Building a web shop or a comprehensive customer portal is indispensable in an omnichannel strategy — it requires a solid technological foundation, a go-to-market strategy, traffic generation tactics, and sales enablement initiatives. Sales teams, for instance, should actively generate shop users and direct their clients to the shop. This, in turn, requires clear channel differentiation: a defined strategy and guidelines for what should be sold where and when.

When implemented correctly, e-commerce is a clear asset, not a competitor, to traditional sales. On the one hand, web shops should be designed to generate fresh leads for sales. On the other, they enable significant efficiency gains: reduced travel times, elimination of time spent on minor tasks (e.g., loaning equipment, test devices, and samples no longer requires field sales involvement), and streamlined administrative tasks. For example, low-advisory tasks can be handled by chatbots in the shop. Critical to successful e-commerce integration in your sales strategy: sales teams need full visibility into all shop activities.

The big question when integrating e-commerce processes into the sales strategy is determining which processes should run on which channel. The primary challenge is to avoid overwhelming sales with digital interactions. Through dedicated customer journey and CX mapping, you should identify when a digital channel will generate meaningful output for sales and what software solutions are required to support this.

Here are four examples of synergies between analog and digital processes:

  1. Links From Quotes to the Web shop: Web shops are ideal for visualizing even complex products. Highlight this in your quotes and use the shop to present personalized cross-selling and up-selling offers.
  2. Product Consultation Based on Live Data: If machines, for instance, send usage data to a portal, a sales rep can leverage this data during a conversation to make cross-selling and up-selling suggestions for optimization.
  3. Pricing Suggestions with CPQ: Digitalizing quotation and product configuration processes not only improves efficiency but also creates synergy. CPQ programs, for example, can suggest the most effective discount levels by product.
  4. Perfect Store: In advanced CRM systems like SAP Sales Cloud, it’s possible to track showroom availability and setup. Engagement maps can optimize product placement and highlight areas for a sales rep to focus on during a client visit, creating an optimal customer experience.