Digital Sales Room becoming a “must have” category for SaaS

Digital sales rooms have been creeping up the Gartner Hype Cycle for a few years now. I think by year end, we’ll start to see the shift from these being a “nice to have” to a “need to have” for sales teams.

The B2B sales processes traditionally have always been about cold reach outs either through a call or a long e-mail with several attachments justifying the product or service. It doesn't end here, in fact once you know that your prospect wants to actually engage, you have to send out countless emails containing various multimedia attachments which have to be all tailored for individual clients and their particular stakeholders who come in at different stages of the sales process.

The present scenario is not much different but only addition is the vast number of CRM tools that have come up with Salesforce leading the pact. Such tools have long hit their peak of innovation and are now coming up with just fancy packages containing the same functionalities.

This is where Digital Sales Rooms have come up in the B2B sales space, DSRs are increasingly becoming a necessity rather than just another good to have tool. DSRs have already become a major part of the Sales process once a prospect is ready to engage but now Sales Teams are using it even before clients are ready to engage. It is becoming the single most important source of truth for both the buyers and sellers. 

In a study conducted by Gartner they claim that only 17% of the buyer's time is spent on actually interacting with the Sales reps face-to-face or on a live call and this includes all the vendors that the prospect might be referring to. Therefore it is a safe assumption that close to 95% of the buyer's journey is spent on engaging with the countless emails and attachments that you send them!

How do DSRs make best use of the time outside live engagement for both buyers and sellers? 

1. Provide a platform that can contain all kinds of content needed by the prospects to understand your service completely (eg. ROI models, Demos, Loom Videos etc.)
2. Personalise the content for individual prospects by making just a few changes.
3. Keep track and get insights on how the prospect is engaging with your content.
4. Engage with your prospect as and when required on the DSR itself.
5. Easily customizable as you progress through the sales cycle.

All of this included in just one link that can be shared across a simple mail (the only mail you need to send)

How does this help the buyers?

1. No more browsing through hundreds of mails
2. One place for all the decision making stakeholders (no more selective forwarding)
3. Accessible when you want and to whoever wants it.

How does it help the sellers?

1. Know exactly how your prospects are engaging with your content.
2. Personalise the content for each individual buyer.
3. Make different content accessible to relevant stakeholders depending on their persona and at the same time discover all the decision makers. 
4. Nudge them at the best time possible.
5. Reach out to all stakeholders at once. 
6. Differentiate your selling process so that your team stands out.

As we move into a new phase of B2B Digital Sales where buyers want to pick services just like they’d shop for products on Amazon, DSRs are the only way to move forward. They are helping the overall Sales ecosystem by catering to the change in the Buyer's journey rather than making small tweaks in Sellers process. 

In conclusion DSRs are all set to capture majority of the buyer's journey time and therefore you should pick the best one for your team! 

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