The Digital Transformation of Sales

Question 1

Two key trends in the digital transformation of sales

Answer 1

1. Self-service technologies

2. Artificial intelligence

Question 2

How would you like salespeople to adapt their behaviors after the online shop is introduced?

Answer 2

§ Go to tool fair rather than to the customer
§ Make customers aware of the online shop + instruct how to use? (is this advertising instead?)
§ Fire some?
§ SP should tell customer to use online shop
Send e-mails

Question 3

Which problems do you foresee and how could you manage them?

Answer 3

§ Fear of losing job
§ Information overload + lack of information
§ Skillset missing - different needed from face-to-face and e-mail selling
§ [Digital specialists missing]
§ Benefit communication

Question 4

Five typical problems in B2B e-commerce

Answer 4

Misaligned incentives
- “What’s in it for me?”

Fear
- Death Of a (B2B) salesman

Competition
- “My competitors will keep visiting my customer”

Over-obedience to customers
- “My customers don’t want to buy online”

Self-image
- “Deal maker” vs. “mutli-channel orchestrator”

Question 5

General vs. narrow artificial intelligence

Answer 5

• General - general in its capability

* Narrow- can do one thing very well, but not much else e.g. chess simulator

Question 6

Behavioural microtargeting

Answer 6

Perceive
- Big Data

Predict
- Customer personality

Act
- Personalised sales and marketing activities

Question 7

The Big Five / OCEAN model of personality

Answer 7

down-to-earth <=== Openness ===> imaginative
disorganised <=== Conscientiousness ===> organized
reserved <=== Extraversion ===> outgoing
competitive <=== Agreeableness ===> cooperative
calm <=== Neuroticism ===> anxious

Question 8

Funnel

Answer 8

Market

1. Generating leads :
   - automatically transfer business cards to CRM system
   - crawl leads from the internet

Leads

2. Qualifying leads:
   - Estimate conversion likelihood
   - Nurture leads (marketing automation)

Qualified leads

3. Identifying needs:
   - Predict preferences/ cross-purchasing potential
   - predict personality
4. Presenting solutions:
   - Recommend argumentation
   - Visualize using VR/AR

Pitches

5. Negotiating:
   - Predict willingness-to-pay
   - track customers/ changes in contracts and specifications

Deals

6. Building Relationships (From Leads to Deals)
   - Use chatbots for customer service
   - predict chum likelihood
   - provide real-time coaching