Understanding the B2B Omnichannel Sales Approach

As the buyer experience in the B2C realm continues to evolve with personalized and technology-driven strategies, B2B buyers are also expecting more from their purchasing experience. Thus, B2B customers have become increasingly empowered and companies are turning to omnichannel experiences to meet customer demands. Simply put, an omnichannel strategy is a holistic approach that enables customers to continue having a personalized experience across various touchpoints. Often, omnichannel sales are a powerful way to improve customer satisfaction and retain customers. Let’s dive into how companies can effectively leverage this B2B sales approach.

What Is an Omnichannel Strategy? 

As omnichannel marketing has grown in popularity in B2C environments, more and more businesses are adopting this B2B sales approach. An omnichannel strategy is an integrated, holistic approach to marketing and sales that provides customers with a cohesive experience at any touchpoint. This can be compared to a multi-channel strategy in which customers have varied experiences across different channels.  

When customers are provided with multiple options for engaging and communicating with a company, they’re empowered to choose the channel that best meets their needs. In turn, this boosts satisfaction, reduces churn and creates more loyal customers. In addition, if a customer decides to first contact a company via their website’s live chat but wants to follow up through email, an omnichannel approach ensures that any support or sales agent has the relevant details of the previous interaction to provide superior customer service.

Companies that leverage a B2B omnichannel strategy also deliver consistent messaging across each different channel, whether that’s email, social media or a website. This sales approach also allows companies to reach customers at the right time with the most relevant offers by targeting specific demographics, industry or other customer attributes.

However, because it’s so important for companies to deliver a unified experience across each channel, an omnichannel strategy needs to be carefully planned to ensure that the customer journey is seamless. If done correctly, companies can expect to strengthen customer relationships and grow revenue. In fact, a majority of companies find this B2B sales approach is becoming increasingly effective in achieving sales goals.

Buyers’ Preferred Channels 

Since the pandemic, the way people want to interact with companies has fundamentally shifted. And, given the choice from a wide range of channels, customers choose them all in equal measure. After emerging from the pandemic, B2B customers show relatively even preferences for traditional interactions, remote human interactions, and digital self-service. However, this also shows that there is a growing customer preference for digitally-driven channels. B2B customers are also showing a greater preference for e-commerce channels, making it an increasingly more effective sales route for B2B organizations.

In addition, a B2B omnichannel strategy is more effective than previous, traditional methods in engaging and serving new and existing customers. To support these evolving preferences, there is a greater demand for sellers who interact with customers through a wide range of channels. As these new B2B sales approaches become even more ingrained into the sales strategy, it poses great opportunities for companies that can successfully integrate various channels and provide a true omnichannel experience to customers. These organizations will be better positioned to take advantage of opportunities in the market and achieve growth.

The Benefits of an Omnichannel Approach

Companies that can successfully implement a B2B omnichannel strategy often enjoy significant benefits, such as improving customer retention and increasing revenue. Since B2B customers have shown preferences for a wide range of channels, failing to offer seamless experiences through these challenges can be detrimental to sales. For example, the pandemic demonstrated that even when in-person channels began to reemerge, buyers continued to favor a mixture of these different channels. In some instances, buyers may be even more willing to spend greater amounts through digital channels.

Through an omnichannel B2B sales approach, companies can deliver customers a more personalized experience. Sharing data between different channels allows companies to develop a deeper understanding of the customer’s preferences and behaviors. This information allows companies to hone their messaging and offers to best align with customer needs and preferences. In turn, this can also improve engagement as customers are more likely to engage with things that align with these preferences. An omnichannel strategy also can help to capture more customers, since a significant portion of customers would not do business with a company if they couldn’t use their preferred channel.

Another significant benefit of an omnichannel strategy is increased sales. This is because omnichannel customers tend to spend more than those who engage with a single channel. As a result, companies can expect higher sales after implementing an omnichannel strategy.

The Challenges of a B2B Omnichannel Strategy 

Even though implementing an omnichannel strategy provides many opportunities for B2B organizations, it also presents challenges that companies need to navigate to be successful. To meet customers where they are, many organizations need to transition away from legacy systems and siloed structures that make it more difficult to create a cohesive digital experience. As companies begin to transition from the traditional structure to ones that enable omnichannel strategies, some customers believe that their experiences don’t align with their experiences as B2C buyers.

Beyond this challenge, many more factors come into play when dealing with B2B transactions. For B2B purchases, buyers will often consider their relationship with the seller, negotiate rates and payment terms or introduce some other factor that makes B2B sales more complex than B2C transactions. In addition, B2B customers often have unique expectations such as special pricing, contract terms or the ability to leverage credit. These aspects are all factors that would need to be translated into an omnichannel experience.

With omnichannel sales, it may be more challenging to attribute leads to their sources when prospects are engaging through multiple channels. This data is essential to understand how each channel is performing and to assess the quality of leads coming from those sources. However, with omnichannel, it can be more difficult to pinpoint the prospect’s first touchpoint.

In addition, another common challenge that companies face is setting the right KPIs to measure the effectiveness of their omnichannel strategy. If companies choose the wrong KPIs to measure, there could be data that suggests something is working when it isn’t. With these metrics not providing true insights, companies could steer themselves in the wrong direction.

How to Implement an Omnichannel Strategy 

Since B2B buyers preferring to engage with sellers that can provide an omnichannel experience is not just a passing trend, companies should seek to implement an omnichannel strategy within their organizations. With this approach, companies will be able to provide better customer support, meet customers where they are, increase revenue and improve loyalty. There are many benefits to be gained. Let’s explore some of the most important steps companies should take as they begin to implement this B2B marketing approach.  

Creating a Seamless Experience 

Across the sales process, the average B2B customer engages with a seller in a variety of ways spanning traditional methods to remote and self-service options. As such, companies need to create a way for each of these options to connect with ease. Companies can start by identifying all potential touchpoints with a customer from their first interaction to closing a deal.  

Thus, building a successful omnichannel strategy requires companies to have a firm understanding of how their customers could potentially interact with sellers. This insight should be used to ensure messaging and the overall experience are seamless across different channels to increase satisfaction.  

Failing to offer customers a seamless experience can often leave them frustrated that their needs are not being met. In worst-case scenarios, this could drive a potential customer away and towards a competitor who might offer them a better omnichannel experience. On the other hand, a seamless experience can motivate a customer to spend more over longer periods of time.  

Keep Everything Customer Centric 

One of the most important aspects of an effective omnichannel strategy is its ability to place the customer at the center. To be customer-centric, companies need to understand who their customers are and what they’re looking for. For top-performing companies, this means conducting extensive research, leveraging transaction logs and building detailed customer profiles to understand their unique preferences. The goal of these activities is to understand how each customer type is most likely to engage with a company during the sales process. As a result, companies can tailor the experience across channels to align with what the customer expects and is looking for.  

When companies take this approach, they can achieve greater satisfaction among new and existing customers. At the same time, they can also effectively compete in the market against companies that don’t utilize an omnichannel strategy.

Have a Full Overview of Each Buyer 

To make the omnichannel experience more powerful, companies benefit greatly by gaining a full overview of each buyer. Often, B2B customer journeys are nonlinear, but they share many touchpoints that include social media, a company website, consultations, and other information sellers can obtain. Being able to develop a full overview of each buyer helps sellers move prospects through the sales process. 

During the sales process, prospective buyers are typically looking for information that will empower them to make decisions, validate that information and get buy-in from other key stakeholders. Developing a full overview of each buyer can help sellers guide buyers through this process and ensure customer needs are being addressed, and challenges are being resolved.

Embrace Digital Transformation

Lastly, companies looking to create omnichannel experiences need to fully embrace technology to be successful. In fact, companies need a strong digital foundation to effectively build seamless experiences across various channels. Often, segmented data and disconnected technologies can severely limit this type of digital transformation.  

When the right digital tools are implemented, companies are empowered with data and digital analytics that can help to automate marketing efforts. At the same time, this data can be used to create highly personalized experiences for buyers that make them more likely to convert.  

In addition, technology can also help sales teams create new data streams that enable them to unlock more accurate tools for lead generation. As a result, sales teams can be empowered with technologies like dashboards that track performance, create targeted lead lists to support digital marketing initiatives and more.