Many B2B companies – especially in classic “German” industries such as Mechanical Engineering – are working intensively on Industry 4.0, which is the digital combination of all production processes. Most of their Sales organisations, however, do not expect significant changes driven by a changing environment.
Frequency and speed of change might be smaller compared to Sales in consumer goods industries, but overarching trends, including digitalisation, globalisation, professionalization and everything as a service are changing customer behaviour already today and accordingly, B2B Sales.
Digitalisation is ever-present and will drastically impact B2B Sales. Today, 90% of B2B buyers search for keywords online before their buying decision in order to inform themselves about the product, suppliers and prices – 70% even watch product-related videos.
New global competitors – especially from China – are entering the European market. “Made in Germany” remains to be a unique selling proposition, but nowadays Chinese manufacturing companies can do more than simply copy.
With their new and innovative offerings Chinese B2B companies provide considerable competition on product level – increasingly in industries, which have been dominated by German global leaders. Therefore, Sales will become even more relevant for German companies as a potential opportunity to differentiate themselves and new Sales strategies are required.
B2B companies and public-sector count more and more on cooperations and centralisation to bundle their demand and strengthen their bargaining position. Accordingly, the price pressure on B2B Sales organisations will increase and also the personal relationship between sales person and buyer decreases in relevance. B2B Sales strategies need to address this.
In the past, most B2B customers were satisfied with simple product offerings. Today’s B2B customers expect solutions, which are composed of different services along the entire product lifecycle. The actual product is mostly “only” part of a service.
The sale of services requires changes with regards to Sales argumentation and methods. A step that is not easy for most companies.
B2B companies have to fundamentally refine their Sales organisation. The answer is Sales 4.0!
What Sales 4.0 means and which elements it is comprised of can be read in the next article.