In our 2020 State of Digital Selling global research report, we found that top-performing digital sellers have four traits in common: Teamwork, they excel at cross-functional alignment around both strategy and operations; Strategy, from long-term strategy to short-term plans, these sellers align across functions to deliver results; Mindset, Companies that embrace a shift in culture and skillsets earn a competitive advantage; and Customer Focus, top B2B digital sellers use data and cross-functional teaming to deliver what the customer needs. Use our infographic, 4 Traits of Top-Performing B2B Digital Sellers to start conversations in your organization to transform sales.

The Traits of Top Performers

Teamwork

Sounds easy, but the reality is many sales and marketing organizations don’t work well together. Our 2020 State of Digital Selling research found that only 31% of sales reps view marketing as essential to their success. There are also digital cultural barriers: marketing uses analytics and automation at a much higher rate than sales, who focus more on direct relationships with prospects and customers. As digitization of both the sales/marketing funnels and customer experiences increases, handoffs between the two teams become more problematic.

In our research, we found two key gaps between average performers and the top 10% of performers: collaborative customer insight sharing and planning long-term digital strategy. 67% of top performers strongly agree that their marketing, sales, and service teams work well together to provide sellers with real-time data intelligence on prospect activity (vs. only 36% among average performers). As prospects move through the funnel, these teams excel at real-time sharing of new insights, sharing a more complete picture of the customer.  This could be as simple as marketing informing sales that a key account clicked on an ad to target sales’ best next move, to as complicated as knowing a prospect downloaded a white paper, how far they read and which topics they spent the most time reading.

Top sales performers collaborate closely with marketing on long-term technology roadmaps that lay the foundation for shared digital transformation of both internal enablement technology, as well as customer experience. Among top performers, 76% collaborate to put in place a technology roadmap for how digital tools and data will integrate over time, compared to only 38% of average performers.

Strategy

A turning point in strategy collaboration started in 2007 with the introduction of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) and Account-Based Sales (ABS).  Our research has found that B2B sellers who follow these strategies outperform their peers. Sixty-three percent of top performers use well-coordinated teams and unique sales planning with marketing, which persists through ongoing teamwork throughout the funnel (vs 43% of average performers).  We also found 47% of top performers focus on industry vertical, vs. only 27% among average performers.

ABM/ABS is a great starting point, but in this year’s research we’re seeing a trend towards more frequent planning, to the point of “always on” dynamic plans.

Mindset

Companies that embrace a shift in culture and skill sets earn a competitive advantage. A key shift in mindset is needed around trusting data and analytics that form the foundation of sales automation. Sales teams need to develop trust in sales automation and the data that fuels it.

In our research, 63% of top performers strongly agree that sellers embrace the adoption of sales enablement tools, are certified as part of training, and managers are held accountable for tool adoption, vs. only 33% of average performers. Fifty-five percent of top sellers use of tools, AI and data analytics consistently identify best next moves that move forward prospects to conversion (vs. 32% of average performers). There’s a clear gap in mindset among top performers vs. the average.

Customer Focus

Top sales organizations prioritized customer satisfaction above metrics such as sales quota achievement and recognize the link between customer satisfaction and quota. Recognizing and addressing the diversity of buying committees typical in B2B needs is a key success factor, as well as customizing sales approaches by industry vertical. Today’s B2B buyers expect sellers to understand their industry to the point that they become a trusted partner in their own success.

Top performers focus on existing customers over acquisition. For B2B sellers, that means understanding their customer’s industry as a trusted advisor, and that they remain in close contact with both marketing and especially service to guide their sales plan by using those teams’ data insights.  Our research data found this area represents the largest gap between top performers and the average: 73% of top performers say their sales process is defined around the customer journey and informed by rich data analytics (vs. 39% among the average); and 75% of top performers (vs 55% index) said improving customer satisfaction was their top priority.

What You Can Do

For these 4 areas that separate the top 10% of performers vs. the average, consider these tips (and learn more in-depth strategies in our 2020 State of Digital Selling research report):

Teamwork

• Use Slack or another enterprise social network to better connect team members among sales, marketing and customer success. Use hashtags to share customer success stories; surprising data analytics; and connect to your CRM to share key account information.
• Create shared digital dashboards with key metrics for each team to illuminate handoffs between teams that need attention and to better understand where your partner teams are focused.

Strategy

• Form a joint sales and marketing digital transformation working group and steering committee to share baseline capabilities, objectives and to plan a shared digital transformation vision.
• Ensure alignment between sales and marketing on industry vertical targets, buyer segments and customer journey(s).

Mindset

• Create a “digital sales champion” program to recognize sellers that have successfully made the digital selling shift. Embed these champions in teams as advocates for digital, especially by sharing specific sales results tied to it.
• Find opportunities for joint digital skills classes among sales and marketing staff to both build relationships and offer mindset shift guidance. Marketing has gone through this transition, and personal stories of success will help sales teams get ready.

Customer Focus

• Benchmark your data, that is, assess whether you have the right customer and prospect data to understand and deliver to customers what they need.
• Make shared customer success metrics (such as Net Promotor Scores) part of compensation incentives among marketing, sales and service. Have customer satisfaction lead sales team objectives.

Please share our infographic with your colleagues to start conversations that can improve your digital transformation of sales.

More Digital Selling Resources

• ‘The 2020 State of Digital Selling’ global research report
• 4 Traits of Top-Performing B2B Digital Sellers infographic
• Modern Marketing Engine Podcast interview: Top Digital Selling Insights

There have been hidden human costs in our drive towards efficiency and productivity using technology. As we approach the post-pandemic period, when businesses will decide which practices to continue and which to wind down, I foresee a rush to digitally transform B2B sales too quickly as harmful to human connections that build trust and long-lasting relationships.

The Cost of Efficiency

When I managed social media at a big bank in the early days of this technology disruption, I needed to understand and exploit its value for financial services. While looking back at the history of technology disruptions in banking, I found a pattern of automation in which to gain efficiencies the industry slowly chipped away at personal connections with their customers. Starting with telebanking, we at least had someone to talk to from home without driving to a branch, automation grew less personal.  ATMs gave customers quick access to basic banking functions, such as making a deposit or cash withdrawal. This culminated in smartphone apps, where many banking functions were accessible from the phone in our pocket.  Each step separated customers further from banks, slowly eroding personal relationships.  Luckily, as a “people-powered” digital platform, social media could address the trust gap.

It’s incredible how wide the gap between customers and businesses has grown.  Here’s an example, as told in Wells Fargo’s blog. After the 1906 San Francisco Great Earthquake and Fire, most of Wells Fargo’s ledgers were in a vault that survived the quake and fires but couldn’t be opened for weeks without exploding. To help the devastated city recover, the bank’s tellers relied on memory and personal relationships to get their customers the cash they needed to survive, let alone start to rebuild. These tellers knew their customers well and were able to disperse money based on their recollections of customer balances and creditworthiness. After recording these transactions in school children’s composition books, they found that these transactions were squared within a few dollars after the bank ledgers were finally retrieved weeks later.

When the financial crisis hit in 2008, many banks that were already established in social media had built trust and better weathered the brand damage that other institutions suffered throughout the industry. They’d built social capital with their customers, which was much needed in the aftermath of the crisis.  While financial services have modernized and scaled through efficiencies that have harmed human connection, the financial services blogs rebuilt trust through stories employees told of how they’d helped their customers succeed and reduced the fear that was palpable then by recounting how the bank had helped their customers survive previous economic catastrophes, thus swinging the pendulum back a bit towards trusted relationships.

As we rush towards the digital transformation of sales, let’s not let the pendulum swing too far. Consider the shift post-pandemic in manufacturing from “just in time” to “just in case” supply chains and our collective desire to emerge from isolation with live events and shopping. We’re wired and ready to connect.

The Right Use of Sales Technology

Sales and customer success teams maintain relationships that can only be built and preserved by people over time. This is particularly true when buying expensive enterprise business products or services.

While conducting research for this year’s upcoming digital selling report, I’ve found a number of approaches that dial back automation in favor of genuine relationship-building.

For example, video meetings exploded during the pandemic as a way to continue face time with customers and prospects while in shut-down.  As more sales reps used video calls, we then saw growth in personalized videos sent via email.  As a consumer, this change was palpable and impactful.  Getting less, “Hi Ed, I thought you might like…” in an annoying automated email, I instead started receiving videos clearly meant for me. In one case, I received a personalized insurance briefing based on a request I’d made, which used my own and my husband’s name, presenting insurance plans that might be best for us and ending with a simple call to action (which I took, I’m now a customer of this broker).

Personalized video messages are a great example of how tech can be used not only to scale but also to build trust in essential long-term relationships.

Maintaining Relationships Post-Pandemic

Sales and customer success team managers know which of their team members have relationships that have grown the bottom line.  These reps need to be supported by digital, but not necessarily by building deep digital skills. A salesperson is much better at reading a customer’s body language, gestures, and so on than any AI I know of.  A data analyst is better at connecting data points to draw valuable insights than most sales reps. We need both of these skills, and that won’t change with the digital transformation of sales in front of us.

“Personalized video messages are a great example of how tech can be used not only to scale but also to build trust in essential long-term relationships.”

To scale and meet the demands of digitally savvy customers, many brands I’ve spoken to have told me that their return on investment in customer experience is diminishing—perhaps a sign that consumers are on to overly automated engagement.  In response, they’re investing in more personable tactics.

Companies are well aware that quality content — engaging, personalized and distributed at scale — is an essential part of modern marketing. Whether it’s using light-hearted memes or in-depth reports, an agile content strategy builds relevance and brand awareness while also establishing companies as thought leaders in their industries.

Though businesses worldwide are developing increasingly sophisticated content strategies to generate leads, demand and revenue, our latest research – surveying 484 executives across the U.S. Europe and China – uncovered some powerful focus areas for companies, specifically in Europe, to hit those goals. Here, we outline the three digital content imperatives European companies should be actioning against now:

1. Optimize Your Organizational Structure

A slight majority — just over 50% — of all European companies in our research use a centralized creative team, which manages content across departments and geographies. That’s not surprising, since for many years, that’s been the go-to model.

In the past, there were good reasons to consolidate content production with a central creative team. This internal agency model allowed for better governance, more consistent quality and a quicker production time. As businesses became more digital, they moved away from creating awareness through brand-centric content and focused more on mid-funnel content, such as thought leadership or buying guides. These factors were instrumental in companies shifting content production away from external agencies.

But this model is only sustainable up to a point and as many companies transform for the digital age, conditions are rapidly changing. Badly judged centralization can constrain the ability to tailor content locally and add significant differentiated value. Our research showed that German companies are most likely to rely on a centralized approach, at 60 percent. That compares to 53% in the U.S. and 44% in China. The European companies we spoke to said that aligning multiple teams around a unified content strategy is their biggest challenge, at 27%, this compares to 23% in the U.S. and 15% in China.

A better way: Increasingly, more companies — and 32% of our global sample — have moved beyond centralization, setting up additional content-producing centers. Typically, they still have a central creative team, which sets much of the overall content strategy. This team creates and enforces editorial guidelines for quality and owns the visual and verbal identity for consistency. It can also hold the technology and provide training for data-based content creation and the measuring of content success.

The work with our clients in Europe has shown how helpful this organizational structure can be in meeting the unique content demands of different business units and geographies. It’s vital in European markets, which often face other regulatory guidelines.

2. Embrace Tech and Data to Create, Personalize and Measure Content

The biggest challenge for today’s content producers is to consistently produce personalized content at a large scale — and do it in a way that increases revenue. To do this, companies need more than the right content. They need to deliver it to the right person, at the right time and in the right channel – and that requires using more data and automation.

Yet companies in Europe are most likely to say that their solution is simply to hire more content creators, at 24%, compared to 18% in the U.S. and 13% in China. Producing content at scale isn’t something that can be solved by simply adding more employees.

“An agile content strategy builds relevance and brand awareness while also establishing companies as thought leaders in their industries.”

Only 11% of European respondents say they use AI to create and deliver personalized content at a large scale, based on AI-driven customer segments and analytics. That compares with 22% of those in the U.S. and 25% in China. (Germany presents the most extreme example of this at two percent, versus 10% in the U.K.)

And just 10% say they rely on AI-driven analysis of demographic, behavioral and psychographic data, enhanced with third-party data to create customer segments. That compares to 19% in the U.S. and 35% in China.

European companies are also noticeably more conservative about most uses of consumer data, citing more concerns about privacy than those in other regions. And for good reason, as data privacy legislation in Europe is more stringent than it is in the U.S. or China.

A better way: Our research shows that the best approach is investing in an innovative set of practices that make up an agile content system. These systems:

• Use data to inform content creation
• Produce content in modules for approval and recombination
• Centralize and automate content storage
• Upload a standard design system
• Measure content effectiveness beyond awareness and engagement

European companies need to push harder to create clear guidelines on how data is used. What is acceptable, and why? What are the guidelines for content aimed at consumers versus B2B efforts? These conversations are increasingly important as companies face a cookie-less future.

3. Tune Campaigns for Different Regions

European countries have long understood that regional differences are significant and strategies that resonate in Portugal might be a total failure in Finland. But in a world of digitally-driven content and AI that can be finely tuned for each market, those differences are not what they used to be. And they can often become excuses for inconsistencies that limit the effectiveness of a content strategy.

These disparities can also be seen in channel effectiveness, with European countries less likely to say their audience engages with them on critical social-media channels. Just 37% of European companies say Facebook provides their highest engagement rate, compared to 55% of those in the U.S. Also, only 15% cite LinkedIn as their most effective, compared to 20% in the U.S. (Interestingly, more European companies say Instagram is their best source for engagement, at 31%, compared to 22% in the U.S.)

Companies in Europe are more likely to use reach as the primary metric of effectiveness than the more advanced engagement metrics used in the U.S. and China. But, companies in Germany (36%) and Spain (34%) are more likely to lock those metrics away in silos specific to individual channels.

A better way: In developing a company-wide digital content strategy, investigate differing standards and requirements in each geography. What changes can be made for greater consistencies within markets, especially regarding automation and success metrics?