The end of Sales have changed – and fast. If your company still relies solely on face-to-face meetings and sales visits, you’re losing your competitive edge. Buyers want to do everything digitally – and this isn’t a trend, it’s the new reality. If you’re still relying on the old model, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.
Consumer behavior
The numbers don’t lie. According to Gartner’s Field Sales research, “Virtual Selling’s Long-Term Impact on Field Sales Deployments” , more than 60% of B2B buyers would prefer to make their purchases without having to speak to a salesperson by 2023. This number was already significant, but it is even higher today.
The same article predicts that by 2025, 80% of interactions between sellers and buyers will occur in digital channels.
The same article predicts that by 2025, 80% of interactions between sellers and buyers will occur in digital channels.
The revenue of Brazilian e-commerce also dataset reinforces this change in behavior. In 2024, it reached R$204.3 billion, an increase of 10.5% compared to the previous year, according to the article in Consumidor Moderno.
This means that if your company still invests most of its resources in face-to-face meetings, you may be losing customers to competitors who have already understood that the game is hybrid.
The solution: structure your team for digital
In-person sales are not going away, but they need to be strategic. The focus now is to structure a sales team that knows how to sell digitally and reserve in-person sales for customers who are more relevant to your business.
Here are some strategies for this:
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Reallocate investments: reallocate study of building codes resources from in-person sales to expand your Inside Sales team.
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Prioritize high-value customers, those who really make a difference in revenue.
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Train your team in digital sales: your team needs to master tools such as calls on Google Meeting or Zoom, marketing automation and active prospecting processes to reduce the time salespeople spend in the field.
Additionally, there are direct benefits to adopting a hybrid model:
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Cost reduction: less spending on travel, fuel, accommodation and transportation.
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Possibility of hiring remote salespeople: hiring professionals in regions beyond the geographic region where the company is located.
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More time, more customers: Salespeople have more time to serve more leads and close more deals.
The changing customer journey
Sales leaders need to rethink the entire whatsapp database philippines customer journey, prioritizing digital channels early in the process. This reduces costs, improves efficiency, and speeds up closing. But that doesn’t mean that in-person sales should be discarded. For larger contracts and more complex negotiations, the presence of the salesperson continues to be a differentiator.
Digital qualifies, in-person closes.
It’s as if they were both on the same team: while one prepares the play and gives the assist, the other shoots at the goal.
The importance of research
As Gartner points out in the same research, before changing anything, it is essential to understand how your team sells today.
This avoids internal conflicts, prevents different areas from competing for the same customers and allows for a more strategic transition to digital.
Research is essential for this. Understand both your salespeople – how they close sales, organize their day and move around – as well as the habits of your audience and the channels where they make purchasing decisions.
