Patrick Welch, President of bigtincan.
getty
Changing buyer preferences have changed the way B2B prospects interact with sellers throughout their purchase journey and shifted the sales monetization paradigm. Instead of personal involvement, two-thirds of current buyers prefer remote interactions or digital self-service. And by 2025, Gartner predicts that four out of five interactions between buyers and sellers will take place on digital channels.
For sales organizations, the ripple effects of these pandemic-driven fluctuations in consumer behavior have reduced the margin of error in buyer engagement. The average B2B prospect spends less than a quarter of their buyers’ journeys interacting with sellers. With the previously linked Gartner article showing typical purchases involving multiple suppliers and six to 10 decision makers, an individual salesperson often receives only 5% of a prospect’s immediate time. In turn, the value of proactive data-driven activation models beyond the sales force has never been more apparent. According to another Gartner study 60% of frontline sales promotion companies are expected to shift to enabling additional customer-facing roles in the next three years.
Enable revenue: An enhanced model of traditional sales support that reduces the complexity of virtual sales environments by creating end-to-end alignment between every revenue-generating department within the organization.
While sales support is only about strengthening the sales force, revenue support connects the automation tools, technologies, messaging, processes, KPIs and key data metrics of each customer-facing role. By extending traditional sales support into a comprehensive revenue support framework, organizations can more effectively streamline the procurement journey to deliver rich and seamless buyer experiences.
The parts of the revenue engine
When it comes to an organization’s revenue engine, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Maintaining a successful engine relies on breaking down silos to ensure every function within the business supports the revenue lifecycle. From channel partners and account managers to presales engineers and customer success departments, enabling revenue can help you drive total alignment of the organization so that data from every customer touchpoint can fuel the revenue engine.
It also injects real-time insight into key data insights across the buyer journey, further simplifying the process of structuring activation models that generate higher profit margins. By analyzing all the sensors and signals along the revenue path, you can take proactive steps to create a separation from industry competitors who rely solely on seller involvement to drive decision-making. In addition, scalable revenue enablement models ensure that every part of the revenue engine has access to the right tools, content, training and coaching to improve cross-functional support and reduce friction between departments.
Creating the snowball effect
In reality, your customer touchpoint data is only as strong as your ability to act on it. Once organizations have a foundation for expanded access to additional data points, sales promotion automation technology can empower them to act on those metrics and effectively shape the buying experience of the future. Whether it’s a machine learning solution that automates the performance analysis of customer-facing content or a scalable coaching platform that provides AI-led custom learning paths, the applied integration of dynamic sales-enhancing technologies can take a revenue engine to the next level.
That next level is like a self-perpetuating snowball effect where automation serves as the wheels that spin the revenue engine. The engine gets smarter on its own, extracting actionable insights from continuous customer data loops that help maximize the value of every buyer interaction, improving customer relationships and profits across the board.
Where to Start Turning On Earnings
Organizations that want to create their own monetization enablement framework should start with a calculated, three-pronged approach.
1. Process
Understanding the specific processes and functions within the organization that should be included in the revenue promotion model. Often those lines are blurry or can get lost in the shuffle. In addition to sales and marketing, there are several other functions that proactively contribute to revenue, including account management, engineering, customer support, and business development.
Construct your framework around how each function plays an individual role in driving the collective revenue engine.
2 people
Confirm that your organization has the right employees in the right roles and enough alignment across departments to support the efficiency of your revenue-promoting model.
For example almost 90% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between the two parties enables critical business growth. Your sales and marketing departments must be aligned on goals, KPIs, messaging, workflows, and pipeline management to work together effectively.
3. Technology
Using integrated, AI-powered enablement solutions can provide real-time visibility and contextual awareness of customer data points. With silo platforms and technologies, such as a traditional CRM system that works independently of an associated sales content portal, it is impossible to connect the dots between data-driven insights at different touchpoints of the revenue path. Every stop on the buyer’s journey – or any “part” of the revenue engine – must be visible through a single pane of glass.
This approach further ensures that the revenue promotion model stays aligned and delivers real value, ultimately helping to foster collective buy-in across the organization. That means your core messages, training content, coaching processes and engagement data should all come from a single source of truth. They should also be readily available and tailored to the unique workflows and features of each of your teams.
With current inflation and the stagnation of the US job market, economic volatility is simply inevitable. However, you can now take action to implement proactive monetization models so you can better navigate that volatility and find new avenues to profitability.
https://cafe-madrid.com/ Business Council is the leading growth and networking organization for entrepreneurs and leaders. Am I eligible?