2020 Trends – Are you ready for your sales channel to be disrupted?

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Get ready for disruption and tune into an omnichannel. We’re all expected to embrace change in one way or another, but you’d better be prepared to go through the gears now. Briege McKinnon examines the seismic changes in the sales landscape and opportunities for growth.

The shift in how consumers obtain products and services, and how companies are adapting and evolving their routes to markets has been marked – and nowhere more so than in channel strategy.

Welcome to the era of the omnichannel! Omnichannel is a cross channel strategy in which products or services are delivered to the end customer in a single orchestrated way through multiple channels. This approach was started in the retail sector, combining physical shops, online and phone into a single co-ordinated channel improving the user experience. Research by Aspect Software shows that businesses that adopt omnichannel strategies achieve greater year-on-year customer retention rates.

These omnichannel approaches are now making an impact elsewhere, starting to disrupt the traditional sales approaches used within the Business to Business (B2B) environment, impacting even the most conservative of sectors as buying behaviours spread from the B2C to the B2B2C and B2B environments. 2020 will see a rise in businesses creating a new omnichannel platform by adopting new technologies in anticipation of these shifting market and buyer trends. The omnichannel looks here to stay.

 

1. Direct sales to end customers are risingThe rise of the internet has created new opportunities in the market, evolving the way channels operate. Consumers are becoming increasingly self-sufficient, researching products and services on their own, no longer relying on consultations with sales partners and local channels. As a result, indirect sales are beginning to decline.There are several buyer trends involved in this shift in the market. Consumer trends, such as direct to customer, are starting to be mirrored within the B2B sector. Brands are developing the capability to sell and fulfill directly to consumers, and this is extending to their B2B buyers, as 73% of B2B buyers report that buying through eCommerce, web direct or marketplaces was more convenient. B2B channel executives have identified the eCommerce channel as key to the future of omnichannel sales and marketing efforts. Indirect sales are not performing as well as previous years, with 68% of B2B buyers doing all of their research online without ever talking to a partner.

   In 2020 there will be a further decline in traditional indirect sales models and more emphasis will need to be placed upon direct sales, changing relationships with traditional ‘indirect’ partners and the opening on new multiple channel and alliance models.

2. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just big business!A strong emerging trend within channel management is using AI to improve efficiency to provide more accurate analytics for how a channel is performing. AI has made especially large stridesas machine learning algorithms have become more sophisticated and made use of huge increases in computing power and of the exponential growth in data available to train them. For example, Salesforce offer an AI platform to their customers which allows them to analyse their data in ways beneficial to their business such as lead scoring, opportunity insights, engagement scoring and marketing platforms. Previously, developing and utilising AI like this would have been extremely expensive and time consuming as each business would have had to develop their own solution. This goes hand in hand with the recent push of affordable dedicated cloud computing platforms such as AWS. This availability of scalable and higher power computing allows algorithm to be trained at a far reduced cost to what was previously available.SMEs stand to benefit from these AI technologies that cover their needs efficiently and at an affordable price. As for the overall trend for AI in 2020, as it becomes more widely available with its inclusion in available commercial platforms, this gives the opportunity for SMEs to take advantage of this rapidly growing technology.
3. A consistent customer experience will be expected from all sales channelsOmnichannel strategy is beginning to move into the forefront of the customer experience, with omnichannel marketing combining all customer interaction touch points into a single integrated customer journey to create long-term loyalty. Research shows that 51% of businesses use at least eight channels for customer experience alone. Digital Trends report 73% of customer prefer to do business with brands that use personal information to provide more relevant shipping experience.In 2020, businesses will shift more of their attention to humanising touch points across channels with an overarching goal of building strong emotional connections with their customers.
4. Big data becomes smallerBig data has transformed the retail sector with tech savvy, direct to customer businesses leveraging hyper-personalisation, customer behaviour analytics, and AI driven machine learning to tailor marketing content to each customer’s behaviours, preferences and context. This has allowed retailers to use analytics to understand customers’ behaviours across channels, enabling them to contextually engage with customers. Data driven analytics allows businesses to pinpoint common customer paths, estimate the frequency of operational bottlenecks, and determine which combination of interactions will lead to desired business results.Whilst smaller businesses and companies operating in the B2B environment may not have the amount of data that the large retail brands use, all companies have valuable data that is becoming easier to extract and analyse. Even the smallest companies have access to powerful software like Xero and Quick Books that provide ‘real time’ data, reports and trends to help businesses to improve the customer experience and increase sales
5. Data security and privacy is a key part of the customer experienceRecent CMO Council research found that data security, privacy and accountability is the most important set of demands from the modern, digitally connected customer. . Customers use multiple devices synonymously, with Google estimating that 90% of them change between multiple screen in one day. Therefore, consumers need to be able to trust business’ abilities to store personal information, however, only 57% of B2B companies have confidence that they meet these demands.The level of privacy and security that provide a good customer experience goes beyond what is legally required of the company and must be actively improved to meet customer expectations and shape customer experience. Customers expect to be able to buy from multiple sources and, whilst doing so, expect that their data is handled correctly.

   In 2020, the demand for data security and privacy will shape key aspects of the customer experience as they expect to be able to buy from multiple channels whilst being reassured their data is being handled correctly and securely.

Companies looking into adopting these trends and key features of an omnichannel approach should be aware that they key point is customer satisfaction, as adopting new technologies and implementing new strategies for the sake of digitisation could impact the customer experience negatively. To survive this shift, retailers, financial institutions and other businesses will need to adapt in order to stay profitable and satisfy customer needs on a long term basis.

With extensive experience in creating growth through effective sales and channel strategies, Where Now Consulting specialises in helping companies to grow and compete. Where Now’s team helps companies to develop sales and omnichannel strategies to develop the tools to optimise the performance of sales teams and channels.

 

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About Where Now Consulting Ltd: Where Now Consulting is a management consulting company that focuses on helping its clients to grow and compete. The company offers a range of consulting services, including business turnaround and performance improvement, formulating market entry strategies, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and alliances, and sales and distribution strategy and management.

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