How much longer can B2B companies ignore the digital transformation? If customers have become accustomed to new technologies and new conveniences in their private lives, they expect the same in their business environment. Why should a person who searches for something on their tablet on a Sunday, looks up information online and places an order at the touch of a button, drive to work in a coach on Monday, search in a printed business directory and place an order by fax or carrier pigeon? I call this the ‘Sunday/Monday Gap’. Of course, I know some distributors who still receive orders by fax, but how long will that continue? You don’t have to switch off the fax overnight, but you should consider and offer the new options. One of the biggest ‘nails in the coffin’ for the survival, growth and future of companies are sentences like:
‘We’ve always done it this way.’
‘We tried that ten years ago and it didn’t work.’
‘Our customers don’t want that. Mr Müller from XY AG has also confirmed this.’
‘I can’t imagine that working for us.’
And one of my ‘favourite’ defence phrases is: ‘Yes, Mr Schuster, that may be the case with others. But everything is different for us and it doesn’t work that way with our customers/sales staff/market.’ To be honest, we advise around 50 new customers every year and get to know the companies of around 800-1,000 seminar participants every year. The basic mechanisms of marketing and sales are the same or at least similar everywhere. Whenever innovations are introduced, there are (in retrospect, curious) opinions and statements such as:
‘It is impossible for people to endure the high speeds of the railway. His respiratory system will collapse; death from pulmonary haemorrhage will be the rule.’
(Professor Dr Dionysius Lardner, 1793 – 1859, University College, London)
‘I believe that there will be a need for perhaps five computers in the world.’
(Thomas J. Watson, CEO of IBM, 1956)
‘Petroleum is a useless secretion of the earth – a sticky liquid that stinks and cannot be used in any way.’
(From a proclamation of the ‘Academy of Sciences’ in St. Petersburg 1806)
‘We have lived 60 years without television, and we will live another 60 years without television.’
(Avery Brundage, President of the International Olympic Committee, 1960)
‘Who in the name of three devils wants to hear actors speak?’
(H. M. Warner of Warner Brothers in 1927)
‘There’s nothing for us to earn on the Internet.’
(Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, 1994)
In my experience, this is usually due to fear of the new and uncertainty about how to deal with it. And that’s completely understandable. But if you want to use the opportunities of digitalisation in marketing and sales, you have to close the Sunday / Monday Gap.
Excerpt from my book: ‘Digitalisation in marketing and sales’
