May 5, 2023
Let's start by looking in the rear-view mirror.
Sales teams as we know them really started to be equipped with advanced technology this century. Salesforce was founded in 1999–7 years before Hubspot. Sales engagement tools like Salesloft and Outreach came in the market about 10 years after. Since then, the number of solutions has totally boomed in the sales engagement and sales enablement software ecosystem, making it easier for the sales team to engage buyers in a more efficient and automated way.
Yet the process between buyers and sellers remained broken with complex buyer journeys, long sales cycle, scattered information, and impersonal interactions leaving room for even more digital transformation.
This is the reason why a new solution has emerged on the horizon: the "Digital Sales Room."
But what is it, and why should you care?
Digital Sales Room Defined
A Digital Sales Room (DSR) is not just another buzzword in the corporate lexicon. It's a centralized hub where buyers and sellers converge, collaborate, and close deals. Imagine a centralized location where content sharing, real-time communication, and deal progression happen seamlessly, without the constraints of geographical boundaries.
Key Features of Digital Sales Rooms
A Central Hub
DSRs act as a one-stop-shop for all sales-related interactions. Sales teams and potential buyers can communicate, share content, and align their objectives seamlessly. It's a remote content collaboration software where buying teams can find up-to-date sales related information
Rather than the usual follow-up communication post-demo being a blackbox, or becoming an infinite email thread overloaded with attached files that buyers do not enjoy getting through, sales organizations are now leveraging digital sales rooms for their entire sales process.
They can now create client portals, share all relevant key sales content, provide a convenient purchasing experience and a smooth sales process while keeping the control over the buyer engagement.
For instance, Topo’s Digital Sales Rooms enables teams to centralize any sales collateral so it can be found easily by sales reps and shared to potential buyers.
A Branded Space
Digital sales rooms are not another standalone tool but the missing piece of the puzzle for sales teams that want to move forward, stand out from the competition and win more deals. From gated content, request to 30-minutes demo for the sales reps KPIs, to never-ending sales cycle and back-and-forth, the usual buyer journey can feel very impersonal.
For decades, the sales process seemed to be in favour of sellers requiring buyers a high-level of engagement and commitment while not having the proper amount of buyer enablement and sales assets to understand the key benefits of each solution and champion internally.
With Digital Sales Rooms, sales professionals can offer more personalized interactions and buying experiences. They can now empower the buying team by sharing sales materials curated to the buyer's preferences, engageing and aligning on next steps in a personalized and centralized location. This enables them to champion, involve and commit buyers, speeding up the deal cycle while providing a delightful sales process.
For instance, Topo’s Digital Sales Rooms allow sellers to greet buyers in a branded space with personal video messages, enhancing the human touch in digital interactions and empowering personalized buying experiences.
Made for Real-time Collaboration
Digital Sales rooms is a portal for both sellers and buyers to engage and collaborate on. This means the sales team will be able to share and empower the buyers with key sales content, and that the buying team will be able to align on a mutual action plan, challenge the sales process and interact with the content shared (sales collateral, customer testimonials, security topic, etc.).
A Secure Digital Room
Digital Sales Rooms platforms like Topo ensure that content access is controlled, ensuring that only the right stakeholders can view critical information.
Curious about Topo's security? Learn more about our customer engagement in terms of security and compliance.
The Benefits of Integrating a Digital Sales Room into your Sales Strategy
The shift towards virtual selling and engagement is evident. According to McKinsey, 80% of buyers now prefer virtual interactions. Digital Sales Rooms cater to this preference, offering a platform that combines the best of in-person and digital sales methods. Businesses that have adopted DSRs report up to a 50% reduction in sales cycles, highlighting their efficiency.
Here's the different reasons why Digital Sales Rooms matter:
Increase Sales Productivity
Digital Sales Rooms automate many of the repetitive tasks that previously bogged down sales teams and eliminate the need for buyers to sift through countless emails or documents. With centralized content, real-time interactions, and integrated tools, sales cycles are faster, more efficient, and less prone to errors.
Sales teams usually juggle multiple tools, from CRMs to email platforms, often leading to miscommunication, missed opportunities, and longer sales cycles. They spent significant time on administrative tasks rather than actual selling.
With DSRs, sales teams can focus on what they do best: selling. The platform offers a unified space for all sales-related activities, reducing the need for multiple tools and ensuring that all team members are on the same page. The result is a smoother, faster, and more efficient sales process. Sales executives who use a digital sales room manage to maintain sales momentum by keeping potential clients engaged with up-to-date content and valuable follow-ups, and sales leaders can now create an actionable and repeatable process for their sales team.
Enhance the Buyer Experience
Digital Sales Rooms (DSRs) place the buyer at the center of the sales journey, providing a personalized, interactive, and user-friendly platform. They empower champions to sell internally, making it easier for them to convince other stakeholders in their organization of the value your solution offers.
Before DSRs, buyers often felt overwhelmed with scattered information, generic sales pitches, and a lack of direct engagement. Sales champions lacked the tools to effectively communicate the benefits of a product or service to their internal teams, making the internal selling process cumbersome and inefficient.
With a digital sales room platform, buyers are now empowered champions, able to sell internally with ease. The platform allows them to:
Empower Champions to Sell Internally: DSRs provide buyers with tailored content and tools they need to advocate for your solution within their organization.
Engage and Commit Relevant Stakeholders throughout the Deal Process: DSRs ensure that all relevant stakeholders have access to the information they need, fostering collaboration and speeding up decision-making.
Help Prospects Prioritize your Project: By offering a superior, personalized experience, DSRs ensure that your project stands out, helping prospects prioritize it over others.
Improve Real-Time Collaboration and Asynchronous Communication
DSRs offer a single platform where all stakeholders, both internal and external, can communicate in real-time. With centralized content, notifications, and integrated communication tools, everyone stays informed and aligned.
Teams relied on a mix of emails, meetings, and disparate tools to communicate, often leading to information silos, miscommunication, and delays in decision-making.
DSRs ensure that all team members, regardless of their location or role, have access to the same information. Real-time updates and notifications mean that everyone is informed of changes or developments instantly, fostering better collaboration and faster decision-making.
Stand Out from the Competition
Today, sales organizations that leverage advanced tools like DSRs stand out. They offer a superior buyer experience, a faster deal cycle, and better collaboration, setting them apart from competitors still relying on traditional sales methods.
Sales team relied on traditional sales pitches, generic presentations, and slow response times, often leading to lost opportunities and a perception of being outdated.
By adopting DSRs, businesses position themselves as proactive and innovative leaders. They can respond to buyer needs in real-time, provide personalized experiences, and ensure that their sales processes are as efficient as possible, giving them a clear edge over competitors.
Enhance Data-Driven Sales Engagement
Digital Sales Rooms come equipped with analytics tools that track buyer interactions, content performance, and team activities. This data is invaluable for understanding buyer behavior, refining sales tactics, and ensuring that content is resonating with the target audience. This makes Digital Sales Rooms an even greater sales enablement tool.
Decisions were often based on gut feelings, anecdotal evidence, or limited data, leading to strategies that might not align with actual buyer needs or preferences.
With the insights provided by DSRs, sales teams can make informed decisions based on real data. They can see which content is most engaging, how buyers are interacting with the platform, and where there might be bottlenecks in the sales process, allowing for continuous improvement and refinement.
Sales enablement professionals are now able to understand the sales assets that generate higher-engagement and perform the best, and sales teams can now have detailed and actionable insights on the prospects that are the most engaged and the most likely to buy. Creating a repeatable sales process that actually works is now possible.
Find out more about the 8 key sales challenges and how digital sales rooms help sales teams in overcoming them in this playbook.
Examples of Digital Sales Room Platforms
Key Takeaways of using Digital Sales Rooms
The Digital Sales Room is quickly gaining popularity. As the lines between real-time communication, the instant needs from buyers and the rise of asynchronous interaction blur, DSRs offer a solution that bridges the gap, ensuring that sales teams can provide the right resources to the relevant stakeholders–all in one place. It enables sales reps to engage, involve and commit potential clients with ease.
Having a centralized and personalized hub to empower champions with valuable content, a mutual action plan that actually serves buyers and sellers, and a digital sales room to facilitate engagement and collaboration leads to faster deal cycles and more deals won at the end of the day.
