The B2B digital inflection point: How sales have changed during COVID-19

  By Ryan Gavin, Liz Harrison, Candace Lun Plotkin, Dennis Spillecke, and Jennifer StanleyCOVID-19 is changing how B2B buyers and sellers interact. Savvy sales leaders are learning how to adapt to the next normal.COVID-19 has destroyed lives and livelihoods and continues to do so in many communities around the world. Although the full implications of the pandemic are far from certain, it is already clear that its economic consequences are dire.For sales leaders contemplating how to react, taking care of their people and customers must be a top priority. Even as they manage that reality, sales leaders also need to adjust how their organizations sell in the face of new customer habits and trying economic times. In many ways, the changes in customer behavior are an acceleration of digital trends that were in motion before the pandemic hit. We believe we are at a digital inflection point, where B2B sales operations going forward will look fundamentally different from what they were before the pandemic.To better understand how both customers and sellers are reacting, we launched a survey of B2B businesses across 11 countries in seven sectors and across 14 categories of spend.1 These findings reveal three emergent themes that we will continue to track:

• Spend. While companies are generally reducing spend, a sizable number are increasing or maintaining it, with rates depending on company size, sector, and—more than any other factor—location in the world.
• Digital. Looking forward, B2B companies see digital interactions as two to three times more important to their customers than traditional sales interactions.
• Remote. Almost 90 percent of sales have moved to a videoconferencing(VC)/phone/web sales model, and while some skepticism remains, more than half believe this is equally or more effective than sales models used before COVID-19.

We hope the insights from this survey can help sales leaders calibrate their responses and navigate their organizations through the three phases of the COVID-19 response: 1) navigating the current crisis with resolve and resilience, 2) planning for the recovery, and 3) reimagining the next normal. Clearly there is a great deal of uncertainty, but we are seeing plenty of signals that indicate an acceleration of previous trends—omnichannel selling, inside sales, tech-enabled selling, e-commerce—rather than completely different behaviors.Sales leaders are already moving quickly to navigate the crisis, with the best ones focusing on how to make targeted changes that help their businesses weather the storm and start preparing for the recovery. As we update this survey in the coming weeks, we will also share perspectives on planning for the recovery as well as reimagining the new normal for sales.