Why Inspection Software Products Need To Embrace The Multi-Channel Sales Approach

Technical developments of the last decade completely transformed the sales process of inspection software products. While it's impossible to ignore the role of digital marketing in today's sales processes, many organizations still fall short in developing digital strategies that can effectively target, engage and elicit interaction from their target accounts across multiple channels. To capture the opportunity of access to a broader market, rapid sales material consumption and high engagement, organizations in the inspection software sector need to adopt multi-channel sales strategies.

A multi-channel sales approach is characterized by several marketing and sales channels working in synchrony. In contrast to marketing automation (3% response rate), this kind of marketing orchestration achieves up to 43% response rate. The selected sales channels can be both online and offline, but more importantly, the channels are specifically selected and used to maximize the sales efficiency by being aligned to the product and the market.

To understand how to use the multi-channel approach to grow an inspection product, let's consider the biggest sales challenges today:

  1. Modernizing industries which haven't embraced technology
  2. Not distinguishing and adjusting the sales approach when dealing with very small businesses (VSBs) or SMBs
  3. Large scale transformation - using new system requires training and will result in learning and initial decreased productivity
  4. Pain of switching - new customers that already use an inspection software will be reluctant to switch due to all surrounding problems 

Communicating and addressing these issues in your sales process will be vital for growth.

300%

Campaigns integrating 4 or more digital channels will outperform single- or dual-channel campaigns by 300% 

90%

Over 90% of marketers struggle to seamlessly connect more than three channels on the buyer journey

Revenue increase through sales efficiency

One of the primary benefits of a multi-channel approach is increased brand awareness. The problem is that many marketers and CEOs can't directly tie their brand awareness effort and expenses to revenue. 

However, multi-channel strategies result in more tangible outcomes when brand awareness meets sales. Multi-channel campaigns achieve this by targeting very specific groups of people during the awareness stage of their buying journey, followed by targeted sales efforts, and therefore enable clearer analysis of the entire sales funnel.

Sales is however not only about pushing your product to your audience. What makes multi-channel sales so effective is its customer-centric nature. You are able to connect with prospects on several channels and platforms, and use messaging that will be relevant and appropriate to their experience on that particular channel. Moreover, you are able to differentiate your message and value proposition depending on the channel and the prospect's buying journey.

Whether they are at the awareness, consideration, decision or advocacy stage, your prospects can be targeted by the appropriate message via the right channels. The research is clear on why organizations need to adopt the multi-channel approach

  • It takes 52% more marketing touches to close a deal.
  • The total number of touches are evenly split between pre-sales (53%) and the sales cycle (47%).
  • The average path to sale for “high growth” tech companies is 512 days from lead to revenue.

Applying the multi-channel approach and designing strategies around channels where your prospects expect you to see, but never do (just as your competitors), adds an edge to your sales approach.

24%

Multi-channel B2B campaigns see on average 24% increase in ROI

84%

84% of CEOs and VPs use social media to make purchasing decisions

Asymmetric return on investment

While many organizations understand how integrating multiple channels in their sales efforts add to efficiency, the primary concern is the return on investment. In another words, is the spend on more channels justified? 

Utilizing paid or owned channels is not about increasing budget, but utilizing existing resources to maximize the prospect's experience. Adoption of more channels will significantly expand top of funnel metrics of engaged prospects in exchange for marginal increase of costs. Different channels can be also added at various steps of the sale journey, therefore act as re-targeting and return paths. Whether it's Linkedin retargeting, email newsletter, or follow-up call.s

The important thing to remember is that the nurturing process is not a single-channel approach. Your prospects need around 35 interactions with your company before they are ready to speak with a sales person. Therefore appearing on multiple channels will resolve several challenges. Firstly, you're able to speed the process of interactions. A single channel approach would require a significant time period to stack tens of marketing messages. Think about the impact 35 newsletter emails, follow-up calls or ads in a short time frame. Your prospects are most likely to opt-out from any overwhelming single channel communication.

Secondly, it's likely that your sales process is not designed to be so overwhelming using one channel, and as a result, your prospects may not be nurtured enough to be ready to discuss your solution. Therefore orchestrating an approach of several channels will solve both of these issues.

Creating a multi-channel strategy also enables new opportunities for data analysis, new skill sets and team accountability. You can track channel metrics and trace back the key drivers and indicators of sales success.

Ultimately, B2B sales is still in reality business-to-person sales. Our prospects are people that need to be engaged and told a story. You need to identify and focus all sales and marketing activity across all channels to communicate the key points on their decision journey that will have the greatest impact.

64%

64% of B2B technology buyers say they read between 2 to 5 pieces of content before making a purchase

21%

21% business fail to execute multi-channel sales strategies due to lack of understanding of how to implement 

Design your multi-channel sales approach

How do you compare to your competitors in terms of sales strategy, execution and efficiency?

App Marketing Minds specializes in building and executing sales strategies for inspection products. Schedule a confidential call today to discuss your current sales approach. 

Sources:

https://blog.leadforensics.com/benefits-of-a-multi-channel-marketing-strategy

http://blog.zoominfo.com/multichannel-marketing-statistics/

https://www.idc.com/

https://blog.leadforensics.com/benefits-of-a-multi-channel-marketing-strategy

http://www.brightfunnel.com/resources/infographics/BrightFunnel_Infographic_B2BMarketingShift2016_HIRES.pdf