I believe salespeople should lean on technology for assistance.
In the era of virtual selling, what are some strategies that can facilitate customer acquisition?
We talk about being customer-centric but, more often than not, we don't really understand what our customer’s emotional journey looks like and where the best point for interaction with that person is. One way to overcome this is by using journey mapping. Journey mapping is taking the time to understand your customers’ behaviours, their preferences, their individual trends and actually meeting them where they are, in terms of not just selling your product, but making sure that you have services to meet them at a point where they need what we're calling a “digital intervention” - providing some sort of service which is not necessarily a product, it might be an awareness, a video or the opportunity to learn about something in a conference or seminar.
Our technology looks at all the customers we work with or plan to work with, the products and services we're offering and the key messages that we think are going to be very effective.
JAY RABHERU.
Head of Creative Agency & MarTech
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES
How can sales use technology to obtain more market and industry knowledge, and how can marketing assist them in doing that?
I believe salespeople should lean on technology for assistance. At this stage, and the foreseeable future of B2B, there's no scenario where a physical sales representative is going to be entirely replaced, because businesses don’t purchase products - people do, and so you need people to deal with people.
But, with that said, there's so much data out there that we can't expect salespeople to be experts across everything. We need them focusing on delivering our message and working with the customer, rather than trying to digest all this information. So, we need to augment our teams with decision making through predictive analytics. Our technology looks at all the customers we work with or plan to work with, the products and services we're offering and the key messages that we think are going to be very effective. The technology then gives them suggestions on what to discuss with a certain customer. We can also use “next best action”, a very specific group of suggestion technology as well as the “next best experience”, which is automatically delivering the experience that your customer wants or needs, without having to wait for a salesperson.
From a marketing perspective, if we can crunch the data and pivot our campaigns quickly, we’re going to get the best ROI. In fact, during the pandemic, we found that the organisations that were able to respond to market conditions quickly, were the ones that were most successful.
So, automating market intelligence and allowing your marketing teams to pivot rather than having to do data assessment and data analytics every time something changes, is crucial for high performing organisations of the future.
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