Yep, that’s what a new McKinsey Covid B2B Decision Maker study is pretty much indicating. The stats are staggering and you’ll be drinking the digital coolAid once you’ve read them.

Spends Dropping Faster Than The Speed of Light

50% of spending is projected to drop in every single industry with banking and insurance being the least affected. That tells me right away that the spending pool being smaller means that vendors have to stand out more. They have to get more concise with their messaging and be quick to hook the buyer’s interest.

A New Sales Model

A whopping 96% of B2B companies have shifted their selling model to an online model. And why wouldn’t they when 73% of buyers at large corporations now purchase using online portals and web support and 50% are buying on e-commerce sites that have no human sales rep interaction.

The Sales Rep Is Dead

The model of selling where a buyer calls a vendor or invites them in to a meeting to find out more is now dead. Sadly, there is a double digit decline in the usage of sales reps in the new digital model. What does that mean for your business, exactly? Well, your personal relationships that you spent decades building and your charming personality have lost their power to sway for the most part. I know I’m beating a dead horse here but the thing that you now have to get right is your outreach strategy and your messaging. Here’s a question that you should be asking yourself right now: Are you saying the right things to the right people in the right channels to get them to even know that you exist? You should be very scared if the answer to that question is “No”.

Apps R Us

The clear winner emerging from this whole Covid shift are mobile apps. There was a 254% increase in mobile app self-ordering amongst B2B buyers versus before Covid. The writing is on the wall folks, big corporate now wants the convenience of a one-click, Amazon-buying-experience. But now they want it with things that nobody ever used to think of selling that way like logistics, machinery and even real estate. So, as the title says, go virtual or vanish in the new landscape of reality.

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