In questo articolo, passiamo in rassegna i risultati emersi da una ricerca condotta da McKinsey riguardante l’impatto della digitalizzazione sulle performance di vendita. In particolare, i dati emersi dal sondaggio – che ha coinvolto più di mille aziende statunitensi ed europee ad alta crescita – dimostrano che le aziende ad alto sviluppo sono in grado di coniugare approcci che, apparentemente, sembrano contrapposti:

1. L’approccio front to back: creare un’esperienza dinamica per i clienti e usare l’analisi dati e il digitale per potenziare le operazioni dell’azienda.
2. L’approccio top to bottom: le aziende che fanno della forza vendite il loro cavallo di battaglia revisionano le procedure e le operazioni dagli organi di direzione ai rappresentanti.

In questo contesto, osserviamo come l’adozione di soluzioni digitali abbia potenziato la collaborazione dei due approcci presso le aziende ad alta crescita considerate nella ricerca.

Approccio front to back

Determinare i bisogni del cliente: ogni strategia digitale di successo inizia con la comprensione del modo di pensare e di agire del cliente così da poter soddisfare le sue aspettative durante il processo decisionale. Nella pratica, significa analizzare come il cliente utilizza la rete, quali sono i siti a cui accede maggiormente e quali sono le applicazioni che utilizza di più. Come parte integrante del processo d’acquisto, le aziende devono essere in grado di offrire al cliente l’opportunità di godere di un’esperienza completamente digitale; questo vuol dire mostrare i prezzi dei prodotti/servizi offerti direttamente online invece che attendere la richiesta da parte del possibile cliente di un appuntamento con un rappresentante.

Puntare sulle tecnologie mobili: dato che la quasi totalità dei consumatori di oggi dispone di dispositivi mobili, ogni contenuto digitale deve essere ottimizzato perché sia facilmente accessibile da smartphone e tablet. Questo aspetto è ancora più importante per aziende i cui clienti si spostano di continuo.

Effettuare test per ottimizzare l’offerta: considerando i costi contenuti di implementazione di piattaforme di e-commerce e la rintracciabilità delle interazioni online, le aziende dovrebbero utilizzare le informazioni sull’utilizzo delle proprie piattaforme digitali per adottare contenuti, formati, promozioni, configurazioni che siano in grado di massimizzare il numero di visitatori, di transazioni e, dulcis in fundo, di vendite.

Operazioni di vendita e insights: le aziende ad alta crescita adoperano applicazioni digitali e analisi dati per rendere il lavoro dei venditori più efficiente ed efficace. La ricerca condotta da McKinsey dimostra che il 43% delle aziende a crescita veloce ammette di utilizzare con successo tecnologie digitali per supportare le vendite, a fronte del 30% delle aziende a crescita lenta. Se si considera l’utilizzo dell’analisi dati nel prendere decisioni all’interno dell’azienda, la differenza è anche maggiore: il 53% delle aziende a crescita veloce si reputa efficace, a fronte del 37% di quelle a crescita lenta.

Approfittare delle opportunità di vendita migliori: l’analisi dati e le tecnologie digitali sono fondamentali per individuare il cliente giusto e le maggiori opportunità di vendita; possono stabilire le possibilità con cui un contatto avvenuto con un potenziale cliente – che sia avvenuto tramite email, durante una conferenza, al punto vendita, ecc. – possa concretizzarsi in vendita. In più, la direzione vendite può utilizzare le tecnologie digitali per stabilire quali venditori devono seguire determinati account e mercati in base alle loro caratteristiche. L’analisi dati serve anche ad identificare i trend e le consuetudini d’acquisto del cliente in modo da proporre prodotti affini a quelli già acquistati: personalizzare il processo d’acquisto del cliente significa offrire un’esperienza unica e irripetibile.

Integrare i processi operativi tra i partner: adottare sistemi digitali per gestire le performance dei venditori e favorire l’accesso al database dei clienti sono azioni di fondamentale importanza per favorire la collaborazione tra l’azienda e i suoi rivenditori e stakeholders.

Ottimizzare le strategie di prezzo: dalla ricerca di McKinsey emerge che le applicazioni digitali consentono di comparare transazioni correnti con lo storico delle vendite effettuate in passato. Tale pratica è di fondamentale importanza nel processo di ottimizzazione delle strategie di prezzo.

Approccio top to bottom

Top down: l’implementazione di piattaforme e strategie di vendita digitale può avvenire con successo solo con l’impegno, l’autorità e la visione strategica dei leader. Infatti, chi dispone del potere decisionale all’interno dell’azienda deve fare da collante tra i dipartimenti marketing, vendite e IT. In molte aziende, accade che sebbene le trasformazioni digitali vadano oltre i confini che dividono le varie funzioni aziendali, queste ultime operano poi in compartimenti stagni. Un modo per favorire la cooperazione dei dipartimenti è adottare innovazioni digitali in grado di coadiuvare il team che gestisce le operazioni di vendita.

Bottom up: coniugare l’analisi dati e l’esperienza in ambito digitale con i migliori venditori sul campo è cruciale per assicurare che le strategie digitali abbiano successo. Infatti, aziende che dispongono di venditori che abbiano conoscenze in ambito digitale, o aziende che investono nella formazione dei propri venditori in tale ambito, sono in grado di acquisire un vantaggio competitivo rilevante. Allo stesso modo, adottare approcci e applicazioni basati sulla verifica di capacità ed expertise in ambito digitale può essere d’aiuto per rendere la forza vendita più performante.

Di seguito, riportiamo l’articolo originale:

What sales executives need to get right for digital success

To realize the full value potential of digital, successful sales organizations reorganize top to bottom, front end to back end. Here’s their road map.

“We’ve got to go digital.” Every sales leader has heard some variation of that statement. But what is digital, actually? And of all the digital things to do out there, what matters most for driving sales growth?

To help answer this question, we conducted a survey of more than 1,000 US and European sales executives, as well as interviewing dozens of sales executives and doing research for the book Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World’s Sales Leaders. In our first article from this data set, we looked at the five areas where sales leaders outperform their peers (see “The sales secrets of high-growth companies”).

For this article, we looked at the how organizationally sales leaders drive performance. Our analysis revealed that fast-growing companies1 successfully connect seemingly opposite approaches:

Front to back: Create a dynamic experience for customers, and use digital tools and data to power operations. It’s common for companies to overemphasize one or the other, but the greatest success lies in a marriage of both.
Top to bottom: Successful sales organizations also overhaul the way things are done, from sales leadership all the way through frontline sales reps. While this structure might sound like a “do everything” approach, its value is in providing a simple way to think through the connections needed throughout the organization to get the most from digital capabilities, from automating processes to delivering experiences across all channels to using analytics to enable the sales force.

Of course, this is all much easier said than done. In our survey, a majority of sales executives said that their companies are increasing their investments in digital sales tools and capabilities for the near term. Yet less than 40 percent believe they are even moderately effective at it and a mere 17 percent rate their capabilities as “outstanding.”

There are, however, companies that are excelling—driving higher revenues from their digital channels and using digital technologies to power sales. Here’s how they’re doing it.

1. Front to back

Front end: The customer experience

Determine what your customer needs. Every effective digital strategy begins and ends with understanding what customers are thinking along every step of their decision journey and working religiously to meet those expectations. That means understanding what their unmet needs are and how they use the web, from searching sites to browsing on apps. At Grainger, which sells over one million industrial and commercial products, customers often don’t know exactly what they’re looking for. “We spend a huge amount of time understanding how we manage the tension of exact search versus a search that returns an unmanageable 200 products,” says Debra Oler, vice president for Grainger’s US industrial-supply business.

As part of the digital customer experience, companies should allow the option of an all-digital experience, e.g. provide instant price quotes online as opposed to requiring contact with a sales rep. One electronics company, for instance, built tools that let customers compile customized orders of differently configured products and then immediately see the impact of any changes on the price, even after the order is placed. The tools also allow customers to see how the manufacture of their order is progressing.

Go mobile. Since most customers are likely to be devoted owners of smartphones, all digital content should be optimized for mobile devices, including order entry, purchasing, and order history. This is especially crucial for companies with large numbers of customers on the move. Grainger, for instance, developed an app whereby technicians, who may be responsible for maintenance on dozens of hotels or other commercial properties, can quickly live-chat with a Grainger product expert to get answers to repair or parts questions. Technicians can also use their phones to take a picture of an unfamiliar part and send it to the company for identification and then purchase. As a result of these and other features, the portion of Grainger’s e-commerce traffic coming from mobile devices is 15 percent and rapidly growing.

Continuously test to optimize offerings. Thanks to the ultralow cost of e-commerce and the highly trackable nature of digital interactions, companies can and should adopt a spirit of discovery toward their digital offerings. Relentless testing of different site formats, promotions, and configurations can maximize visitor numbers, transactions, and revenue. One leading multibillion-dollar global e-commerce site launched more than 100 new marketing campaigns within six months of its launch, using a rapid test-and-learn pilot approach—and Amazon, the oft-cited leader in all things digital, employs a large team of PhDs to constantly analyze the layout of the site, using advanced testing techniques to evaluate multiple versions of it at any given time and find which permutations generate the most sales.

Back end: Sales operations and insights

Our survey reveals that many fast-growing companies use digital tools and analytics to empower salespeople to work more effectively and more efficiently. Some 43 percent of fast-growing companies say they are successful in using digital tools and capabilities to support their sales organizations, versus just 30 percent of slow growers.2 When using analytics to make decisions, the disparity is even greater: 53 percent of fast growers rate themselves as effective, compared with 37 percent of slow growers.

Get in front of the best sales opportunities. When we asked sales execs to identify which specific factors were the most important for driving sales growth, their top choice was the ability to identify the right customers and opportunities. Analytics and tools for lead qualification and scoring are crucial. They can evaluate the likelihood that a lead coming from a particular type of customer or particular channel—say, a website email, referral from a conference, or inquiry at a retail store—will result in a sale, letting sales reps prioritize their time and efforts. In the same way, sales leadership can use analytics to make ongoing deployment decisions about which reps should go to which accounts in which markets, and how much quota to assign. One large IT company used McKinsey’s sales-coverage planning software, Rep Planner, to reposition and ultimately reduce the numbers of its sales reps, yielding a 5 to 7 percent improvement in sales productivity.

Analytics should also focus on identifying customer trends and patterns that provide next-product-to-buy or related-purchase recommendations tailored to each customer, thereby delivering a great customer experience. For instance, one Fortune 500 market leader in business outsourcing found that its customers who had bought a particular product, had a growth rate above a certain threshold, and had expanded internationally within the previous 12 months were disproportionately likely to buy another particular product. Analytics can also be used to flag when a customer might be ready for an upgrade or renewal.

Integrate with channel partners. The best sales organizations have extended their own digital systems and data to connect with resellers and marketplaces, sharing, for instance, prospecting lists and support for managing sales-rep performance. Cisco became a leader in this practice after it realized it was getting a lot of the same complaints from resellers: the deal-registration process was a headache, and deal reviews and approvals were slow. Channel partners complained they were losing deals as a result. Now, when a partner’s rep registers a deal on Cisco’s portal, she can see immediately if her contact person is available to approve the deal on the spot. If not, a voicemail gets converted to text and delivered to the Cisco manager, who can quickly accept, decline, or transmit to the next approver via mobile phone.

Optimize pricing. Survey respondents told us that optimal pricing for deals and products is the sales function with the highest impact on sales productivity. Digital tools offer unprecedented ability to compare current deals with a wide array of past data on similar sales and circumstances. Such dynamic deal scoring and discounting controls can help identify the highest possible price that will result in a sale.

2. Top to Bottom

Getting your organization ready

Too often, “going digital” means loosely stringing together pockets of digital activity instead of developing and implementing a coherent and unified digital strategy. The result is that customers are left hanging, either unable to get what they need or receiving incongruent communication. The best-performing companies couple top-down leadership with bottom-up change management to truly transform the way the organization works over the long term.

Top down: The biggest determinant of the outcome of any digital sales transformation is leadership commitment, clarity of strategic vision, and authority to run the show. Our survey showed that clear and consistent communication from sales leadership is more important in motivating an organization than, for instance, the level of resources expended.

Leadership must also work to bridge the divide between the marketing, sales, and IT departments. Digital transformations are cross-functional in nature, but these three functions often operate in silos. Our survey showed a significant disconnect in how the IT and marketing organizations evaluate their effectiveness, compared with the perception of their effectiveness in the sales force. One way to enhance collaboration is through an empowered sales-operations team that straddles sales, marketing, and IT. Successful sales-operations teams are able to work effectively across organizational boundaries to drive both front-end and back-end digital innovations in sales, for example, by working with marketing to improve the digital customer experience on the website, or working with IT to upgrade customer-relationship management and customer data.

Bottom up: Pairing back-end analytics and digital expertise with the right people out on the front lines is a crucial way to ensure that digital strategies pay off. This means having digitally literate sales reps who can integrate the information and insights gleaned from new tools and analytics into the way they sell. To make that happen, fast growers in our survey spend significantly more time and money on sales-force training than slow growers do. Given today’s shifting sales dynamics and norms, the best managers spend the time to mentor high-performing salespeople and support them in building new skills.

The best companies are also willing to adopt an experimental approach, continuously testing tools, analytics and features to make sure they are in line with how their sales teams sell and with what customers want. Companies can no longer afford to spend two years laboring away in isolation to achieve perfection.

While developing digital capabilities is essential to driving sales growth for B2B companies, capturing their full value potential depends on how well businesses can integrate people and technology across the organization.