We are living a unique moment in history, and this is having an enormous impact on our businesses. During the very last months, the already-fast-paced digitalization process met with the COVID 19 emergency and the result is unprecedented: suddenly, there is no more time to carry out a slow transition, and the acceleration of your company’s digital transformation became the key to being truly competitive on the market. Many steps can be taken to get your company ASAP to the next level; however, among them right now there’s one that can give you the benefit of an outstanding competitive advantage: the digitization of the sales process. Let’s see together how making your sales methods digital-powered can strengthen your company and help you start the year with a considerable advantage over competitors.
COVID 19 made the world suddenly a lot more digital
If we had written this article a year ago, we could have just talked about the importance of being present online; however, nearly a year after the infamous COVID 19 pandemic began, such a statement would put a smile on many faces. Today most of the offices operate remotely by necessity, shopping is done online and friends and family meet via video chat; it is incredible to think that just a few months ago for many users, all this would have been almost science fiction. However, in 2021 this is the reality for both people and companies. According to reports from Google Trends, the pandemic in its first months have tripled the number of active consumers online, creating a sudden spike in the request for digital services compared to traditional ones, and this trend is here to stay.
On the business side, these events have opened up new opportunities, while shaking up at the same time those companies who were aiming for a slow, stable digital transformation process: when company headquarters and offices were forced to close throughout the world, being online became the key to remain on the market. In a series of unprecedented and difficult-to-predict events, within a matter of weeks a new – way higher – digital standard was created. Just as suddenly, the companies – especially small and medium-sized ones – that had focused their strategy by playing the diversification game offered by the digital world found themselves at the same level as all the other realities, losing their competitive advantage overnight.
In short, whatever the level of digitalization and internal digitization of your company was, the unforeseen and sudden emergency most likely had a strong impact on your present and future plans. Having left behind this first period and its difficulties, companies with full digital maturity are now faced with a new priority: looking for manners to win over customers and differentiate themselves from competitors in a useful and suitable way for the hyper-connected society.
Digital onboarding and sales methods: where you can make the difference
In this climate of strong digital trend and levelling of corporate properties, the digital sales field is the one where competitive advantage is still far from being saturated: despite deciding of the entire success of a commercial operation, the moments of sales and customer onboarding are still highly fragmented into many different channels, often physical and therefore lacking a proper communication with each other. This out-of-date approach to sales causes frustration both on the business side due to less fluid operations and sometimes insurmountable information silos, and on the customer side, creating sporadic, cumbersome and often unclear contact.
Today is a good time to say goodbye to frustrations and start working on the digitization of sales, becoming the first to reap the countless benefits of the process.
Digitizing the sales process: the five immediate benefits
1. Gain a strategic advantage over competitors
This is the ideal time to digitize your company’s sales process because it makes possible to provide services in line with the new customer’s requests while gaining a strategic advantage over competitors: the anticipation of marketing trends is the secret of a successful business and there are still many realities that have not brought their sales strategies up to date.
2. Increase customer experience
One of the great benefits of going digital is the possibility of designing services whose only boundary is our ability to understand the customer’s needs. For this reason, the adoption of a digital-assisted sales system means increased Customer Experience for the customer, who can use tools and try the quality of the service first hand from early contact with the company.
3. Improve your customer engagement strategy
Key tools for the digitization of sales, such as web-assisted methods that allow to fill out new contracts live over the phone and quick and easy-to-use digital signature systems, help customer engagement and make selling a moment of meeting and collaboration.
4. Deliver services with complete transparency and clarity
One of the consequences of the digital transformation in sales is the complete transparency of every moment of the process: each step taken in the relationship between operator/company and customer is clear and recorded, and allows access by both parts to the whole sales history. This new reality dominated by accountability is fertile ground for a future long relationship of trust between company and customer.
5. Reduce sales times to the minimum
In an interconnected world, where speed is a basic requirement, leaving the customer at the mercy of long lead times is a serious mistake. Even more during the onboarding process, in which the customer can reconsider or be contacted by market competitors with further offers, timing can make the difference between a successful company and one that will soon have to close its doors. Thanks to the simplification of the process, the digitization of the sales process is the best friend of every successful company.
OnBoarding Funnel makes digital sales easy
Thanks to the new tools available on the market – one above all our OnBoarding Funnel digital-driven sales platform – today there are no more excuses for being left behind in the sales process: strategic advantage over competitors is at hand, now the matter is just getting started.
Want to help with empowering the digitization of sales processes in Europe and around the world? Contact us to find out more about what OnBoarding Funnel can do or ask us about partnership opportunities: we are looking for business partners internationally and your company could be next.