Peter Barfuss, head of sales operation and sales transformation at Siemens Digital Industries, shares how the company worked with BCG to reimagine its inside sales operations and develop enhanced field sales capabilities.
BCG’s Approach to Digital Sales
Our successful digital sales transformation is built upon five principles:
- Understand the customer journey. Leverage key digital tools, demand analytics, and the LTV/CAC ratio to gain full transparency into the customer journey.
- Optimize sales processes. Integrate marketing and sales with digital tools, such as digital inbound marketing, account-based marketing, and data-driven, customized offers.
- Optimize individual sales channels. Create high-performing channels with a digitally enabled sales force, AI-driven call centers, and data-driven inside sales.
- Integrate channels. Align online and offline channels using next-generation sales management, shared incentives, and a real-time sales cockpit.
- Implement sales enablers. Ensure that key enablers are in place, including a centralized global demand center, advanced analytics, and the right culture and talent.
Companies that master these five principles not only gain, on average, a 3% EBITDA margin advantage over competitors, they also outperform in terms of profits, revenue, and growth.
How We Work with Digital Sales Clients
Our digital sales consultants work directly with sales teams on the ground to benchmark your current B2C and B2B digital sales processes, identify untapped opportunities, and establish a data-driven sales strategy. Armed with this analysis, we roll up our sleeves and enable your teams to launch agile sprints and test ideas in the market—then scale up quickly.
In addition to our deep experience in digital sales and digital marketing, we also bring comprehensive expertise in digital innovation, big data, and IT architecture. This allows us to deliver end-to-end solutions that integrate a data-driven sales strategy with cutting-edge technologies, tools, and data and analytics.
Next-Generation Go-to-Market Model
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Supercharging Digital Sales with AI
Many organizations assume that they don't have enough data to use AI in sales, or that they should focus on the basics first—but this is a myth. Our approach harnesses the data organizations have available, coupled with a collection of relevant use cases, to unlock AI and data-driven sales.
Our Digital Sales Consulting Work
In the last five years, we have completed more than 1,800 digital sales projects across all industries and regions—each one tailored to meet our clients’ unique circumstances. These projects have driven significant results:
A US
telecommunications company experienced stagnant digital sales owing to a lack of integration between sales and digital. In collaboration with BCG’s digital sales consulting team, the company built a high-velocity inbound sales operation, which increased the digital conversion rate by 600% and achieved a $500 million impact over five years.
Our digital sales consultants helped a global
biopharma company develop an integrated set of capabilities across analytics, marketing, and inside sales in order to engage customers in a more targeted, personalized, and data-driven way. In 15 months, the company increased its incremental annual sales by $45 million, improved sales rep productivity by 45%, and doubled its sales conversion rate.
A leading global
technology company, held back in their new cloud offerings by a traditional field based sales model, was falling behind digital native competitors. We helped the organization design a next-generation sales model and build a regional inside sales center in 90 days and established a true global demand center marketing team. The company expects this new capability to well over $1 billion in run-rate revenue after the first three years.
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October 24, 2024
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June 22, 2023
Distilling Lessons in Digital Sales and Marketing
Pierre-Yves Calloc’h, chief digital officer at Pernod Ricard, explains how BCG and BCG X helped the wine and spirits company build and deploy digital programs that have improved P&L by optimizing brand investment, promotion calendars, and sales activities.
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Meet Our Digital Sales Consulting Team
Our digital sales consultants deliver innovative, forward-thinking, customized solutions in next-generation sales strategy. Here are our featured experts on this topic.
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