Commercial prospecting: are you more "classic" or "digital"?

Traditional contact methods (such as cold calling) are facing increasingly low returns. Digital technology (social networks in particular) can help to counterbalance this trend and boost the entire sales process. Provided you organise your sales process by effectively integrating this new component, of course! So, should you choose between traditional methods and digital techniques? And how can you best exploit the contribution of the latter to generate leads?

Here are some answers based on our operational expertise and feedback from our clients.

Business process: traditional methods are no longer sufficient

Have you developed in-house sales techniques? You have "recipes" for generating leads that are known to salespeople and that bring satisfactory results. Excellent. So why not stick to these methods? Because they are no longer sufficient. They are no longer enough to convince your contacts, who have become better educated in sales techniques and sometimes resistant to "marketing" that is designed to generate mass requests. These classic techniques are sometimes no longer sufficient to meet contact and sales objectives or, when they do, they entail high costs and a high investment of time.

• • The number of appointments obtained by telephone calls is steadily decreasing. The ever lower costs of telecommunications for companies and the multiplication of prospecting services generate a flood of calls, which we all often try to avoid. In addition, the information used for these calls is poorly traced and very short-term oriented;
  • The way buyers operate has changed. The Internet has become a preliminary or parallel stage to any "real" exchange. People get information from blogs, official sites, and "Google" a whole lot of things. Ignoring this new stage in the customer journey is doomed to failure;
  • Companies that have a separate organisation, between the marketing department that generates leads and a sales person who exploits and transforms these leads, lack a global vision. Interaction strategies must be thought out as far upstream as possible in order to bear fruit and provide quality leads. We must no longer have a simple vision of the sales person who is "fed" by marketing. They must become players from thepre-sales stage.

So-called traditional sales methods should not be banished. It is simply necessary to realise that they are no longer sufficient to achieve results or even to differentiate oneself in an increasingly competitive environment. To improve the efficiency of prospecting from a financial point of view, and to find that little extra that makes the difference, it is necessary to integrate digital technology and to take into account new customer behaviour. This effort to digitise the sales process will enable a transition to a more radical change that is inevitable in the long term. Don't see digital as a constraint, nor as your enemy! Traditional and digital methods are complementary. The new methods are an evolution of traditional methods, the whole business does not have to be reinvented. On the other hand, work needs to be done on the content so that the focus is no longer solely on the brand and its products, but rather on the benefits provided to the customer.

Starting a "commercial digitalisation" process: the essential stages of the journey

Renewing business processes, touching them and making them evolve by injecting a bit of digital (website that encourages contact requests, white papers, mobile application, etc.) is the most difficult part. This digitalisation has a fundamental effect on the way tasks are carried out, and thus changes certain processes permanently.

For example, if you embark on a process of better lead qualification, and you decide to use predictive analytics, it will be easy to implement the tools that enable these changes. It will be much more difficult to change the way your employees use this data and integrate it into their daily work.

So you need a roadmap. A change of mentality within the company must enable priorities to be shifted: everyone must get involved and think about customer benefits, the real expectations of consumers. How can this transformation be launched? Through change management, and a progressive implementation, depending on the characteristics of your company.

• • Start with a clear definition of lead segmentation, scoring criteria and process, but also conversion scenarios and funnels to qualify these leads and deliver them at the right time to the sales team (maturity, progress in the buying decision process);
  • Define key performance indicators (KPIs) for better monitoring of these different stages. Take care of the internal processes for tracking, storing and using contact data. This is a raw material that should not be neglected, and you must take care of its quality;
  • Determine procedures for assigning leads and "passing on" them to sales staff according to your own criteria;

However, digitising sales processes is not limited to defining procedures and operating diagrams. It is also necessary to integrate a "marketing" approach in the upstream phase (i.e. pre-sales) and to involve sales representatives. They must be present at all stages. They are the ones who know the products and the customers, as well as having a concrete vision of the needs. They must be involved in defining the themes and "content" to attract and engage leads. This represents a real paradigm shift in the way they work.

Support should be offered to them in this context (training, highly educational explanation sessions, group work between departments) to facilitate adaptation. More communication than usual is needed to explain the changes underway and their purpose. Comprehensive support is needed, mobilising the various internal players, to improve commercial efficiency and the customer experience... digitally!

As we can see, lead development strategies via interactions on social networks or websites make it possible to gradually bring a future client closer to the prospecting company. This approach is not opposed to the traditional approach of making appointments by telephone or canvassing in the field. Salespeople must be an integral part of the process of digitalisation and the addition of new tools that do not break their job but on the contrary help them to reappropriate it. More than ever before, digital technology enables them to maintain conversion with their prospects over time, to build a relationship over time and to adapt to all expectations, whether the prospect is already mature or in the discovery phase. A "better" way of working and winning orders that you need to explain to your sales staff to win their support.