Life is tough for salespeople who take a traditional approach. Modern buyers don’t want to be bothered with calls and meetings, but prospects still need to make informed purchases. Salespeople still play a vital role in the buyer’s journey, even without face-to-face interaction, by using something called asynchronous selling.
According to Gartner’s Future of B2B Buying Journey Report, direct contact with salespeople accounts for just 5% of a customer’s time throughout the entire buying journey.
That’s a tight window for a salesperson to demonstrate relevance and value. Not to mention separating themselves from the competition—and often doing more with fewer resources.
If those hurdles weren’t enough, that same Gartner report found the number of stakeholders involved in B2B buying decisions has increased by over 30% since 2015. Now, instead of 5 people making the decision, it’s between 6 and 10.
For salespeople, going back and forth with a prospect’s internal decision makers becomes a full-time job. Not an enticing prospect when they’re only occupying 5% of that buyer’s journey.
So how do sales teams help more decision-makers without increasing the number of meetings and extending the sales cycle?
By working closely with skilled content marketers to engage prospects in asynchronous selling.
It’s a buyer’s world: The value of asynchronous selling
A decade ago, the quickest way for B2B buyers to get information on a specific solution was to jump on a call with a salesperson. But now, according to our head of business development, Kara McKenna, we live in an Amazon world where buyers know what they want, do their homework, and then communicate with the seller.
“Typically, when I hear from prospects, they’re already interested in what we’re selling,” McKenna explained. “This is the beauty of asynchronous selling. It gives prospects a reason why they should want to speak with us. So we don’t waste their time or mine, which helps build the relationship a little better.”
The research shows this too. In a recent McKinsey survey of B2B executives, buyers preferred digital interactions 2-3 times more than typical sales interactions (meetings). Daniel Huang, Mid-Market Account Executive at HubSpot, agrees with this point but takes it one step further.
In a recent podcast interview with our CEO, Cara McDonald, and Digital Reach’s Chief Revenue Officer, Mandy Thompson, Huang argued that asynchronous selling is now critical to sales conversions.
“It used to be that you could only move prospects from one stage to the other if they jumped on a call,” Huang said. “But with asynchronous, you’re using modern communication methods like text messaging or email that allows you to cover so much more ground between calls.”
There is a strong case to be made for the value of asynchronous selling. But the question for many B2B companies is how to build it into their sales cycles.
Building it: The rise of the marketer
Marketing is the answer. Marketers are now as important as salespeople in closing deals. It seems many executives agree. Deloitte’s recent CMO Survey showed that marketing budgets rose to 11.8% this year among B2B companies, higher than pre-pandemic levels. Many executives believe strong marketing teams are the direct link to sustainable profitability.
Huang wholeheartedly agrees with Deloitte’s research. In his view, buyers’ preference for asynchronous communication has pushed sales teams to rely on their marketing departments to maintain a healthy sales funnel.
“Asynchronous selling should be the equal responsibility of both marketing and sales to cater to the modern buyer,” Huang argued. “Marketing helps sales teams communicate in the ways the consumer wants to buy.”
Increased marketing communications allow salespeople to take advantage of opportunities during that other 95% of the time they’re not directly involved in the buyer’s journey. In this way, asynchronous selling makes life easier than ever for B2B salespeople. They just need to adopt it and invest in the marketing part.
Despite the benefits though, many B2B sales reps find it difficult to prove value without synchronous, human interaction. McKenna says she understands the value of calls or in-person meetings in moving their solutions from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have’ for prospects. But today, sales need to think outside the box.
“How many deals would I leave on the table because I insisted we jump on a call?” McKenna explained. “Oftentimes people are just looking for a little bit more information. So I send something over, and they remain a prospect. It’s a buyer’s world now, so if I can get information in front of them the way they prefer, why wouldn’t I do that?”
With only 5% of the time in a buyer’s journey, the modern salesperson’s focus should be on closing. This is why asynchronous selling is valuable to complete the other 95% of the buyer’s journey.
For more information on our asynchronous sales solutions, visit our Services page. If you are curious about bolstering your company’s asynchronous sales approach right away, contact us today to learn more about how we can help.