There’s a new trend in selling that takes its name from the tools and methods driving it. Sales 2.0 has its roots in the Web 2.0 movement and is making it imperative for both sales and marketing teams to work in unison to acquire customers, optimise the sales cycle, and better analyse and track a company’s marketing return on investment. By harnessing the power of Sales 2.0, you can transform your entire organisation and improve both your top and bottom line results.
The Web 2.0 Factor
Web 2.0 sites have changed the way that consumers use the Internet by adding rich, interactive, user-friendly interfaces, delivering applications via browsers (computing in the cloud), enabling site data to be owned and controlled by the user, increasing user influence and participation through social networking, and taking the customer through the sales process easily with seamless shopping carts.
Web 2.0 has also given people more control when it comes to investigating products and services. Prospective buyers are more informed than ever before, and they can find out what they need to know about a product without speaking to a salesperson.
“Customers use the web to search for products and they expect the process to be quick and easy,” says Rob Stokes, CEO of digital agency Quirk eMarketing. “That’s because web-savvy consumers have become seasoned e-commerce users and are now demanding instant gratification.”
Sales 2.0 can transform your business and improve bottom line results, says Rob Stokes, CEO of Quirk eMarketing.
Aligning Sales and Marketing
What is the impact of these developments on sales and marketing? Because your customers’ buying behaviours and expectations have changed as a result of Web 2.0, so must your sales and marketing processes adapt to benefit from these changes. That evolution is critical for businesses.
Increasingly, sales and marketing teams are using social networking services like Twitter and Facebook to broadcast their latest successes, product features or events to a wide audience who have chosen to “follow” or “like” the organisation. This ability to reach out and communicate with willing followers is also making it possible to target buyers and decision-makers rather than executives who may not be involved in the buying process.
It’s Still About Relationships
New Sales 2.0 technologies also allow sales people to engage prospects as they share information across social-media sites. Of course, sales will always be about relationships, but new media makes it possible to build those relationships in more efficient, measurable, and cost-effective ways.
Sales 2.0 raises the quality of your customer engagements, making it possible to interact anytime, anywhere. “Because customers or prospects are able to visit your website at their convenience, often outside of business hours, you need to know about it, and you must know what they were looking at,” says Stokes. “It’s imperative that you create connections with your prospects and keep them highly engaged.”
Instead of using traditional sales and marketing methodologies where you inform customers about your value proposition, the web enables ways for you to adapt to customer’s online buying behaviours, Stokes adds. The new form of relationship selling isn’t about selling anymore – it’s about helping the customer buy. That is why alignment between sales and marketing is so important. “It’s about turning your website into a gateway to your business,” says Stokes.
“Web analytics plays a key role in this respect. You need information on how users interact with your site in order to ensure that you can optimise their experience. If you provide them with information and communication that is of value to them, chances are that you will move them closer and closer to making a purchase.”
Capturing the customer online
Timing is everything when it comes to sales. Use these web-based, lead-nurturing techniques to take advantage of every opportunity there is to stay in touch.
- Webinars can be used to attract and educate hundreds of prospects. Web conferencing can be used for personalised sales meetings and demos.
- Send and track email newsletters to keep product and pricing announcements fresh in the mind of an audience that’s partly qualified. Choose a solution that can track click through’s to monitor what interests prospects.
- Sales 2.0 takes its cue from e-commerce websites like Amazon.com, where customers can buy quickly and easily.
- Some sites enable more frontline interaction with customers. Chat rooms, buddy lists, private messaging, blogs and microblogs all help keep the customer engaged and encourage them to browse, participate, and return.
- Offer free downloads such as content-rich e-books that will be of use to customers and get them to provide you with their email address so you can maintain contact.
