Hybrid selling and digital-first selling are two essential strategies for B2B marketers in today’s B2B landscape. These approaches have gained significant importance due to shifts in customer preferences and the need for remote engagement. It has been documented that 57% of buyers now prefer to engage with companies through digital channels, and 86% of all buyers (92% of Millennial and Gen Z buyers) prefer to be sold virtually.
Changing customer behavior does not bode well for B2B marketers that have not changed their sales training or approach. More traditional sales methods like cold calling and direct emailing are becoming less and less effective with this new generation of purchasers. The average email open rate across all industries is only 19%, which lends credence to the idea that email is not the way of the future. While most businesses have a digital-first selling strategy, few are implementing it and this has resulted in millions of dollars of lost revenue and opportunity.
Hybrid selling is a sales strategy that combines various channels, including in-person interactions, remote contact via phone or video, and e-commerce to serve customers across the entire purchasing journey. It enables B2B marketers to cater to customer demands for more channels, convenience, and personalized experiences. By adopting a hybrid approach, companies can achieve broader and deeper customer engagement, leading to increased revenue. In fact, hybrid sales can drive up to 50 percent more revenue compared to traditional sales models, and this sales method is expected to be the dominant approach by 2024. Customers today expect a mix of different touchpoints, and hybrid selling allows businesses to meet those expectations effectively.
Digital-first selling refers to a strategic shift from analog sales processes to hyper-automated, digital-first customer engagement. This approach acknowledges the permanent changes in buying preferences, with an increasing number of B2B sales interactions occurring in digital channels. Research from Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels. B2B marketers must adapt to this digital transformation by embracing new tools and channels to engage customers effectively. Digital-first selling enables sales representatives to align their sales activities with customers’ buying practices and preferences and empowers them to provide a seamless digital experience throughout the customer journey.
The combination of hybrid selling and digital-first selling allows B2B marketers to leverage the benefits of both approaches. Hybrid selling encompasses multiple channels, including digital channels, to reach customers where they prefer to buy. By adopting a digital-first approach within the hybrid model, B2B marketers can enhance their virtual selling strategies, diversify digital selling tools and channels, and engage digitally oriented customers effectively. This integration allows for broader reach, increased customer satisfaction, and improved sales performance.
How Can MyFormData fit in with a hybrid and digital-first selling approach? We see a few promising ways that can help your digital-first B2B sales strategy.
- Automated Data Extraction: Intelligent form capture technology can streamline the data collection process and enables sales representatives to focus on high-value activities. This would fit well in a hybrid approach to sales where prospects can move swiftly along a funnel, guided by specialists at each level.
- Integration with CRM Systems: Intelligent form capture technology can integrate with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, automatically updating customer data and interactions. This integration ensures that sales representatives have a comprehensive view of each customer’s journey, enabling them to deliver personalized experiences. MyFormData can be integrated with more than 4,500 sales and marketing platforms.
- Lead Capture and Qualification: Form capture technology can capture leads from various sources, such as digital forms, landing pages, and websites. Your team can then automatically qualify leads based on predefined criteria, ensuring that sales representatives focus their efforts on the most promising prospects and interact with them on the right channels.
- Personalizing messaging: By leveraging intent data from forms, you can create tailored messages that address their specific needs and interests. This boosts relevance and engagement, significantly improving your response rates. Whether you utilize buying groups or customer segmentation, intent data provides valuable insights into their interest levels and proximity to purchasing your products. You can also take an informed guess at what kind of digital response would be most likely to elicit positive feedback.
- Intelligent Routing and Follow-up: By analyzing customer interactions and preferences, form capture technology can help to more intelligently route leads and assign follow-up tasks to the most appropriate sales representatives. This ensures that customers receive timely responses and are connected with the right salesperson based on their needs and preferences. This would be a perfect fit for a hybrid approach to B2B marketing and sales.
- Measuring Effectiveness of Campaigns: Gathering form-fill data from a landing page (even abandoned forms) would give you great insight into how your marketing campaign is performing and how you might be able to improve it. Whatever kind of digital campaign you run, you can capture form-fill data from email or landing pages and use it to assess performance.
Integrating intelligent capture technology into a digital-first approach enables organizations to leverage automation, enhance customer experiences, and improve sales efficiency in today’s evolving B2B marketing and sales landscape. At MyFormData, we specialize in gathering intent data via abandoned form-fills. The MyFormData Platform (SaaS) enables marketers to boost business revenues by capturing, verifying, and enriching data from web-form visitors in real time to boost conversions.
Using MyFormData in a digital-first sales approach would allow sales reps to focus on high-value activities and improve their productivity and efficiency. With the ability to integrate with thousands of platforms, MyFormData can make an impact on any company’s digital-first sales approach.
MyFormData can be used by marketing agencies, digital marketers, or any business that needs to drive traffic to websites and uses forms for conversions. It’s easy to integrate, and your privacy and data are well-protected.
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