Let’s face it — selling products to an organization is a tad more complex than retailing to an individual. Businesses have higher stakes, a longer sales process, and put greater emphasis on post-transaction support.
However, as a corporate firm, you must adopt pertinent B2B sales strategies to sustain the USD 6.7 trillion B2B industry.
Converting leads in the competitive setup is challenging. But with the right approach, you can prove the worth of your offerings and augment sales. Before deploying an array of B2B sales techniques, it is crucial to acquaint yourself with some essential details.
This post elaborates on B2B sales, the existing challenges, and tactics to accelerate leads in your sales funnel.
Table of Contents
Understanding B2B Sales and Its Vital Elements
Before devising a plan with the best B2B sales techniques, it is crucial to understand the systematic transactional process.
Source: Zendesk
Generally, a sales cycle comprises of different stages involving finding leads and nurturing them. For this purpose, you might implement multi-channel marketing promotions via email marketing, offline marketing, telemarketing, etc.
Above all, you should understand that B2B marketing and sales depend on the following main facets:
- Your product or service
- Qualified leads
- Your sales pitch
- Post-sales support
These four pillars are crucial in defining your B2B sales strategies. Simply put, successful B2B sales is a process that includes the closure of business deals by formulating a mutually beneficial arrangement.
As a B2B marketer and salesman, your goal should be to align all the available tactics with this process. In addition, you should always include the four pillars in every sale augmentation technique.
The Prevailing Challenges in B2B Sales Cycle
The B2B sales process has set defining elements. Similarly, the challenges revolve around well-defined facets.
Source: EBQ
Here are some of the crucial pointers that require thorough review and analysis:
- Lengthy sales cycle:Â Aspects like in-depth reviews, competitor analysis, and legal documentation increase the duration of a sales cycle
- Reaching decision makers:Â A B2B pitch undergoes assessment by various stakeholders before reaching the final authorities
- Practical limitations:Â Limited number of skilled sales associates, lack of collaboration between marketing and sales team, and time constraints impact the pace of a transaction
- Limited market size:Â Compared with B2C, the business-to-business market has a fixed and limited target audience
In addition to these challenges, your potential clients demand enhanced post-sales support. Fortunately, you can overcome these hurdles by implementing well-defined B2B sales strategies.
Top B2B Sales Techniques to Expand Your Business
The best aspect of most sales strategies is the exclusion of costly materials and complex techniques. Explore these methods to increase the potential of growing your company’s profits.
1. Accommodate Sales Enablement
Simply put, ‘sales enablement’ is the process of finalizing your goals by assessing the client’s requirements.
Source: Provectus Digital
The main motive of  B2B sales techniques is to assist leads in making intelligent decisions. For this purpose, you can follow these tips:
- Develop a content database that includes reports, blogs, case studies, guides, and other informative material
- Discover how your product or service offers a unique proposition to the target audience
- Decide the best price for your offering by communicating with the leads and prospects
- Analyze the reports and feedback for creating apt content or modification in your product
Notably, this process can help you understand clients’ pain points. The resultant rectifications help in curating the perfect solution. This way, you can witness an increase in conversion rates.
Indirectly, such B2B sales strategies help steadily boost your profits.
2. Implement Social Selling
Today, B2B buyers are self-directed.  68% of these prospects leverage social media and the internet to find suitable solutions.
Take a look at the leading B2B marketing tactics. Social media promotions are still on top for building relationships and advertising products. You can, thus, capitalize on these channels to grow your sales.
Source: Statista
You must establish your brand’s presence in the corporate world for social selling. So, leverage these platforms for implementing this strategy:
Several B2B examples portray successful social marketing and selling campaigns. For instance, HubSpot utilizes Instagram to offer insights to its target audience.
Source: Convince & Convert
However, to implement such B2B sales techniques, it is vital to understand the primary purpose. Social selling is the method to build fruitful relations with your prospects. Building contextual relationships are the crucial factor that separates selling from marketing.
3. Leverage a Comprehensive CRM Tool
Today, you can use CRM software for small firms as well as large-scale businesses. These platforms are integral to managing customer relations by offering various error-free modules.
Source: ScienceSoft
Notably, investing in CRM software can be one of the effective B2B sales strategies due to the following reasons:
- You can attract leads through channelized and tailormade marketing campaigns
- The sales team can use the contact information and offer crucial insights
- Options like advanced analytics and AI predictions can accelerate a deal closure
- You can use a unified portal to understand the buyer’s journey
Customer relationship management software like Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, and Zoho are some prominent options. You can effectively enhance lead nurturing by using segments like lead insights and customer reports.
So, ensure you use such software to benefit from a streamlined client management process.
4. Remain Patient During a Deal
Knowing your buyer’s journey is one of the most crucial aspects of B2B sales techniques.
Source: Ironpaper
Here are the main points that you should understand:
- Awareness stage:Â Your clients know that they require a solution for an existing problem
- Consideration stage:Â The clients understand the solution and are browsing for the best choice
- Decision stage:Â Your clients are identifying apt vendors for finalizing the solution strategy
As you can observe, the sales team needs to work in tandem with the marketing squad. Initially, the promotional campaigns will drive your leads in the buyer’s journey. However, after a point, you have to expedite the process.
Remember this — your prospects will consider multiple touchpoints before closing a deal. Hence, respecting their time should be one of your B2B sales strategies.
Here are some tips that you can implement in this process:
- Understand the prospect’s challenges
- Compile all the relevant data and insights
- Offer the best solution from your end
- Brainstorm and discuss potential modifications
Overall, do not rush your prospects into buying a product or service. Patience will exhibit professionalism in the corporate sector.
5. Train Your Sales Team
Success on the sales front is a combination of apt digital tools and a skilled workforce. Both these facets should receive equal importance.
Source: The Yellow Spot
Your salespeople should understand the following aspects before reaching a specific lead:
- The target audience
- Demography
- Ways to acquire hot leads
You should invest in formal learning and development programs to attain proficiency in these facets. In addition, it is essential to identify each individual’s strong and weak points in your team.
This assessment helps you allocate the most suitable lead to a specific salesperson. Eventually, you can outperform your competitors and improve the sales output to the desired level. It is vital to understand that face-to-face interaction between salespeople and clients will never become obsolete.
However, as a B2B company, you should bolster their skills. A modern sales team must understand client needs, solutions, and practical demonstration of your product’s value.
6. Value Your Current Customer Base
B2B sales strategies do not always focus on acquiring new leads. Some tactics aim to leverage the existing clientele.
Source: Medium
It is crucial to understand that the chance of selling a product or service to an existing customer lies between 60 to 70%. So, you can improve your profits through efficient planning and enticing sales strategies.
Apart from increasing revenue through customer loyalty programs, you should also focus on gaining analytical insights.
For instance, CRM tools can help you understand your clientele’s existing reviews and engagement. Consequently, you can utilize this data to design case studies, modify products, or prevent customers from falling off the grid. In addition, your existing buyers can also help expand your outreach.
All these factors can bolster other B2B sales techniques. So, stay connected with your current customer base and acquire honest reviews on your products or services.
7. Bridge the Gap Between Your Marketing and Sales Teams
Expanding your business in any domain is the result of optimum teamwork. Similarly, your sales and marketing teams are vital pillars of customer interaction.
Source: Sujan Patel
Here are some actionable steps to implement one of the best B2B sales techniques:
- Instruct the marketing team to share content assets with the salespeople
- Encourage healthy brainstorming between both departments
- Use a CRM or project management software to share crucial client data
- Enable both teams to define your ideal lead
In addition to these steps, you should instruct the sales team to evaluate your best leads. On the other hand, your marketing team should collect crucial analytics and identify common patterns.
So, ensure swift alignment of both these roles and notice an augmentation in your sales.
8. Highlight the Benefits
Understand this pivotal aspect — B2B buyers are more interested in a product’s offering than working.
Source: Tag Marketing
In other words, your target audience wants to understand the ROI for their business.
Consider the example of a client who requires you to develop an e-commerce website. In terms of features, you might explain the point of encrypted transactions. However, the client will be more interested to understand that your website will help boost customer trust.
To amplify the effect of such B2B sales strategies, you can use the following material:
- Testimonials
- Demos
- Statistics
- Infographics
Overall, elaborating the value to the client will improve the chances of increasing your sales. So, focus on selling ‘solutions’ to the end buyer.
In a Nutshell
To expand your business in the B2B domain, you should be well-versed in locating qualified prospects. Also, it is essential to leverage a skilled workforce and automation tools in your B2B sales strategies.
The choice of an online platform, use of a CRM tool, and approaching a deal tactically are some long-term tactics. In addition, you should focus on training your sales team and bringing the marketing team into the picture.
Furthermore, leverage data and your existing customers to plan and modify your sales campaigns. Finally, aim to emphasize the advantages of your products and services. Remember that the B2B buyer focuses highly on ROI and value proposition.
All these B2B sales techniques can help grow your business in any subdomain.
