The biggest challenge for today’s businesses is to consistently produce personalized content at a large scale, deliver it at breakneck speed, and credibly have an impact on revenue. The businesses that are successful in this endeavor have invested in an innovative set of capabilities that make up an “Agile Content System”.

Digital transformation in normal times is usually considered a growth opportunity – and it is.  B2B companies coping with the pandemic are also demonstrating that shifting to digital can provide important benefits in sustaining the business through:

• Alternative channels for customer engagement – the use of Zoom, Teams, Slack, and other forms of collaboration and meeting apps have skyrocketed
• Keep parts of the supply chain operating – ecommerce has proven less vulnerable to disruption than call center or face to face channels
• Lower costs – by using data analysis to uncover and target expense reduction
• Preserve cash flow through business model redesign – SaaS business models are providing a valuable cash flow buffer in the face of decelerating demand.

These benefits are crucially important in this unsettled period, but they will also be valuable once the crisis recedes. Digital marketing and selling, digital experience innovation and digital operating model renovation stand out as three digital transformation shifts that leaders can use to sustain their business as much as possible during this crisis as well as to accelerate customer demand once the economy rebounds.

Identifying and pursuing quick digital wins that can also elevate future performance has become an immediate imperative for B2B leaders.  The purpose of this article is to provide guidance on where to look and what to prioritize in each of the three transformational shifts. Our recommendations are based on the discussions with B2B leaders and examination of successful cases of B2B digital transformation we conducted for our forthcoming book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation

Digital Selling and Marketing:

In such uncertain times, the best customer for most B2B businesses is the customer they already have.  Current customers are much more likely than new prospects to buy, have a lower cost to serve and will be more willing to endure the delays and interruptions their current suppliers encounter.  Using collaboration and virtual meeting tools to enable sales teams and intermediaries to connect with buyers who are working from home is only a first step.  Customers have a need to be connected to a bigger picture about what’s going on in the market, in the supply chain and even in different parts of their own company. They may require frequent updates on even small issues that previously wouldn’t garner their attention but are crucial to keeping their business afloat. And, customers need help to figure out new paths forward and rapidly find alternatives as business conditions change.  There are several use cases to increase the use of digital to focus on existing buyers:

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has never been more important.  It is a superior way to coordinate the efforts of sales, digital marketing and service to meet the information and relationship needs of the full set of stakeholders, influencers and decision-makers in current accounts.  ABM can be set up in the basic form in a matter of weeks and then can expand and grow. When the economy improves it can take on the added task of improving prospecting and new customer acquisition.

Digital customer insights and analytics become essential when the routine ways of monitoring a category through face-to-face interactions among industry ecosystem participants break down.  Consider opening up an industry “war room” to buyers who can join virtually or receive insights through an email or online feed. Enable the war room with social listening, digital surveys, scouring the internet for news and monitoring key data sources.  Once the current crisis is over the war room can become a source of insights for innovation or a value-added service that can build a competitive advantage.

Direct Ecommerce may be the only way to keep the parts, accessories and supplies flowing that keep customers in business.  For service providers, it may take the form of shifting in-person services to digital channels.  Barriers put up by intermediaries such as agents, distributors, and systems integrators can prevent suppliers from undertaking commerce directly with their customers.  In times of crisis, these barriers will come down; enabling both supplier and customer to sustain a revenue stream while establishing a direct connection that will be very valuable, and hard to turn off, when conditions improve.

Digital Experience Innovation:

Most mid-size and large corporate customers have a built-in divide between the purchasing department and the user of the supplier’s goods and services.  In situations like the pandemic, operations become more siloed and day-to-day connections between the buyer, supplier and user can fray. Users can feel isolated and unserved.  Digital experience innovation plays a valuable role by meeting the needs of the user around the clock with less human intervention from the purchasing team or the supplier. The use cases for user support span the entire customer experience. They include:

Virtual Technical Support can be the lifeblood for corporate users struggling to find new ways of working and encountering new or unexpected bottlenecks as they try to patch together approaches to keep doing their jobs. B2B suppliers should consider ways to open up their expertise online.  Can training guides, specification sheets, and other materials intended for the technical support team be made available to customers online? How about setting up a Virtual Technical Support SWAT team that can swoop in after an initial online meeting and use collaboration tools to solve complicated problems (systems integration challenges, supply chain workarounds, etc.) more quickly than normal? The service may be essential during the pandemic but could save travel and speed problem resolution when times return to normal.  Collecting data on problems and their resolution can later enable AI-driven systems to automate the service in the future.

Online Learning becomes a necessity when there is no readily available source for corporate users to learn how to work with new components, become familiar with a crucial application, or manage a novel service because a supply chain disruption changed their normal routine. Avoid becoming entangled in long lead times to develop a new curriculum by setting up an online listening function to understand what challenges customers are facing. Then, empower sprint teams to create videos and audio-assisted documents to fill the need.  The production flaws will be forgiven in a time when help will be so appreciated.  Later on, the content can improve the larger curriculum and responsive listening can inform technical support and solution innovation.

A Digital Bulletin Board is an excellent and inexpensive way to keep customers informed of what’s going on from a supplier and industry point of view.  It can span multiple topics from immediate steps to mitigate health challenges, to information about shortages or substitute offers to information about how others in the industry are coping with important challenges.  It can be a tool for employees to stay informed as well as customers. At a time when many in an industry are looking inward, it can elevate the presence of the supplier within the customer as a source of information and expertise and provide a platform for continued use once the pandemic has receded.

“Digital marketing and selling, digital experience innovation and digital operating model renovation stand out as three digital transformation shifts that leaders can use to sustain their business as much as possible during this crisis as well as to accelerate customer demand once the economy rebounds.”

Digital Operating Model Renovation:

Many of the world’s companies may be heading for a cash crunch and resource imbalances over the next few months. Now may not be the time for thinking about how the operating model can be redesigned, pursue new customers, or enter new markets.  It is time to consider important, and significant moves to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the business in ways that will be sustainable for the next few years.

Subscription Revenue Models provide a more sustainable revenue stream in times of uncertainty and in normal times.  They also lower the initial outlay customers must make for important purchases. A shift that can be extremely valuable for cash conserving customers.  There is usually a huge timing hurdle to overcome when converting transactional purchases to subscriptions because large initial revenues must be given up by the supplier in favor of a revenue stream that is spread over months or years.  This period of economic pause may be an ideal time to move to subscription because demand is already depressed, interest rates are low, and investors may be willing to endorse any move that sustains revenue.  The long-term benefits will be substantial, and the normal short-term barriers may be easier to overcome.

Cost to Serve Reconfiguration is a topic, that although very sensitive, cannot be overlooked. In normal times it includes thinking through how automating processes or investing in new digital platforms can reduce labor costs and generate bottom-line savings.  However, this is not the time to install major new systems or make uncertain employees fear for their jobs even more than they already do.  It is the time to collect data, measure, and evaluate whether the new selling, marketing, technical support, online education and digital communication approaches can be optimized and scaled after the crisis has subsided to lower cost to serve, boost employee work-life balance and improve customer service.  Treating the crisis as a series of pilots and experiences requires collecting data and measuring impact. The benefits for ongoing operations can be as profound as the short-term gains these changes produce.

Agile Process Redesign is at the heart of going faster and incorporating customers into the design process for many organizations.  The importance of quickly bringing new solutions to market or rapidly adapting current solutions has been made abundantly clear in the past several weeks.   Most corporate leaders have dramatically stepped up their planning but are struggling to accelerate the pace of the work that actually gets done. This is an ideal time to introduce agile teaming methods to the workforce.  There is no shortage of projects that need rapid attention, the case for change is apparent to employees and these methods can be deployed quickly with fairly low investment.  Agile methods have numerous additional benefits in driving leadership accountability, clarifying project status and ensuring that projects remain customer-focused even when moving rapidly.  The payoff is immediate and the benefits for the organization when things improve are substantial.

By Fred Geyer (Prophet) and Joerg Niessing (INSEAD), authors of the forthcoming book The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation. 

Watch this video to learn more.

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Watch the webinar replay in which you’ll learn about the challenges that B2B organizations face in undertaking transformation on a large scale and how they address them. The discussion features Rene Steenvoorden, Chief Digital Officer, Randstad, Heather Thiltgen, President, Boston Medical Center/WellSence Health Plan, and Fred Geyer, Senior Partner at Prophet, who were interviewed by Joerg Niessing, Senior Affiliate Marketing Professor at INSEAD.

Two of the participants, Fred Geyer and Joerg Niessing, co-authored ‘The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation’. Get your copy of the book here.

If you have any questions or would like to learn how our Marketing & Sales practice helps clients identify a clearer path to a digital transformation that powers growth with real and measurable results, contact us today.

To be the relevant choice, the go-to brand for customers has been shown to drive profitable growth and to help insulate businesses from unexpected shocks such as COVID-19. The sixth annual Prophet Brand Relevance Index®, which studied 228 brands among 13,000 consumers, reveals how brands that rely heavily on serving B2B customers build relevance differently than brands that focus only on B2C customers.

As part of the study, we compared 57 brands with significant B2B businesses such as Amazon, General Electric, FedEx and IBM with 171 pure B2C brands such as Lego, Peloton, Netflix and Etsy. Both cohorts of brands with significant B2B business and the pure B2C brands increased relevance to their customers over the course of 2020.  The B2C group had a greater range of high and poor performers with brands such as Peloton, Kitchen Aid and Lego in the top five and Popeye’s, Burger King and Facebook in the bottom three. Technology brands were the best performing in both the B2C and B2B cohorts. Apple led the pack followed closely by Amazon ranked tenth overall.

“The sixth annual Prophet Brand Relevance Index®, which studied 228 brands among 13,000 consumers, reveals how brands that rely heavily on serving B2B customers build relevance differently.”

When we analyzed the drivers of customer centricity and pragmatism, key differences appeared.

When compared to B2C focused brands, B2B reliant brands…

1. Meet Important Needs

On average B2B reliant brands outperform B2C-focused brands on meeting their customers’ important needs by a remarkable 28 percent.  3M for example, is rated 64 percent higher than the average B2B brand on meeting important needs and being a brand the customer cannot live without. That said, it is one of the worst-performing brands in the survey on making the customer happy by connecting with emotion.

2. Make It Easy

B2B reliant brands are 25 percent more likely to make it easier for their customers than B2C-focused brands. Microsoft, for example, performs a bit above the average of B2C brands on consistent performance and being dependable, but excels at making the consumers’ lives easier.

3. Don’t Deliver Consistently

B2B reliant companies are 17 percent less likely to perform as well as B2C companies on “consistent delivery.” GE is a typical example. It ranks in the top one hundred brands with very high customer scores on most dimensions of pragmatism, such as makes it easier and is dependable but ranks only average on consistent delivery.

4.&5.  Fail to Connect Emotionally and Don’t Make the Customer Happy

This doesn’t appear to be a surprise as emotion is important for B2C brands but not to the same extent as B2B brands. What is surprising is the size of the difference; a 47 percent difference for happiness between B2B reliant and B2C focused brands. Adobe demonstrates the challenge.  It outperforms other technology-oriented B2B companies such as HP and IBM on being a brand customers can’t live without but is rated 75 percent lower on makes the customer happy and connects with emotion.

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New research shows B2B companies are on par with their B2C counterparts and should look to B2B digital leaders for best practices.

The online world is full of warnings that B2B companies have fallen behind B2C companies when it comes to digital transformation. However, our new report, The 2020 State of Digital Transformation in B2B, clearly shows that B2B companies are on par with their B2C counterparts across five stages of digital maturity. This work is based on a comparison of 170 B2B companies with 238 B2C organizations and 160 B2B2C firms based on a survey conducted by the industry analysts at Altimeter, a Prophet company.

Five Stages of Digital Maturity

Digital maturity was determined by evaluating the relative adoption of digital practices across twenty-six criteria grouped into five areas: Leadership and culture, customer experience, marketing and sales, technology and innovation, and data and artificial intelligence. To understand the impact of digital transformation maturity, we grouped all of the respondents into one of five transformation stages based on their maturity scores (see Figure 1). Click here to see a deeper exploration of digital maturity in the full report.

Sixty-nine percent of all companies (B2B, B2C and B2B2C) have moved past the initial stages of digital transformation maturity and are investing in digital technology and data to accelerate growth and improve productivity. Two-thirds of these more mature companies are in stage three where they are focused on operationalizing the use of platforms and data at scale and putting them to work to drive growth. The most mature companies, 25 percent of total respondents in stages four and five, are characterized by efforts in integrating operations to deliver more personalized experiences and using emerging technologies such as AI to redesign customer experiences and offer digital services to accelerate growth. Time is running out for the laggards in steps one and two while those companies in stage three must turn their efforts into impact so they can justify their investment and continue to accelerate progress.

Digital Maturity is a Better Predictor of Capabilities and Plans Than Customer Type

Our study revealed that stages of digital maturity are better predictors of digital capability building, investment in technologies or utilization of advanced digital platforms and data. Differences between B2B and B2C companies on a broad range of digital transformation plans and practices become small once responses are controlled for the level of digital maturity.

“The most mature is taking a more opportunistic approach compared to those who are still struggling to put in place basic digital capabilities.”

B2B2C companies are more likely to be more digitally mature (41% in stages 4 and 5) than either B2B or B2C companies; probably because they must build capabilities to address both business and consumer audiences.

Digital Maturity Matters

Organizations that are furthest down the path of digital transformation are best able to turn uncertainty into a competitive advantage. Their response to the pandemic is illustrative. The most mature are taking a more opportunistic approach compared to those who are still struggling to put in place basic digital capabilities. While eighty-two percent of stage one through four organizations are continuing or pivoting their transformation efforts, seventy percent of the most digitally mature companies are accelerating their digital transformation efforts (see Figure 3). They recognize that disruption is a time to step forward not back and have the confidence in their digital capabilities to capitalize on the situation.

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B2B organizations have made drastic changes in response to COVID-19 – shifting to remote work, digitizing customer offerings and moving commerce online. Digitization planned to take years happened in months.

Based on conversations with 170 senior B2B transformation leaders and C-suite executives, this report reveals the main drivers of digital transformation investments and initiatives for B2B companies in 2020.

Here’s what you can expect to learn:

• Substantial Operational Shifts Due to COVID-19
• COVID-19 Exposed Significant Gaps in Digital Selling Capabilities
• Marketing Transformation Continues Despite and Because of the Pandemic
• Five Stages of Digital Transformation Maturity
• Most Companies Continue Transformation Initiatives – Digitally Mature Are Accelerating
• Application of Digital Tools Varies by Maturity Stage
• Technology Priorities Reflect Level of Digital Transformation Maturity
• Digital Transformation Sponsored Primarily by CIO/CTOs and CEOs

Download the full study to explore additional findings and examine detailed charts for each of the headlines provided above.

About the Authors

Fred Geyer and Joerg Niessing are co-authors of The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation, curators of B2BDigitalTransformation.com – an online resource center for B2B transformation leaders and facilitators of a monthly webinar series featuring senior B2B executives discussing the challenges of B2B digital transformation. For more information about the guide, the webinar series or to gain access to the online resources go to B2BDT.com. Fred is a Strategic Advisor at Prophet, a leading growth and transformation consultancy and Joerg is Senior Affiliate Professor of Marketing at INSEAD and director of INSEAD’s “B2B Marketing Strategies” and “Leading Digital Marketing” programs.

Watch the webinar replay in which you’ll learn the challenges and opportunities that B2B organizations face in undertaking transformation on a large scale. The discussion features Lindy Hood, SVP, Chief Customer Officer at Zurich North America, Sonny Dahl, Global Head of Customer Experience at Maersk and Fred Geyer, Senior Partner at Prophet and will include lessons learned in accelerating forward momentum as well as how COVID has impacted their transformation plans.

Two of the featured speakers, Fred Geyer and Joerg Niessing, co-authored ‘The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation’. Get your copy of the book here.

If you have any questions or would like to learn how our Marketing & Sales practice helps clients identify a clearer path to a digital transformation that powers growth with real and measurable results, contact us today.

Watch the webinar replay to learn about the three transformative shifts that need to be taken by B2B businesses to build operational resilience and sustain profitable growth today.

Arming growth leaders with the steps needed to move ahead, this webinar is based on the insights from ‘The Definitive Guide to B2B Digital Transformation‘ – a book co-written by Fred Geyer, Senior Partner at Prophet and Joerg Niessing, Faculty Member at INSEAD. Get your copy of the book here.

If you have any questions or would like to learn how our Marketing & Sales practice helps clients identify a clearer path to a digital transformation that powers growth with real and measurable results, contact us today.

Firms reluctant to make the shift to digital selling are finding that their hands are being forced as social distancing makes traditional interactions between suppliers and customers impossible.

The COVID-19 pandemic is changing the ways suppliers and customers interact with remarkable suddenness and scale.  B2B companies that rely on large sales forces, networks of intermediaries, call centers, and visits from technical support teams are particularly vulnerable to having their customer relationships interrupted. Making a shift to digital selling is an important way to sustain supplier-customer relationships throughout the pandemic and to exit it with capabilities to accelerate revenue-building once customer demand improves.

B2B companies that have successfully made the shift to digital selling – organizations such as integrated logistics giant Maersk and the commercial arm of ING bank – have reoriented themselves and are now using data and digital tools to acquire new customers; sustain and grow share of wallet among established customers; expand the number of buying centers within existing customer organizations.

“Making a shift to digital selling is an important way to sustain supplier-customer relationships throughout the pandemic.”

These companies have taken advantage of recent B2B advances in digital targeting, personalization, outreach, content creation, account-based marketing (ABM) and always-on marketing, to position themselves well in today’s uncertain times. A digital selling shift involves moving to a selling approach that relies extensively on digital marketing and data-driven selling. It integrates sales and marketing in a tightly linked partnership that is data-driven, digitally powered, and foregoes the need for person-to-person contact.

During a digital selling shift in the current environment, B2B leaders pursue revenue-generating paths to address the parts of the sales funnel that at immediate risk and provide the greatest growth opportunity once recovery begins. The risks and the opportunities will vary by company and industry. For established leaders in mature industries, the greatest risks and opportunities will often occur in the parts of the funnel dealing with renewal, cross-sell and supporting existing relationships. For insurgent companies or rapidly growing sectors, the opportunities and risk may reside primarily at the top of the funnel in acquiring new customers and encouraging them to make an initial or trial purchase.

Our study of successful digital transformation in B2B has uncovered several paths leaders can take to reduce their risks of selling disruption and boost their opportunities to build demand as economies begin to recover:

Demand Generation to accelerate customer acquisition

The explosion of data and a rapidly expanding set of vehicles for reaching B2B decision-makers is making it possible to create direct relationships with end customers without cutting out their sales representatives, channel partners, distributors, advisors, or other middlemen. These channel and content alternatives are enabling established sellers to generate leads for their sales as well as for their intermediaries. Engaging in demand generation provides an added benefit: it creates a direct relationship with the customer that enables suppliers to learn from users and buyers, test alternatives, and more effectively probe for new opportunities. This path may be particularly important to insurgent companies or companies in rapidly growing sectors.

Digital Sales Enablement to accelerate cross-selling and boost value

Here, companies use digital tools and digitally collected data to sell more effectively. Sales engagement and relationship management platforms, including those of Salesforce.com, Oracle, and SAP are so well established that Gartner reports that the market reached $48.5 billion in 2018 and represents a quarter of all corporate purchases of enterprise software. Sales enablement platforms, networks, and apps help individual salespeople achieve more and help sales teams work more effectively together. In the past few years, these platforms have shifted from individual customer relationship management to helping the sales teams engage more fully with their customer’s entire decision-making team. The payoff is immediate: better equipped and coordinated sales teams perform better. They generate more revenues, strengthen customer relationships, and stay with companies longer. This path may be particularly relevant to leaders in mature industries.

Digital Relationship-Building

New, more targeted vehicles, such as LinkedIn advertising, along with compelling content (such as video and virtual reality) have paved the way for Account-Based Marketing (ABM). ABM is more personalized and tailored to the needs of individual decision-makers than traditional push email and digital advertising campaigns. As an integrated approach, it combines salesperson interactions and digital engagement for maximum efficiency and impact. Its digital components extend engagement into an anytime, anywhere experience through the 24/7 advantage of online and mobile vehicles. This path is likely to be relevant to all companies with sales teams whether they are leaders or insurgents.

Digital Customer Support

Companies are also using digital technologies to shift more of the routine chores online. B2B companies are now using advanced AI bots in combination with live person-to-person chat to enable customers to easily order parts and accessories and get problems resolved online. Companies are also shifting their technical support and client-learning functions to digital formats. These new tools boost team efficiency and effectiveness through improved resource deployment and enable customer 24/7 customer support. This path is helpful in any industry where technical support or customer training is an important part of the supplier value proposition.

Direct Digital Commerce to accelerate acquisition and cross-selling

One of the biggest opportunities digital has created for customers is allowing them to make purchases directly from suppliers and bypass intermediaries. As more customers demand 24/7 access, intermediaries’ have become increasingly open to allowing suppliers to directly engage with customer segments that are hard to access, fulfill offers that are costly to serve, or supply information directly that enhances the customer experience. Direct commerce can be valuable at renewal, upgrade or cross sell occasions in addition to initial purchase. It’s important that suppliers determine how they will integrate direct digital commerce solutions with their intermediary relationships or their own salespeople. This path has broad relevance for both incumbents and insurgents but the scope of bypassing the intermediaries will vary based on the power of the intermediaries and the willingness of the supplier to challenge them.

Our 4 Step Approach

By examining case studies in successful transformation by B2B companies we’ve identified a step by step approach to following each path and generating measurable impact:

1. Choose where to play by understanding where in the sales funnel to sustain or grow customer demand and by understanding the barriers customers face in achieving their goals.
2. Determine how to win by building a compelling digital strategy based on clarifying the target, capturing the target’s attention, cultivating their interest, and converting them to buy, buy more, or recommend to others.
3. Accelerate what to do by using scrum agile methods to conduct a series of sprints to pilot new digital selling approaches, scale previously piloted approaches, or build capabilities required for digital selling.
4. Ensure you have who is needed by setting up and enabling a customer data team with the resources they need to put in place a system to undertake the shift and maintain progress through continuous customer-driven improvement.

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Summary

Sustained, profitable growth is increasingly uncommon for B2B companies as they face changing market dynamics and the threat of digital disruption. This book guides B2B leaders along a step-by-step path to uncommon growth through three transformative shifts:

• The Digital Selling Shift to digital demand generation
• The Digital Experience Makeover to digital customer engagement
• The Digital Proposition Pivot to data-powered, digital solutions

Prioritizing customers over technology is the key to success.

The current paradigm of technology-led transformation is a recipe for failure. Successful digital transformation puts technology at the service of customers.

Rich case studies from Maersk, Michelin, Adobe and Air Liquide with best practices from IBM, Salesforce.com, Johnson & Johnson, ThyssenKrupp, and scores of leading B2B companies to illustrate in this book how putting customers at the heart of digital transformation drives uncommon growth.

Order Your Copy Here

Why B2B Leaders Need This Book

Endorsements

Vincent Clerc
CEO, Maersk Ocean & Logistics

“A thought provoking exploration of three crucial transformational shifts for B2B companies.”

David Aaker
Renowned brand strategist and bestselling author of Owning Game Changing Sub-Categories

“This book illuminates the secret sauce of digital transformation in the B2B space: the thrust should come from customers and how digital could improve their experience and relationship with the brand.”

Dr. Lars Brzoska
Chairman of the Board of Management, Jungheinrich AG

“This is a great guide to applying best practices to the formidable challenge of digital transformation in complex markets and supply chains. It provides the tools leaders need to move ahead.”

Lindy Hood
Chief Customer Experience Officer, Zurich Financial North America

“By providing case examples and step by step assistance in determining where to play, how to win, what to do and who to win, this book fulfilled my need for inspiring and pragmatic transformation guidance.”

About the Authors

Fred Geyer is a senior partner at Prophet. He has helped B2B clients in the financial services, healthcare, and technology industries – including Zurich Financial, AXA, Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices, Medtronic, and Avery Dennison – undertake customer-first transformations and address the challenges of digital disruption. Fred’s prior experience as president of Crayola Canada and chief marketing officer, North America, of Electrolux Floor Care, enables him to bring a practitioner’s perspective to making digital transformation work in the real world.

Joerg Niessing is a member of the faculty at INSEAD and is a globally recognized expert and strategic advisor on digital transformation, digital strategy, customer-centricity, and data analytics. He is the program director of INSEAD’s flagship programs “B2B Marketing Strategies” and “Leading Digital Marketing Strategy.” Over the past five years, Joerg has engaged with more than 3,000 executives from a wide range of companies in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, and Asia, including Google, Kone, Roche, Maersk, Michelin, IBM, Thales, PwC, and Kion.  Joerg’s prior experience as head of Prophet’s Insight and Analytics practice, along with his previous work as a marketing data scientist, inform his insights on ensuring that digital transformations are data-driven, customer-centric, and drive sustainable growth.

Connect

Want to speak to Fred about how to become more consumer-centric and implement the essential shifts needed to unlock growth? Contact us today. And if you’re a leader looking for more insights into the B2B sector then visit the B2B Digital Transformation resource hub here.

The recent release of the Prophet Brand Relevance Index^® (BRI) uncovered three important ways B2B growth leaders can set their brands apart in their category.  The study of 225 brands by 13,500 U.S. respondents is important because relevance is so closely linked to profitable growth. In fact, our data reveals that the most relevant brands have outperformed the S&P 500 average revenue growth by 230 percent and EBIT growth by 1,040 percent over the past 10 years.

While B2B brands aren’t ranked in our Index, a large cohort of well-known brands with significant business-to-business (B2B) revenues such as GE, IBM, Adobe and Amazon were included.   The best performing B2B brands tripled the ratings of the remaining B2B brands in three dimensions – consistent promise-keeping, innovative differentiation and trust. Each dimension provides a guide to B2B brand relevance building.

1. 1. Consistent Promise Keeping

Ruthless pragmatism, the brand’s ability to consistently make the user’s life easier, is a key driver of brand relevance.  Three attributes stood out for the best B2B brands: “Lives up to its promises,” “Delivers a Consistent Experience” and “I know I can depend on.” Users and buyers realize that the B2B world is filled with brand options and choices, but no single brand is right for every situation at any given time. Honesty about what a brand can deliver matters enormously, as it makes reasonable and achievable promises to its consumers.

“B2B brands that lose touch and trust are among the first to lose relevance.”

For example, Marriott consistently delivers on its promises to business travelers. They focus on the fundamentals—convenient locations, exceptional cleanliness, comfort without the frills—and they do it every day across thousands of locations, scores of staff members and a portfolio of brands.

2. 2. Sustained Innovation

A hallmark of relevant brands is pervasive innovation – pushing the envelope and finding new ways to meet consumers’ needs. They find better ways to engage with customers and create superior experiences through service and product innovation.  The brands that excelled in B2B stood out in two key areas: “Is always finding ways to meet my needs” and “Has better products, services and experiences than competitors.” Pushing the envelope appears to be less of a differentiator than sustainable innovation that drives tangible benefits for consumers for top B2B performers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) embodies the principle of sustained innovation and benefit delivery.  Amazon didn’t pioneer the shift to cloud computing, nor do its web-service innovations depend on cutting-edge tools and applications.  Instead, it relies on building an ever-expanding suite of web services that can be utilized at scale, by different types of businesses, with a wide range of applications with very different levels of data and platform maturity.

3.  3. In-Touch & Trusted

Survey respondents agree that distinctive inspiration is an important driver of relevance.  In doing so, they are focusing on several different aspects of the brand including, “Makes me feel inspired,” “Has a set of beliefs and values that align with my own,” “Is modern” and “I trust.” Top B2B brands spike on trustworthiness and being modern and in touch.  Trust in the B2B context is far-reaching because it extends from personal relationships with the company’s representatives to confidence in the future behavior of the brand.

B2B brands that lose touch and trust are among the first to lose relevance as Union Carbide, International Harvester and Lehman Brothers can attest. Far more brands are building strategies focused on staying in touch and building trust. One example is Mayo Clinic, which is extending its relevance outside the hospital into the B2B world, offering services for executive health, which helps the brand build trust beyond its patients and into the top of the funnel of organizations.

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We’re now several decades into the digital age and yet transformation is still profoundly changing how we work. Until recently, the most disruptive elements have been those that empower consumers, giving rise to entirely new brands and industries like Airbnb, Uber and Spotify. B2B sales organizations–and most B2B sellers–have been several steps removed from the biggest changes. Certainly, B2B companies have deployed digital technologies to enhance business performance. But, in B2B industries such as medical devices, insurance, agriculture and business software, disruption has been less evident.

That’s changing fast, as smart B2B companies race to rethink their selling strategies. Access to data, information and channel alternatives has arrived in B2B and it’s changing the selling landscape. Intermediaries– hospitals, farm cooperatives and brokers, for example–no longer have a monopoly on data. The ability to collect customer data, store it centrally via the cloud and migrate it with orchestration across platforms is quickly breaking down legacy system silos. Data aggregators are emerging, providing a more complete view of the customer. For the first time, end-to-end customer data is a reality in B2B.

The impact of these relatively new changes is transformational. The most evolved B2B companies are reinventing the way they sell and finding ways to increase growth dramatically. But many B2B companies are still struggling to find the best path to modernize selling to accelerate growth.

The Five Digital Shifts Impacting B2B Selling

At Prophet, we see the impact of digital in B2B selling in five selling shifts:

1. Digital sales enablement
2. Digital outsourcing
3. Digital relationship development
4. Data-driven solutions
5. Digital demand generation

We’re working with clients to tap into each of these shifts more effectively, leveraging these future-proofing strategies to achieve uncommon growth:

1. Digital Sales Enablement:

This is the shift where many B2B companies have already made substantial progress by using digital tools and data to enable sellers to become more effective. Sales enablement tools, including Salesforce, Oracle and SAP are so well embedded that they are expected to be a $5 billion market within three years[1]. These platforms, networks and apps help individual salespeople achieve more and help sales teams work more effectively.

In the past few years, these platforms have shifted from customer relationship management to helping customer teams more fully engage the entire customer decision-making team. The advantages are immediate: Better equipped and coordinated salespeople accomplish more. They increase revenues, strengthen customer relationships and stay with companies longer.

2. Digital Outsourcing:

Companies are shifting more of selling’s routine chores to digital functions because studies of sales time utilization indicate two-thirds of a typical sales person’s day is spent on non-selling tasks[2]. Outsourcing frees-up sellers to focus on what they do best: building and expanding human relationships.

Many early efforts included more precise targeting, better sales resource planning and automating routine order-taking functions. More advanced B2B companies are also successfully making it easy to order spare parts or accessories online and handling problem resolution with advanced AI bots and call centers. These new tools make freeing up the sales persons’ time to develop relationships while increasing team efficiency and effectiveness through improved resource deployment.

3. Deepening Relationships:

The combination of new, more targeted vehicles such as LinkedIn advertising to reach B2B decision-makers with compelling content like video and virtual reality has opened up a shift called account-based marketing (ABM).

ABM is more personalized and tailored to the needs and criteria of individual decision-makers than traditional push email and digital advertising campaigns. It is also an integrated effort that coordinates the use of salesperson interaction and digital engagement for maximum impact and efficiency. The digital components also extend engagement into an anytime, anywhere experience through the 24/7 advantages of online and mobile vehicles.

“While the full impact of digital transformation on the sales process is still evolving, it’s clear that the classical model–where marketing and communications generated interest while the sales team closed the deal and expanded relationships–is dead.”

4. Data-Driven Solutions:

Oceans of data flooding the B2B value chain are shifting what sellers sell as well as how they sell. As suppliers gain greater access to data about their customers–and their customers’ customers–they have expanded the playing field for moving from selling products and services to providing data-driven solutions.

Infused with analytics and insights, solution-sellers can more readily mix the elements of the customer value proposition including pricing, value realization, value-added services, experiences and core offer innovation to suit the customers’ particular needs. In a data-driven world, they are better able to extend solutions into partnerships with other providers and make them interoperable with the customers’ systems and the ecosystem of the industry. These strategic decisions are also blurring the lines between sales, R&D, marketing and operations and demanding better leadership and teaming behaviors from sales team members and other functions.

5. Demand generation:

This may be one of the most exciting and rapidly evolving areas of B2B selling, particularly in intermediated businesses. The explosion of data and a rapidly expanding set of vehicles to reach B2B decision-makers among the customers’ customer is making it possible to create direct relationships with them. These channel and content alternatives are enabling established sellers to generate demand in three principal ways:

1. Bypassing the intermediary to sell directly
2. Generating sales pull through the intermediary
3. Hybrids of 1 and 2 where smaller size customers or certain offerings go direct, and larger size customers or parts of the portfolio are sold via intermediaries.

The Organization Imperative

All five of these B2B selling shifts spark the need to rethink the organization, redefine the roles of sales, marketing, e-commerce, data analysis and customer research and build new, often agile ways, for these teams to work together. It also requires rethinking the digital stack of how platforms and data work together in a way that can support the shifts and adapt to future changes.

Generally, we see a blurring of the roles of sales and marketing as digital investments that were previously the domain of communication-oriented marketers are redeployed to accelerate selling momentum. While the full impact of digital transformation on the sales process is still evolving, it’s clear that the classical model–where marketing and communications generated interest while the sales team closed the deal and expanded relationships–is dead.

And while we realize that B2B selling in many companies may never be fully automated, it’s essential to acknowledge how much digital can do to make it more efficient, not just more effective. Research consistently shows that the top 20 percent of a sales team is truly productive, while the bottom half often has a neutral or even negative impact on revenue growth. Hiring and training humans gets more expensive all the time, while the cost of using digital tools to find, target, serve and support customers in routine areas is plummeting.

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[1] Jim Lundy, Lead Analyst, Aragon Research, 2017 “Aragon expects the worldwide sales engagement platform market to grow from U.S. $1.57 billion in 2017 to $5.59 billion by 2023.”

[2] Salesforce.com, Top Productivity Trends, Salesforce Blog, 2019

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