There is north of a million B2C sellers in the US alone, covering a wide range of roles from healthcare insurance sellers to telemarketers. These sellers have essentially been left aside from the inside sales movement that began shortly after the 2008 downturn. 

Enabled by a barrage of new technology solutions including sales intelligence, sales engagement, and sales enablement, inside sales grew to play a prominent role for B2B sales. During this time, it was as if the sole focus of B2C sales was to develop e-Commerce. 

The pandemic has made engagement both harder and more important, forcing B2C sales to catch up rapidly. This is evident in the surge of initiatives to modernize their tools and communication infrastructure that’s currently underway.

These projects revolve around addressing the following top 5 challenges of selling via the phone:

  1. Enabling omnichannel outreach by leveraging 2-way SMS and email
  2. Optimizing connect rates in a world where 70 to 80% of the calls end in voicemail
  3. Providing effective guidance to sell more sophisticated products and services
  4. Automating and streamlining sellers’ workflows
  5. Optimizing campaigns using granular and more behavioral segmentation

Sales modernization needs to be part of your roadmap, especially as you formulate plans to transition your customer-facing systems to the cloud.