B2B sales trends 2022: Getting closer to the customer
What are the sales trends that B2B organizations can expect in 2022? Sales teams are leveraging advanced CRM to become more customer centric.
B2B sales can be a complicated and nuanced dance between buyer and seller. With each step, the sales rep needs to respond the right way to move in a positive direction. One misstep or missed opportunity is all it takes for the buyer to walk away or for a competitor to step in.
B2B sales today are all about customer-centricity and contextual selling.
The days of winning over customers with cold calls and product presentations are long gone. A seller-centric approach of telling customers why they should buy your product or service, right now, doesn’t cut it anymore.
Simply put, buyers today have more power. They have more power over the purchase process, more solutions to choose from, and greater access to information.
While this power dynamic might present organizations with new challenges, it also offers a distinct opportunity for differentiation.
What is contextual selling?
Contextual selling is a sales strategy that shapes seller-buyer engagement using data-driven signals far beyond traditional customer journey mapping.
Instead of static links between prospective buyer needs at each stage of the purchase journey, contextual selling pairs customer journey maps with real-time data (customer, channel, third-party, commerce) to help identify and guide sellers to take the next-best action for each distinct opportunity.
This strategy helps sellers individualize the sales processes for each buyer, allowing for customer-centric engagement with each interaction.
With this insight, sales organizations are empowered to meet and exceed dynamic, ever-evolving customer needs, at scale.
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Contextual selling examples
To understand how contextual selling works, let’s look at a couple examples.
Example 1: Sue’s working on a contract renewal for a long-time customer. Before her next scheduled meeting with the customer, she checks customer insights, where she sees that contacts from her account have been looking at a new solution on her company’s website.
On the sales call, Sue mentions the new solution and shares some documentation about how well it could work for their business. After a few days, she has another call to discuss the renewal contract and also test the waters to see if they have interest in the new offering. In addition to the renewal contract, Sue provides the customer with an expanded contract option that includes the new solution at a modest discount.
Sue lets the customer know that if they’re considering the new offering, she could extend a discount if everything was on one contract, which would avoid duplicate approval and purchasing workflows.
Sue uses contextual knowledge of the customer’s online interest as well as the need to renew the existing contract to fast track a prospective opportunity into immediate consideration.
She positions this as a better outcome for the buyer: lower total cost, less administrative juggling, easier overall.
Example 2: Joe’s working on an upsell opportunity and improves his engagement strategy using service and ERP data.
Before a scheduled customer call, Joe sees that there’s a new active and unresolved service issue. Through account team collaboration/unified customer view, Joe’s able to find the details of the issue and the primary service contact.
Joe contacts the service team and invites the primary service rep to the call. On the call, the service agent provides a clear resolution date using inventory data from their ERP system, which allows Joe to transition back into the sales journey on a positive note.
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The proven power of customer-centric sales
Sellers who put the customer first and make the sales process about the buyer and their needs significantly outperform other sales reps.
The data proves it:- A September survey of 180 B2B companies found that organizations reporting a “very mature” level of customer-centricity experienced 2.5x revenue growth over the last five years compared to very immature organizations.
- Forrester’s Customer Experience Index came to a similar conclusion, estimating a 17% compound average revenue growth for CX leaders compared to 3% growth for laggards.
- In LinkedIn’s 2021 State of Sales Report 72% of top sales performers who met quota by 125% or higher said they “always put the buyer first.”
No more guesswork
Adopting and excelling with contextual selling requires that organizations make customer centricity part of their selling DNA.
Sellers need to be supported by leadership and with intuitive sales automation tools that remove the guesswork through context, provide insights based on customer data, and recommend the next-best action.
