How Digital Transformation Changed the Landscape of the Sales Process Steps

How Do You Determine Digital Transformation? 

Digital transformation utilizes digital technologies to completely overhaul or create new digital processes. Sales digital transformation describes the process of introducing innovative digital solutions to the sales process at all levels.

Digital transformation for sales specifically incorporates the seven steps of the sales process, which are prospecting, preparation, approach, presentation, handling objections, closing, and follow-ups. 

 

Digital transformation for sales doesn’t require whole processes to be uprooted or redefined and instead focuses on several small changes that can be incorporated and measured over time. Sales is a delicate process that shouldn’t be overly disrupted.

In order to stay ahead of the competition and prepare your business for the digital future, it’s important to incorporate incremental changes one step at a time.

The end goal of digital transformation for sales is to streamline outdated processes and introduce automation wherever possible. This creates a futureproof sales funnel that continues to work even if the digital landscape pivots. 

 

What Does Digital Transformation For Sales Look Like? 

Digital transformation for sales incorporates both internal and external processes. This means that the sales department, the business at large and external clients all require a different approach to fully take advantage of the benefits of digital transformation.

Common examples of digitally transformative sales integration have a huge emphasis on CRM data quality. Launching social selling platforms or implementing a marketing automation platform to streamline lead generation are the two most obvious routes. 

 

It’s important to remember that although technology is a huge part of digital transformation as it relates to sales processes, the dynamic shifts needed to propel sales into the digital age are much more comprehensive.

It takes time to build the necessary infrastructure and operational mite needed for success.

A true digital transformation that incorporates people, processes, and technology is required at every level of the sales funnel.   

 

Digital Transformation Sales Process Initiatives

We have identified the following initiatives and objectives that are critical to evolving sales in the digital sphere: 

Sales Organizational Design 

Objective: Enhance value through sales interactions while keeping costs down. 

• The sales channel mix should be integrated to optimize effectiveness and the cost of sales. This technique steers away from the more traditional reach and frequency-based model and instead focuses on responsive, efficient, and dynamic targeting of cross-channel opportunities. 
• A digital demand engine should be established because the future of digital sales is marketing-generated pipelines that incorporate sales-ready leads. This means that there is a growing need to support online buyer education, knowledge, and progression along the entire buyer journey. 
• Specialist sales roles will need to be upended in order to achieve true digital transformation. Sales representatives will need to transform into concentrated specialists where operational demarcation and role clarity are king.      

 

Sales Processes

Objective: Blend workflows and support the highest quality interactions. 

• Cross-functional planning processes are the key to the internal-facing push approach. This means that the outdated linear sales approach needs to be shifted to provide customer-centric support to the entire buyer journey. This can be achieved through detailed feedback regarding collaboration between functions and channels that relate to the buyer’s journey. 

• Integrating marketing and sales processes into the buyer’s journey enables businesses to adapt their role and channel mix, build their capabilities, and design proficient marketing and sales lead handover processes. 

• Focusing on new and successive drivers provides better lead follow-ups and enables businesses to capture more valuable insights. In the grand scheme of things, sales disciplines need to evolve to become more customer-centric with a focus on quality, not quantity.    

 

Technology & Data 

Objective: Increase sales capacity while continually optimizing effectiveness and efficiency. 

• Delivering inherent value that drives CRM adoption is crucial. Most businesses pigeonhole their CRM around data capture, which only serves to benefit management. In order for salespeople to get the most out of CRM software, they need to move away from the top-down approach and streamline their energies while focusing on simplicity and mobility. 
• It’s crucial for businesses to digitize their front line and invest in digital process automation. Investing in productivity and efficiency tools enables businesses to curtail low-value admin tasks, which enables salespeople to spend more time nurturing leads.
• Enabling data-driven selling is one of the most important aspects of transformative digitization. Utilizing a customer’s digital footprint helps salespeople to lessen the information advantage carried by highly informed, savvy consumers. This can be achieved by allowing sales representatives easy access to key data sets, which can then be analyzed and evaluated with ease.  

Conclusion 

The most important aspect of sales digital transformation is the ability and capacity of leaders to deliver.

Creating new ways of working, disrupting processes, and upending business practices all come at a cost. The sales pipeline is a delicate process and change should be approached incrementally in order to properly measure and facilitate digital change. 

Innovative and transformative technologies give sales representatives instant access to product specs and a variety of other tools that maximize sales pitches.

This often results in increased closing rates and an overall better customer experience.

Digitizing sales processes also helps businesses to better identify their target customers and specify their markets, which improves efficiency.  

Focusing on delivering targeted digital transformation while still maintaining operational processes and maintaining focus is key to truly transforming sales processes.

Operational details need to be clearly communicated across multifunctional teams (not just sales), while simultaneously testing new ways of working. Doing so will enable technology to do the talking and is the best way of generating fresh engagement, increased pipe, and sales longevity.