Digital Sales Rooms: What are They and How to Use Them
As the world becomes increasingly digital, accelerated by COVID-19, the way we purchase goods and services is also changing. In this new digital age, buyers can make purchases without ever having to leave their homes. According to a McKinsey survey, 70 percent of B2B decision makers are open to making new, fully self-serve, or remote purchases over $50,000.
This shift has forced the sales teams to adapt and create new methods for engaging buyers. Of the many techniques adopted over the last several months, digital sales rooms (DSRs), also known as customer collaboration platforms or client portals, have been one of the most effective in driving conversions.
We’ll explore digital sales rooms and how you can use them to create a modern buying experience, driving meaningful customer interactions to increase conversion rates and shorten sales cycles.
What are digital sales rooms?
A digital sales room is a shared online space where salespeople and prospective customers can collaborate and access relevant material to the deal, such as product catalogs, quotes and proposals, contracts, and more.
Also known as sales microsites or virtual deal rooms, they provide more than just a safe environment to engage with a customer. Sales organizations can find real-time data on what prospects are interested in and where they spend their time, enabling sales leaders and their teams to tailor the sales process further and improve close rates.
As B2B sales become more complex and remote purchasing more prevalent, sales enablement tools like digital sales rooms become essential to differentiate a company and create personalized interactions that support buyers.
How to use a digital sales room?
When used correctly, there are many benefits to capturing customer interactions, gathering all related material, and streamlining the digital sales process into one digital sales room. With this information, reps are able to quickly templatize sales rooms to easily customize them to each buyer.
By choosing a customer collaborative platform, like Recapped, you can quickly launch a digital sales channel and take advantage of its ability to shorten sales cycles, improve conversion rates, and close more business.
Once your system is in place and your sales team is ready to engage, digital sales rooms can be used in a variety of ways.
Personalize the experience
Quickly personalize the buyer's journey by understanding their interests, level of product knowledge, and business needs. You can provide buyers with a more targeted and relevant experience that will accelerate the sales cycle.
Recent studies found that 73% of B2B executives want personalized customer experiences, similar to the B2C customer experience. Digital sales rooms will help meet these new demands.
One single source of truth for sales collateral
When you include all your sales collateral in one digital sales room, your prospects will have everything they need to make a purchasing decision. Uploading relevant product information, pricing, helpful blog articles, customer reviews, and case studies will give prospects the ability to self-serve and reduce the number of unnecessary emails that delay the sales process.
Since digital sales rooms are updated in real-time, your prospects are always seeing the most up-to-date information about your products and services. This enables your sales team to focus on the needle-moving activities to close the deal.
Consolidating scattered content from multiple sources into one digital sales room will provide a seamless buying journey, that gives your company a competitive edge.
Keeping all stakeholders and sales teams aligned
As teams continue to operate remotely, virtual sales and purchasing processes are becoming the new normal. This means it's more important than ever to keep everyone aligned. Features like activity feeds, task assignments, and document sharing ensure everyone is on the same page, no matter where they're located.
With a DSR, you’ll gain insights into which team members are working on each deal, what stage of the process they’re in, and what content or documents they have access to. This will help you quickly identify any roadblocks or miscommunications that may slow down the sales process and take action to remove them.
Increase efficiency through automation
Digital sales rooms help increase efficiency by automating manual tasks and processes. For example, when a prospect accesses a specific document or downloads a product catalog, you can trigger a follow-up email or task for the sales rep. By automating these processes, you can free up your sales team's time so they can focus on selling.
In lengthy B2B sales cycles, automating can keep things in order and make sales teams more effective. Each sales rep will be able to focus on their prospects and customers rather than worrying about administrative tasks.
Ongoing, real-time communication
The sales conversation should continue even when you're not meeting. Digital sales rooms allow sellers and prospects to communicate in real-time, which keeps the sales process moving forward. By offering a DSR messaging system, you can stay on top of any questions prospects may have and address any concerns that could slow down the sales process.
Contract and deal approval
Streamlining the contract and deal approval process is another key benefit of digital sales rooms. By making the resources available to all required stakeholders of the customer's organization, you can speed up approvals and get deals signed faster.
Insights into sales cycles and buyer intent
These platforms offer valuable insights into how prospects are engaging with your content. By understanding what content is being accessed and when you can better align your sales process with the buyer's decision-making process. Additionally, you can use this data to score leads and prioritize follow-ups.
When executed by an entire sales team, this tool can be a powerful differentiator for your company and build strong customer relationships. By consolidating your sales collateral, automating manual processes, and providing real-time communication, you can increase efficiency, close more deals, and gain valuable insights into your buyer's decision-making process.
Get started with your digital sales room today
At Recapped, we offer a consolidated customer collaboration platform to streamline your complete digital sales process. From content management to contract approvals, our platform will help you collaborate on deals, pilots, and implementations to generate more revenue.
Schedule a demo today to see how we can help you streamline your digital sales process.