Accelerating Your Digital Transformation Strategy

As the B2B buyer’s journey goes increasingly digital, marketers are thinking more and more about accelerating their digital transformation strategy. The organizations with truly impressive results are the ones where digital transformation transcends the boundaries between marketing, sales and product. In fact, for one of our clients, digital transformation began at the product level but eventually led to a transformation on the sales and marketing sides as well.

Wonderlic, a pioneer in tests and assessments in the employment and education spaces, had built a great degree of success selling a combination of offline and digital products through a highly consultative and relationship-driven salesforce. But as they thought about how to continue to expand their success, they didn’t turn only to sales and marketing. They knew their challenge wasn’t just to increase marketing reach or conversions, to improve lead management, or to accelerate the sales cycle. Rather, they had to focus on their audience. They needed to research and think deeply about the needs of current customers, as well as the untapped potential markets to fuel their growth.

We worked with them to digitally transform their business, and in doing so they had to ask many questions about their customers and the current business landscapes. Here are some similar ones for you to consider:

1. What undeniable shifts or trends are our core customers facing?

2. How have these shifts changed their goals?

3. Does our product / service require changes or additions to help accommodate this shift?

4. What hassles or areas of friction do our customers endure and how can we minimize them?

5. Who uses our product in ways we never expected?

6. Are there markets that haven’t wanted, needed or been able to afford our product that may now be interested?

7. Is there a different pricing structure, delivery model or product offering we can shape to address new or emerging markets?

8. What should we amplify about our product to respond to customers’ shifting needs?

9. How have our customers’ expectations about the length, speed or complexity of the sales process / transaction changed?

10. Have our customers’ watering holes changed and are their information sources human or digital?

11. How are our competitors impacting the industry and our customers? Are they doing something transformative that we should factor into our thinking?

What did they learn? Customers were evaluating products differently than they had been when Wonderlic first developed its line of assessments. Customers also had different expectations about product requirements and the user experience, and ultimately, they were buying differently. What followed was the full-scale transformation of a more than 80-year-old company. Wonderlic decided to develop, promote and sell a SaaS product in a completely digital fashion — to compete on an innovation level with the most bleeding-edge startups while bringing the deep expertise and scientific chops of a time-tested organization.

What happened? Sales. Lots of ’em.

How can you achieve similar results and accelerate your digital transformation strategy? Start by asking and answering critical questions.