Who’s Driving Your Online B2B Sales Strategy?
Who drives your company’s online B2B sales strategy? Buyers, that’s who! Who has more choice and is more connected than ever before? Yes, your buyers!
B2B companies face many challenges in the transactional shift as the traditional customer contact strategies for their sales, marketing, and communications move away from a ‘human only’ context and into a hybrid or crossover that integrates social media and online search into the new ‘digital/human’ sales path. Forrester Research recently coined the term, “the new physics of Lead to Revenue Management (L2RM),” what others called “ye olde sales funnel.”
Digital Maturity
Companies are facing both information overload and ‘under-load’ at the same time. Technology and Internet strategy are changing business practices faster than many companies can manage. For instance, who in your organization leads and is responsible for the digital content in your company? Many B2Bs don’t even know where to begin to answer this critical business question.
Digital Maturity is a relatively new concept that measures digital best practices in your company. It creates a benchmark to measure your progress in developing the best practices needed to be successful online. Measurement is critical.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
– Peter F. Drucker
If it takes a community to raise a child, it is also true in the business of raising a brand. Here are some key questions to ask when determining your path to digital maturity:
- Does your company have one person who manages the decisions on investment for the ‘digital core’ in your business, or is it a shared decision?
- How well are the teams working together?
- How is your C-level, marketing and sales strategy aligned to share and create content that will be published and broadcasted from your unique brand content ecosystem?
Your Turn
Starting this week, we are launching a new series of ongoing educational blog posts to continue the discussion on all things ‘Digital Maturity for B2B’. The goal is to share insights and know-how so that B2Bs can successfully bridge the content gap with tools to assist in balancing the workload for sales, marketing, and management teams. We look forward to your input into this conversation, and we’ll be listening for more ideas to promote why ‘being social with relevant content to help buyers buy’ is a critical next step for B2Bs to succeed in this ever-changing digital/human world.
As always, feel free to share your thoughts below or on Twitter (@SterlingKlor).
