The Race To Differentiate the Customer Experience In a ‘4D’ Selling Model

Customers are constantly raising the bar for sellers. Nowhere is this pressure to adapt more acute than in business-to-business technology, equipment, and solutions markets. Over the last several years the B2B buying process has gotten longer. It involves more stakeholders. And happens almost entirely online. Most buyers under the age of 40 would prefer to discover, shop, and purchase without a sales rep involved at all if they could.

Forbes Contributor Stephen Diorio writes that the emergence of “4D” selling systems – selling channels that are digitally enabled, displaced geographically, data-driven, and dynamic – as the primary mode of selling in the wake of the pandemic has only accelerated the pace of change. The move to “4D” selling has transformed the go-to-market approach of almost every (97%) organization according to the Markets in Motion research report. It has made almost every aspect of selling a struggle – generating attention, relationship building, maintaining engagement, communicating value, and differentiation. Sellers regard customer demands for more relevant, timely, and personalized content as the number one change impacting their ability to perform, according to research by the Remote Sales Productivity Report. Gaining B2B buyers’ attention and keeping them engaged virtually, communicating how their solutions can solve problems, and building relationships are the top virtual selling challenges according to research by the Rain Group and Blue Ridge Partners.

Enterprise technology sellers and their organizations are exploring what they can do to differentiate the customer experience in “4D” selling channels. Many are realizing that Zoom meetings and other meeting technologies that only facilitate audio and video conferencing are not enough. These simply get people to the table; what they do at the virtual table is where innovation needs to happen.

Many sales and marketing leaders – like HPE, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Honeywell, Dell, and Audi – are taking this to heart making big investments to create digital experiences or virtual worlds to support selling in the future.