The advantage of the self- serve journey is that it drives a sale without the seller being needed, even at the moment of purchase—making every marketer a seller. Marketers historically have focused on demand The advantage of the self-serve journey is that it generation, making customers aware of their drives a sale without the seller being needed, even products. Now, however, by creating and deploying at the moment of purchase—making every marketer self-serve tools, marketing can play a role in not just a seller. And by using the customer’s data from that generating demand, but converting and nurturing it. journey, sellers have a ready-made business case to pitch to leadership. For example, IBM’s hybrid cloud-value calculator, Amazon Web Service’s migration evaluator, Google A customer-centric journey involves finding Cloud’s pricing calculator, and Microsoft Azure’s the right customers through analytics-based total-cost-of-ownership calculator are all self- insights and ensuring a personalized, consistent service tools that offer personalization and empower customer experience. But to unlock value, it is potential customers. By answering a few questions essential to address the siloed channels that hinder about factors such as their company’s industry, transformation. annual revenue, IT spend, and current cloud maturity, prospects can get a customized, visual business case for adopting the cloud solution. Future of B2B sales: The big reframe 13
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