Unlock new growth opportunities in the industrial B2B sector by embracing business transformation. The McKinsey B2B Pulse 2024 Survey highlights that top-performing companies invest in omnichannel sales strategies, achieving up to 70% higher market share growth across all regions and sectors. This blog explores why experimentation, digital commitment, and customer-centric investments are non-negotiable for distributors seeking long-term success. Discover actionable insights and data-driven strategies to inspire your next transformation step. This is the ninth year McKinsey has published the report. It tracks the investments, innovations, and experiments of B2B sellers. And it reveals the trends, truths, and must-haves of what B2B customers really want.
McKinsey’s latest B2B Pulse Survey finds that 39% of B2B buyers are willing to spend over $500,000 per order through self-service digital commerce or remote online connections with a sales representative.
This is a must-read for all industrial distributors and manufacturers.
McKinsey’s latest B2B Pulse Survey reveals that across all sectors and regions, market leaders continue to experiment, invest, and commit to omnichannel sales as the path to sustainable growth.
Amid today’s economic uncertainty, the B2B landscape is undergoing significant transformation. Fueled by rapid integration of digital technologies, sellers continue to invest, innovate, and experiment with how they present their offerings. Their B2B customers are shifting toward consumer-like purchasing behavior. They’re also demanding a much more sophisticated buying experience and are willing to walk away if they don’t get it.
In this ever-evolving environment, B2B decision makers are asking how they should continue to balance self-service (where they can manage buying on their own through a digital interface) and human interactions in their approach to sales. To find answers, we recently conducted our 2024 B2B Pulse Survey to better understand their priorities, expectations, and behaviors. We gathered responses from nearly 4,000 B2B decision makers across 34 sectors in eight major industries from 13 different countries. This year marks the ninth time that we have fielded this survey; since 2016, we have gathered insights from approximately 30,000 respondents globally.
This year’s research shows that trends we’ve been tracking over the past several years have now crystallized into five fundamental truths about success in B2B sales and how these truths are experienced across three different archetypes of decision makers: adapters, innovators, and seekers.
- The “rule of thirds” rules all. At any given stage of the buying journey, one-third of customers hope for in-person interactions, one-third want remote communications, and one-third prefer digital self-serve options. The rule of thirds holds true across all geographies, industries, and company sizes, all types of buying occasions from new to repeat purchases, and across high- and low-value purchases.
- Seamless omnichannel is gold. B2B customers use an average of ten interaction channels in their buying journey (up from five in 2016). But sellers offering multiple channels isn’t enough. More than half of our respondents want a true omnichannel experience, one in which they can interact and buy while switching seamlessly across multiple channels. They are likely to switch suppliers if they don’t have a smooth experience across these many touchpoints.
- E-commerce is indispensable. In-person sales is no longer the top revenue-generating channel among organizations that offer e-commerce as an option. E-commerce is now on top, with more than one-third of revenue coming from this channel for those that offer it. Meanwhile, in-person revenue has dropped five percentage points year over year. Customers’ comfort with remote and self-serve spending has jumped, notably for orders of more than $500,000.
- Hybrid work works. Companies where employees work in multiple locations (at home, in the office, or at client sites) are more likely to experience 10 percent–plus revenue growth than companies where employees work from a single location.
- Gen AI’s got game. Nineteen percent of B2B sales forces are already implementing gen AI use cases and finding success, and an additional 23 percent are in the process of experimenting with it. Data-driven commercial teams that blend personalized customer experiences with gen AI are 1.7 times more likely to increase market share than those that do not.
In this article, we’ll explain the imperatives to develop effective go-to-market strategies that arise from these five truths. First, we’ll describe three distinct archetypes of B2B decision makers and how these truths apply to them. Then we’ll explore how leaders can act in response to each of the five truths. Although there is some variation in how different archetypes operate in an omnichannel ecosystem, all decision makers want the ability to interact in many ways, everywhere, at any time.
Learn more about the three archetypes of B2B decision makers. Explore the full report: McKinsey B2B Pulse 2024
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