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Great-aunt Ethel buys groceries from Instacart. She streams YouTube jazz videos from her living room. Great-aunt Ethel – known for handwritten letters, paperback butterscotch, and her love of polka records – now fills her days with telemedicine visits, Amazon Prime deliveries, and video chatting with the grandchildren.
The influence of COVID-19 transformed Great-Aunt Ethel, seemingly leading her into the digital age overnight. This dramatic change in behavior and preference isn’t just limited to consumers, however.
Starting from our quarantined sofas, we’ve seen our communities, businesses, and the world judge amazing conditions and constraints, change decades-old practices, and get used to a new normal – seemingly overnight. Believe me when I say COVID-19 has irrevocably changed your B2B customers and overturned traditional buying cycles.
COVID-19 changed B2B buyers forever
In a nutshell? Your shoppers have gotten used to researching and buying online – and they prefer it. You’ve been shopping online as a consumer for years, and now the B2B boundaries are gone. McKinsey found that 70% to 80% of B2B decision makers prefer remote interactions or digital self-service because of the ease of planning, travel cost savings, and overall security.
We have seen increasing B2B adoption of self-service options for years, but this is often limited to cheaper purchases or reordering previously purchased items. That distinction is gone. Seventy percent of shoppers in the same McKinsey study said they were willing to independently purchase new items over $ 50,000 online, and 27 percent of shoppers comfortably buy more than $ 50,000.
This preference for self-service online options remains – 90% of B2B decision-makers expect the remote and digital model to last over the long term.
The lure of the e-commerce siren is great. When you as a consumer know the ease, personalization and speed of ordering on Amazon, there is no going back. Once a B2B buyer has an easy, seamless, and satisfying online business purchase, a new habit is cemented.
Related Article: 3 B2B Marketers Delivering Customer Experiences That Rival B2C
2020 Upended Traditional Sales Cycles
The traditional B2B sales cycle has been reliable and reassuring. In contrast to B2C whims and instant gratification, B2B sales cycles have often been determined by commercial events, decades of relationships, and vacation cadences.
When COVID-19 postponed and reduced participation in trading markets, it opened the floodgates for online sales around the clock. Companies fell over themselves to adopt self-service options – in just three months, e-commerce penetration in the US market grew faster than it had combined in the last 10 years.
The proliferation of ecommerce options has allowed buyers to deviate from typical buying cycles. In the wholesale of consumer goods, for example, a company can generate most of its annual sales through popular retail markets in July and then again in January. In the months in between, sales have largely flattened out.
Now online earnings are growing every month. When selecting our B2B customers, we see that online sales are growing at a double-digit rate every month from July to December (compared to the previous year). In September alone, online sales increased by 72% compared to the previous year.
This ecommerce acceleration gives shoppers endless choices – they buy when they want, how they want.
Related Article: Design Ecommerce Experiences to Meet Growing Demand
Can you meet new buyer expectations and sales cycles 24/7?
Closing the book in 2020 and moving closer to COVID-19 means optimism that things will return to normal. I look forward to a nice glass (cough: bottle) of tequila with friends, with no two standards between us.
In many cases things are not getting back to normal because honestly normal was restrictive.
Why shouldn’t your customers shop from the comfort of their own home in the middle of the night? Why not make a record sale in December, your slowest sales month?
Experience the disruption and get ready to meet new customer expectations and constantly updated sales cycles. To do this, you need at least one strong B2B e-commerce website that comes with powerful self-service features and is designed for a well-designed user experience (UX). This allows your customers to easily find products, complete purchases, and answer questions of their own.
Use a smart, multi-channel digital strategy to turn your website into a customer acquisition, retention and maximization machine, giving your marketing and sales teams real-time insights into the ins and outs of your customers. What catches their attention and motivates their next action? When and with which offer should a sales representative contact? Data will tell you.
Use these insights to continually adapt your digital campaigns and the approach of your sales reps, and you will have a repeatable strategy to improve the customer experience with the flexibility needed to meet the inevitable challenges of 2021.
Related article: B2B buyer loyalty depends on balance
The irony in the possibilities
While many companies do not falter and stall under unmet customer expectations, the recipe for success for a 24/7 self-service B2B sales environment is readily available.
The irony of disruption is the endless opportunities to attract, retain, and maximize any customer. They want to shop with you online and in person, when and how they want.
Let her.
As Chief Executive Officer of the digital agency Whereoware, Michael Mathias leads the strategic vision and innovation culture of Whereoware, the comprehensive digital marketing and the impeccable performance. Mathias comes to Whereoware with an impressive track record of accelerating business growth at all stages. The know-how includes marketing, software, professional services, big data, analytics and technology.