Look no further than your dining room table and you will see what has become the predominant way that human interaction has evolved. Consumers no longer will accept anything but instantaneous feedback weather it’s texting with their friends, booking a trip, buying an app, finding a partner, picking a seat at the movies, flagging a taxi, or buying clothes. The “Thumbs Generation” will accept nothing less in their B2B experience than they have become accustom to in their B2C experience. Dynamically configured and personalized offers delivered instantaneously is the new expected buying experience and where the new sales battles will be fought.
This generation is unlike any other and they are arriving in businesses of all sizes. Whether they are banding together with a group of friends in Silicon Valley to launch a new take out food services or finding their way to jobs at GE, HP, J&J, or Walmart, this generation has vastly different expectation of how B2B commerce will be conducted.
Speed and buying experience are the currencies and those companies that have embraced this generation stand to vastly outperform their competitors. Simply understanding the need to evolve is far less difficult than modernizing a company’s commerce model. Transforming complicated pricing and quoting workflows to the point where the click stream is logical and efficient requires an objective look at what customers truly value. Answering question like; is the product proven to work, will it work in my business, and can I get my people to use it had traditionally been answered with complicated sales processes requiring multiple face to face meetings and many iterations of what was actually going to be delivered. The “Thumbs Generation” is expecting a try and buy it experience. They have researched your product or service, have looked at the cost of action vs the cost of inaction, know the benefits of your product or service vs your competitors, and want to try your product before they make a financial commitment.
The implications are enormous, and the choices are difficult. Questions like; do I have the right sales force, are we using our data to create a personalized buying experience, are our customers more likely to buy a subscription vs the product or service outright, and how can I recognize if existing customers are likely to churn, are all daunting questions that are at the core of the buying experience.
Our thumbs are believed to have evolved with our tool using at least as far back 2.3 million years ago with the emergence of homo habilis and we need look no further than the dinner table to see where evolution has taken us.
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