business
‘‘
TALKING
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The social storm
What happens next? The customer takes
to social media to disparage the vendor’s
process and hence their brand, reaching the
very people that the vendor would identify
as prospects. And the seller’s executive team
is left to figure out what went wrong.
After all, the customer clicked on the free trial
in the email, so marketing scored a hit for a
marketing-qualified lead (MQL). And sales
would classify the interaction as neutral; a
prospect left to ripen. The customer though
feels harassed and mistreated and is telling
other prospects all about it.
This is a classic example of technology
misapplied. Digital transformation rests
on four pillars: engagement of customers,
empowerment of employees, optimisation
of operations and reinvention of business
models. The right commerce platform will
allow organisations to move away from
monitoring sellers towards empowering
sellers to engage customers. The platform
will tie together customer information with
preferences, business goals and other data
(including what is being talked about on
42
INTELLIGENTCIO
social media), to form a rich profile, ripe for
enriching engagement. We have the right
data – that is not in dispute – but we need to
use it in the right way. Dynamics 365, to deliver meaningful insights
into the hands of frontline agents.
We need to allow the intelligent cloud,
through AI-rich platforms such as Microsoft Microsoft research has shown that 72%
of buyers see rep engagement as a strong
purchase incentive, indicating strong
demand for a trusted advisor as part of a
buying experience. And sales teams that
emphasise engagement were found to
be 2.3 times more likely to achieve quota
success than those who do not.
WE NEED TO
ALLOW THE
INTELLIGENT
CLOUD, THROUGH
AI-RICH
PLATFORMS,
TO DELIVER
MEANINGFUL
INSIGHTS. Think of engagement as synchronising the
selling process with the buying process. You
need to understand where your customer
is in their purchasing cycle and tailor your
interaction to match. If your customer is at
the exploratory phase, having yet to define
a set of requirements, then don’t discuss
your product’s pricing. Instead, address pain
points and relief.
“
Engagement over productivity
The right commerce platform – one that
feeds on insights from the intelligent cloud
– will help you achieve this mapping of the
sales pipeline onto the purchase journey and
turn 2018 into the Year of Increased Sales. n
www.intelligentcio.com