for the latest technical disruption changing the rules of the game. Agility in the foreseeing change and adopting the same well ahead of its time is going to give fastidious enterprises the edge they need to thrive in the economy.