Time to get to grips with digital

By 2017, 60% of all US retail sales will involve the Internet, either as a direct e-commerce transaction or as part of a shopper’s research via an online device, according to Forrester’s 2013 report US Cross-Channel Retail Forecast, 2012 to 2017. Some 10.3% of all retail sales in the US are expected to be online purchases: that’s $370 billion in web sales out of $3.6 trillion total retail sales. In 2015, digital channels provided at least a fifth of revenues for 41 percent of fast-growing B2B and B2C companies surveyed by McKinsey, compared with 31 percent at slow-growing ones.

Most sales executives said their companies were increasing digital investment but under 40% believed they were “even moderately effective at it”; only “17 percent rated their capabilities as ‘outstanding’”.

McKinsey authors have recently researched the second edition of Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World’s Sales Leaders. This distills interviews with over 200 B2B and B2C sales leaders at some of the world’s most successful companies.