Industrial Buying Process: Anticipating Crucial Changes

The manufacturing industry is faring very well, and businesses are reasonably positive about the near future. Reasonably because there are developments that industrial companies are monitoring closely. Take the lack of personnel, the pressure to become more sustainable, and the growing digitalization. This last matter also has major implications for commerce, such as the changing role of sales in the industry.

Changing Industrial Buying Process

With the transition to the digital age, major changes are underway in the industrial buying process. Just five years ago, the Sales Manager of a manufacturing company could still rely on loyal preferred customers. These customers were mostly won through traditional sales efforts and industrial marketing methods such as cold calling, advertising in trade magazines, or exhibiting the product at trade fairs.

But times are changing...

Prospects don't sit around and wait for your sales department to call them. Trade journals aren't even opened. And visiting trade fairs is too much effort.

With the evolution of the internet, potential clients are empowered to search for answers and solutions to their business problems and needs. By obtaining information online, they know more ... or think they know more. They are critical and, what's more, don't feel any need to listen to another general sales pitch.
 

The three biggest annoyances:

• Unsolicited cold calling;
• Aggressive sellers;
• Limited knowledge level of salespeople.

Changing Industrial Sales Process

Today, 80% of the industry buying process has already been completed before anyone contacts you. This has major consequences for the commercial playing field in the manufacturing industry. In practice, we see that the new business strategy and sales process are not yet sufficiently geared to these changes at many industrial companies.

The biggest change? 90% of B2B buyers search online first.

Only when convinced of your technical product or service, will prospective clients contact you themselves. Your manufacturing company, product, or service needs, therefore, needs to be visible online and, above all, distinctive.

Anticipation Provides Profit

When appointments are made, prospects arrive much better prepared. The sales talk is entirely different, with potential customers no longer afraid of asking very specific questions. And they expect to hear the proper answers from someone who knows their business.

Let's face it, wouldn't you much rather be helped by an expert than a salesman?

Sales closes 9% bigger deals with prospects who have been ‘fed’ relevant content from marketing.

To keep an edge over your competitors, anticipating these changes in the industry buying process is absolutely essential. It's time for a different approach, an alternative new business strategy.

Marketing can help your sales team do just that, using industrial marketing. Think of improving your visibility, creating a preferred position, and new sales opportunities.

Marketing helps Sales and Vice Versa

As an industrial marketing company, we believe that in the future of the manufacturing company, sales and marketing will become one department.

Marketing creates high-quality content, analyzes data, and delivers crucial information to sales. Sales provides marketing with knowledge about what the customer cares about and what is happening in the market. Industrial marketing at its best.

That way, sales, and marketing are in constant contact. They don't necessarily take over each other's tasks but enrich and feed each other with the right information. This balanced collaboration between marketing and sales is paying off.

Proper cooperation between marketing and sales is a crucial success factor if you want to anticipate changes in the industrial buying process.

Industrial companies where marketing and sales work closely together see their profits rise by 20%.

Conclusion

The days of conventional sales methods where you make random phone calls, drive endless miles, and drink too many coffees are behind us. However, to stay ahead of competitors, (continue to) close deals and ultimately secure a secure future, industrial companies will need to move with these developments.

Standing still is the fastest way of moving backward.

With the changes in the industrial buying process, the role of the salesman is also changing. That seller's role is now more critical than ever. Fortunately, there are all kinds of digital opportunities to respond to this. Crucial to this is the collaboration between marketing and sales. Together they determine the goal and the desired result.

Wondering what industrial marketing can do and how to choose the right approach? Make an appointment. We will show you how it works and what results it leads to.