How to Create an Effective Digital Sales Strategy

Why a digital-first sales approach matters

B2B buyers increasingly purchase through online channels, so it’s critical for sales teams to adjust tactics. In fact, one industry report found that 73% of B2B buyers prefer ordering online. Sales teams can’t rely solely on trade shows, phone calls, and in-person meetings. They must meet customers where they are: in inboxes, on social media, and in online chats.

That’s why every sales team needs a digital sales strategy. A digital-first approach empowers your salespeople to provide the personalized, value-driven, and omnichannel experience that buyers expect.

This post breaks down the steps to creating a digital sales strategy and identifies the key components you need to build one—so your team can accelerate sales across channels.

What is digital sales?

Digital sales is the process of selling products and services through digital channels. Unlike traditional methods like calling prospects or showcasing products at trade conferences, digital sales engages prospects through:

• Websites
• Emails
• Social media
• Targeted ads
• Online chat
• Digital sales rooms

A digital-optimized experience is essential, as the majority of B2B buyers prefer self-service buying. Customers research online and want to keep sales rep interactions to a minimum. Sales teams need strategies tailored to prospects’ digital-first, self-service preferences.

Enter digital sales strategies. A digital sales strategy uses digital tools, channels, and data to engage prospects throughout the sales funnel and drive them to purchase. The right strategy takes the guesswork out of your team’s efforts and ensures you deliver the right resources to prospects at the right time, increasing conversions.

Key components of an effective digital sales strategy

Every company’s digital sales strategy is unique. That said, there are key components you should keep in mind when crafting yours, including:

Clear revenue and growth goals

Clear, realistic revenue and growth goals increase the likelihood that your sales team will achieve desired results. For example, you might aim to increase revenue growth by 10% over the next year by improving close rates for an active digital channel.

Defined buyer personas and buying journeys

A buyer persona is a research-based representation of your ideal customer that describes their demographics, needs, motivations, and challenges. A well-defined buyer persona helps your sales team understand your ideal customer’s pain points and preferences, enabling more personalized, effective sales campaigns.

Meanwhile, understanding the buyer’s journey—the steps a customer takes from discovering a product to purchasing it—helps your team deliver the right messaging at the right time.

Digital sales channels and touchpoints

It’s critical to engage prospects through the digital channels they already use. Look at your prospect persona and journey. If they use social media, chat, and online search, your team should optimize the sales pitch for each of these channels. As much as we wish a prospect’s journey were linear, it takes an average of eight touchpoints to nurture a prospect to convert. Leverage these channels effectively to increase meaningful touchpoints and support sales goals.

Sales content and enablement resources

High-quality sales content, like case studies and e-books, helps customers understand how your solution solves their problem. For example, case studies highlight real-life companies that face the same challenges as prospects and show how they used your solution to overcome them.

Meanwhile, sales enablement resources, such as product one-pagers, educate sales reps on product features and benefits so they can communicate them to prospects.

Technology and tools stack

The right tools bring your digital sales strategy to life. For example, a CRM system organizes customer data and enables personalized outreach, while digital sales room software provides a central hub for sellers to interact with buyers. Also, an AI-powered sales tool can automate admin tasks and save sales teams hours of manual work—one survey suggested as much as 2 hours a day. That’s time reps can reallocate toward closing complex deals.

These tools, well-employed, could mean the difference between a vague aim to increase digital sales and a concrete digital sales strategy that actually drives revenue.

Step-by-step guide to creating a digital sales strategy

What are the steps in a digital sales strategy? Our breakdown walks you through the process—from identifying goals to choosing the best tools.

1. Define your digital sales goals

Setting clear goals helps your sales team focus its efforts and makes it easier to evaluate performance. Use a goal-setting framework like SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) to get started.

For example, you could break down our earlier goal of increasing revenue growth through digital channel close rates into smaller SMART goals. Namely, “increase digital channel close rates from 20 to 22% over the next year by improving lead qualification.” From there, translate the goal into actionable steps, like determining the current number of qualified leads.

2. Understand your digital buyer

Create a detailed digital buyer persona by defining their job title, industry, company size, challenges, and behaviors. Find information using data from your CRM and lead generation tools, as well as customer surveys and social media feedback.

3. Choose the right digital sales channels

Let your buyer persona guide your channel choices. If your target audience frequently engages on LinkedIn and converts through emails, prioritize those channels. You can also choose channels based on which ones are most ideal for your industry.

4. Align sales and marketing around digital selling

It’s critical to get marketing and sales on the same page to ensure a positive customer experience. Even more importantly, according to a recent HubSpot sales trend report, surveyed sales pros say alignment improves lead quality and increases revenue.

To unify sales and marketing around digital selling:

• Establish shared goals and KPIs
• Collaborate on messaging and branding
• Develop a joint content strategy
• Integrate sales and marketing technology

5. Enable your sales teams with content and training

Empower your sales team with the knowledge and skills they need to be effective digital sellers. For example, provide training on relationship building, digital communication skills, social selling techniques, and AI sales tools.

Create training content and courses on key sales topics like confident negotiation. Online training platforms like Articulate 360 make it easy to update sales enablement content as needed, and deliver training continuously to keep sales reps up to date on product updates, sales trends, and tactics.

6. Select and integrate digital sales tools

Choose digital sales tools that align with your goals, like using CRM software for tracking customer data and performance management tools to measure and optimize campaigns.

Ensure these tools integrate with your existing tech stack. Or better yet, use an all-in-one sales solution that offers the key capabilities you need.

Common digital sales strategy mistakes to avoid

We’ve walked you through how to build a digital sales strategy step by step. Issues in your digital sales strategy can drive customers away and reduce sales. So, let’s explore common mistakes in the digital sales strategy process—and how to avoid them.

Treating digital sales as a channel instead of a strategy

While digital sales involves selling through different online channels, it’s not a channel itself. Treating it as such leads your team to aimlessly run ads on Instagram with the murky goal of “boosting conversions.” To avoid this, create an overarching digital sales strategy with measurable goals and detailed buyer personas, then choose channels that align with both.

Relying too heavily on technology without process

AI and other sales tools can’t fix a broken sales process. If your team’s workflow is disorganized or no one has mastered your clunky CRM, more technology will only compound the issue. Start with a clear process and align your team on it, then bring in sales engagement platforms and AI-driven automation to reinforce the structure you’ve established.

Failing to train your sales team

If your team can’t effectively explain over digital channels how a product addresses customer pain points or why a customer should choose your brand over a competitor, you won’t close deals. Provide sales playbooks and other training materials, and create a tailored sales training program to strengthen your team’s knowledge.

Misalignment between sales and marketing

Sales and marketing misalignment leads to mixed messages throughout the buyer’s journey, reducing trust and revenue. Invite teams to collaborate on goal-setting, buyer persona development, and brand messaging. Then, integrate your CRM with marketing software to create a unified system for everyone.

Understanding these common mistakes helps your team avoid these pitfalls, making your digital sales strategy that much more effective.

Examples of effective digital sales strategies

Let’s look at a B2B example of this framework in practice.

Scenario: A leadership coaching software company wants to increase annual revenue by 20% by prioritizing digital channel performance. It creates the following digital sales strategy:

1. Goal: Prioritize follow-ups to increase the team’s close rate by 15% this quarter. The business sets team KPIs for follow-ups and close rates.
2. The buyer persona: The team uses CRM, customer survey, and industry data to create a persona: an HR director at a mid-size company who struggles to deliver actionable feedback to direct reports. They spend most of their time online checking emails and LinkedIn.
3. Digital channels: The team conducts outreach and follow-ups through email and LinkedIn messages.
4. Sales and marketing alignment: Sales and marketing collaborate on customer LinkedIn testimonial videos and standardized follow-up messaging tailored to buyer personas.
5. Sales team enablement: Sales leaders train their teams on effective follow-up frameworks and provide templates.
6. Tools: The team uses a CRM system to track opportunity stage and follow-up tasks, and a sales engagement platform to automate follow-up sequences.

By prioritizing structured follow-ups via email and LinkedIn, the company increases its close rate by 15% and grows sales without additional lead volume.

Building a scalable digital sales strategy

So, how do companies implement digital sales strategies? In short, by using the right metrics and tools to measure sales performance and streamline workflows.

Metrics to measure success

The metrics you use will depend on your goals and the digital channels you use. That said, here are six KPIs you may consider using:

1. Conversion rate: The percentage of potential customers who take a specific action
2. Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The total cost of gaining a new customer
3. Average deal size: The average value of a company’s deals
4. Sales cycle length: The time it takes for potential customers to move through the sales process
5. Pipeline velocity: How quickly qualified leads move through the sales funnel
6. Customer retention rate: The percentage of customers a company keeps over time

Tools to support digital sales

We can’t emphasize the importance of digital selling tools enough. Here are six to incorporate into your digital sales strategy:

1. CRM software: Centralizes customer information and tracks interactions
2. Sales engagement tools: Automate and track interactions between sales teams and prospects across channels
3. Digital sales room software: Provide secure online spaces for sales teams to interact with buyers
4. Sales training platforms: Onboard, train, and coach sales teams to improve skills and close more deals. Course authoring platforms like Articulate help leaders create effective sales training.
5. AI-powered automation tools: Streamline workflows and reduce time on manual tasks
6. Sales analytics tools: Collect sales data and generate insights on performance

Putting your digital sales strategy into action

Now that you have a step-by-step process for creating a digital sales strategy, you can focus on executing it. Start with clear, measurable goals and a detailed buyer persona, and take it from there. Also, make sure your sales team has the right resources to achieve digital sales success. On that note, check out our blog post “How to Quickly Create Sales Training With AI” to discover how to drive sales enablement without creating training courses from scratch.