- OpenText™ | Blogs
- 07.03.2017
- EN
OpenText™ "ON DIGITAL-First Fridays: Sold? But I Never Started the Sales Cycle!"
Consumers expect highly personalized products and services, delivered in real time. Instant gratification means no more waiting in long lines, no more trudging through shopping malls, no more cash purchases. Even tangible goods are fading into services delivered in the Cloud.
In the Subscription Economy, the customer is in control, sitting in the driver seat: creating ecosystems around products and services, driving distribution across networks (not chains), co-creating and crowdsourcing, and forcing product development and service availability to be “outside the box”.
Forget the funnel. The sales funnel is being replaced by an orbital model, based on multiple interactions that create a lifetime of value. It’s no longer about quantity—or the more leads you feed into the funnel, the more deals you’ll close. It’s a more complex process based on multiple interactions taking place across multiple touchpoints and channels. The focus is on nurturing long-term relationships with loyal customers and community members rather than funneling leads through the buying cycle.
In the digital world, purchasers are either 100% sold self-service or 90% sold by the time they contact a sales rep. Big Box retailers are attracting aisle browsers who look at goods in the store and immediately surf the web for a better price. Consumers of digital do not want a sales call, they want a compelling digital experience to take them from need to sold.