How an omnichannel strategy can impact your sales team

Many B2B companies want to improve their service levels and sales efficiency. What is the best recipe to do that? You will be disappointed as there is none.

Of course each situation is different, but we might have some few ideas why theses two areas can benefit from implementing an omnichannel strategy on your internal organisation. This is what we will explain in this article, focusing on why being able to interact with your clients AND your colleagues through different channels might be as important.

OMNIchannel strategy: what is it?

Let's begin this article with a definition of an omnichannel strategy

OMNIchannel: An omnichannel strategy consists of being able to interact with a customer through different channels, preferably in real time, and track all theses interactions.

The usual channels included are search, websites, mobile apps, social media, phone and emails. Face-to-face meetings and printed documents can also be included from time to time.

The fact that a customer values being able to interact through various channels with the same company without being forced to repeat themselves is a key factor that explains why companies implement an omnichannel strategy.

Marketing departments were often the first to see the real value behind an omnichannel strategy but we tend to see more and more sales departments implementing similar strategies as well.

Why you can benefit from applying an omnichannel strategy internally

Originally multi-channel strategies were  designed to keep track of the same customer through different channels and therefore improve the overall customer experience.

The fact is that by focusing too much on clients it has sometimes become easier to reach a customer than a colleague.

There are various reasons why applying an omnichannel strategy to your organization should increase your internal communication and be good for your sales, marketing and overall customer service and sales efficiency.

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For example, if you enable one of your sales reps to automatically share information about a client with one of his colleagues through his mobile you are saving time.

You are also saving energy if your marketing department can focus on content generation rather than cumbersome admin tasks to wrap up the results of a campaign - imagine if the campaigns could auto-generate leads to the right sales rep instead, including information about opens, clicks etc and that the marketing department easily could see how many leads, orders and sales a specific campaign produced.

What if the sales rep could get relevant website visitors converted into leads automatically, be notified on that in realtime, get the task added to qualify the lead and even see what parts of the web the lead visited, before reaching out to the lead.

What if you, on top of this, could do all these things from a computer, smartphone or tablet, wherever you are. That would be both efficient, agile and more desirable.

From a client service perspective, If you, as a customer service department, always have accurate knowledge of what your colleagues are doing with your customers then you can reach out when it's relevant for your specific customer.

Plus, because you have access to relevant and updated information about when customers reads your emails, visit your website and engage with your campaigns, you can come up with the right solution. You can also reach out when it is relevant for your customer, i.e. when they actively are searching for answers or might have questions.

Teams that can respond quickly are in general perceived as giving better customer service than those that respond slow, or even not at all.

From a sales perspective sharing relevant lead information between colleagues before making a call can really make a difference. When you do reach out then you are well prepared since you know what emails our customers have read, what parts of your website they were interested in and how you are connected.

Moreover, and this is a big added-value, if you can do this from anywhere on a smartphone or tablet (office, car, subway etc.) then you can answer quickly and deliver a good service in an appropriate time.

Finally from a marketing perspective a proper internal omnichannel solution helps the marketing department to understand how many leads are produced and go beyond the traditional ‘open, click’ analytics.

With an integrated internal omnichannel solution where the email automation tool, social media, website, CRM and ERP are all interconnected, it's easy to see what campaigns that produce the best results in terms of generated leads, opportunities, closed orders and at the end, sales…

For these three reasons, do yourself a favor and try a multi-channel software. A properly implemented omnichannel solution includes integrated softwares to support sales, marketing, delivery and finance departments in one digital and highly automated flow, accessible from different computers, smartphones and tablets.

If you want to know HOW you can implement your omnichannel strategy, read these articles.

Andreas Lalangas, CEO, Salesbox