Driven by the growing expectations of digital buyers, chemical suppliers must adapt and adopt new sales models to engage fast-growing digital audiences effectively.
This transition is a real challenge in industries like specialty chemicals, where traditional and analog approaches have dominated for decades.
Suppliers now face the difficult task of adapting their strategies, processes, tools, and teams to meet the expectations of their digital buyers and succeed in a hybrid environment.
At SpecialChem, we’ve helped thousands of chemical companies make the transition to hybrid sales and marketing.
Let us share with you the common reasons why the shift to hybrid sales is a struggle for suppliers and outline actionable solutions to successfully navigate this transformation.
Let's dive in!
The Challenge: Adapting to the Expectations of Chemical Buyers
Chemical buyers, like all B2B buyers, have evolved.
They are now digital-first and demand easy access to information with seamless digital experiences and personalized interactions, whether they’re browsing your website or meeting with your sales representatives.
To be more specific, they prefer to complete a large part of their journey online — without having to speak to your sales team — from researching the best solutions to comparing the available suppliers and browsing online catalogs.
They want to consume content at their own pace and expect suppliers to provide detailed online resources to select the right chemical ingredients and help them make informed decisions.
And finally, they expect personalized information and communication at every step, as generic pitches no longer resonate with their situation. By implementing a hybrid sales strategy, you will be able to respond to the new digital behavior of chemical buyers.
The Root Causes: what can hinder your hybrid sales transitions
While the difficulties vary from organization to organization, we’ve observed that they generally fall into four key areas:
1. Lack of resources, skills, and strategy
Insufficient sales or qualification teams: Without the dedicated staff and processes to qualify and nurture your digital leads, your opportunities will rarely convert into business.
You may be struggling to connect with digital buyers due to the limited reach of your channels or a lack of sufficient or relevant content.
A lack of personalized, segmented action - such as tailored content and communications - reduces lead engagement and conversion.
2. Insufficient tools and expertise
A common barrier is a lack of technology and skills.
Outdated or missing CRMs make it difficult to track leads, opportunities, and ROI effectively.
Without automation, manual lead nurturing of a growing number of digital leads becomes time-consuming and ineffective.
Many unoptimized websites in the chemical industry are designed as business showcases but fail to actually capture leads or provide a good user experience, driving buyers away.
3. Inappropriate processes
Hybrid sales need clear workflows, but your existing processes may be ineffective with a new organization.
Leads are often sent to sales teams without proper qualification, wasting time on unqualified prospects.
Lead qualification criteria are frequently missing, and nurturing processes tend to be too basic to engage digital buyers effectively.
4. Bad data usage
Two common issues hinder hybrid sales: suppliers either don't collect data or don't centralize it, or they collect it but don't use it.
Both scenarios limit buyers’ insight and hinder lead generation and nurturing.
To meet the expectations of digital buyers, you need to understand profiles, preferences, and behaviors through the effective use of data.
Solutions: how to implement an effective hybrid sales organization
Now that we've listed the common hybrid sales gaps, let's review the actionable solutions that you should implement:
1. Invest in the right digital tools
Adopt a CRM to manage your leads effectively and use marketing automation to streamline and segment your lead generation and nurturing. Optimize your website to capture leads with clear CTAs, valuable content, and trust signals. You can rely on third parties like SpecialChem to help you automate the lead nurturing process and capture digital buyers.
2. Implement an omnichannel strategy
Invest in creating content that aligns with your buyer needs and questions. Be active and share content on all the channels used by your digital buyers (your website, digital platforms, and ingredient databases…). Build a demand creation strategy for your audience segments, create campaigns that will spark interest and create engagement, and define lead management processes.
3. Build a solid lead qualification process
Effective lead qualification is critical for hybrid sales. Define clear qualification criteria, assign a dedicated team to manage digital leads and processes, and establish KPIs to track performance. If resources are limited, consider outsourcing lead management. For example, at SpecialChem, we offer project identification services to help qualify digital leads and identify active projects among them.
4. Understand your digital buyers’ expectations and journey
Use analytics to track behavior and engagement across all touchpoints to refine your strategy. Regularly surveys and interviews the market to understand the preferences of your digital buyers. Partner with digital platforms to collect unique market trends and insights.
Hybrid sales is not the future, but already the present!
It requires thoughtful planning and execution, and by addressing those root causes and adopting the right strategies, you will meet the expectations of today’s buyers.
When you're ready to take the next step, SpecialChem is here to help you bridge the gap if the transition seems a little overwhelming.
