Gone are the days when B2B sales were about making a hundred cold calls a day or visiting clients in person. Also gone are the days when ideal customers from your target companies are knocking at your sales team’s doors in droves.
Although cold calling, inbound marketing, inside sales and field sales still have a place in the sales planning of many companies, the modern B2B buyer is looking for a different type of interaction with B2B sellers. The buyer’s journey often starts with a Google search looking for compelling content and market research. Potential customers are trying to understand key differences between your solution and others and between their needs and all of the potential solutions available to them.
According to a review from HBR, 90% of B2B decision-makers don’t respond to cold outreach. However, in the era of social selling, 74% of business buyers conduct most of their research independently before making a final decision. In fact, 41% of B2B buyers view 3 to 5 pieces of content online before contacting a sales rep and becoming a quality lead.
That means that modern sellers need to develop digital sales skills, learn how to interact with buyers in a remote selling environment, and learn how to use remote selling tools.
In this article, I will go over the most important elements of B2B sales that both sales leaders and individual sales professionals need to know about, including essential B2B sales tools, and how B2B sales work.
The focus?
Helping sales managers to drive their sellers to reach more key decision-makers, improve the selling process, grow the sales pipeline and close deals. We’re going to help you also understand the B2B sales processes, strategies, and more.
In addition, for outside sales and inside sales, we’ll outline the change of thinking required to adjust to the changing B2B sales landscape which will help you penetrate your target accounts and reach more decision-makers.
What is B2B Sales? Find out in this complete guide created by @M_3Jr! #b2bsales #leadership #sales Share on X
What is B2B Sales?
Business-to-Business or B2B sales is a business transaction between two companies, usually in the form of infrastructure, materials, training, software, or other needs the buyer may have. A form of B2B that is becoming more and more popular is B2B SaaS.
B2B sales typically have higher price points, more complex processes, and compliance issues than Business-to-Consumer sales. For instance, while a B2C sale may happen in a matter of minutes, a B2B sale may take months to complete and often includes many more stakeholders. In order to effectively manage the extended sales cycles and engage with diverse stakeholders, businesses often turn to various strategies, including outbound call center solutions, which offer proactive customer outreach, personalized interactions, and streamlined communication for improved conversion rates and customer relationship management. B2B sales involve transactions between businesses, often focusing on large-scale orders or customized solutions. For industries dealing with bulk orders, B2B wholesale strategies are a cornerstone, enabling businesses to efficiently manage pricing, inventory, and customer relationships.
In addition to leveraging tools like outbound call center solutions to streamline communication and improve conversion rates, businesses often rely on expert guidance during critical transactions. For instance, working with an experienced M&A advisor can be invaluable for navigating Mergers, Acquisitions, or other significant business changes that impact both operations and sales strategies.
Therefore, your approach in the B2B industry is different from that in B2C. To drive B2B sales, you need a team of highly trained B2B sales professionals who fully understand the B2B environment, and prospective buyers, and can be capable of selling products and services which align to the company’s goals and the buyer journey.
The B2B Sales Cycle
Once you understand the B2B sales cycle, you can design an effective sales strategy. B2B usually has longer sales cycles, often dictated by the buyer’s procurement processes and fiscal policy. Implementing procurement software can assist in managing these extended cycles efficiently, ensuring seamless approval flows and vendor comparisons. Prospective customers within B2B sales tend to have multiple stakeholders and different people involved in the decision making process.
What is the difference between B2B and B2C Sales?
Understanding the Core Contrast between these two concepts is key. At the heart of delineating B2B from B2C sales lies the essence of their target customers. In essence, while B2B sales cater to fellow enterprises, meaning business to business, B2C enterprises pivot their strategies towards engaging with their customers and the broader consumer base or specific segments therein.
Unraveling the Disparity: Key Differences
Let’s delve into the pivotal differences between B2B and B2C transactions and strategies:
Target Customer Base
B2B: Business entities engage in transactions with other businesses, extending products and services tailored to meet the needs of corporate counterparts.
B2C: In contrast, B2C enterprises cast their nets wider, focusing on captivating the attention of the general populace or distinct consumer segments.
B2B Sales and B2C Sales – Side by Side Contrast:
B2C:
- Quicker personal purchase decisions.
- Lower value, higher volume.
- Marketing is a major factor.
- Shorter buying cycle.
B2B:
- Buyers have to justify the expenditure.
- Higher value, lower volume.
- Relationship building is key.
- Long-term strategy required.
How To Build a B2B Sales Team
The make-up of your B2B sales team will depend on factors such as the sector you operate in, the nature of your products or services, and the size of your firm. For example, small businesses may not have outside sales or inside sales separated. Everyone is just one team called sales.
Either way, you’ll need a team to support your sales reps, so in this section, you’ll find recommendations on cultural elements that will help to optimize your team’s close rate.
Sales Operations and Customer Relationship Management
The sales operations team manages the B2B sales pipeline and the CRM. They help ensure consistency and make improvements when necessary. In doing so, they allow the sales reps to focus on pushing their numbers up vs. inundating inside and outside sales reps with what I call “garbage” admin work.
Sales Enablement Is Required
To an extent, sales enablement straddles both operations and marketing. It seeks to improve client interaction and provide the B2B salesperson with content to increase deal sizes and improve win rates. The focus should be all around driving more sales and aligning sales to acquire more customers.
Sales Engineering May Be Needed
The sales engineering team isn’t simply a back-office tech-savvy team. As the prospect becomes more engaged, they’re bound to ask more detailed questions. They’re making a business decision, so they want as much information as possible.
The sales engineering team steps forward to answer the client’s questions, then hands back to the sales professional.
The potential buyer will want to clearly deal with a well-organized team that’s able to answer the most technical questions accurately and quickly. Remember, your potential customers will not glean everything they need to know from your company blog. So if you have a technical product, you’re going to want to ensure you’ve got your pre-sales team set up.
Sales Management Must Be Experienced
The sales manager or sales leader should be someone who is intimately familiar with the company’s sales processes and possesses strong leadership skills.
Their key role is to analyze the data from the sales team and ensure that they stay on track with their targets. The role involves training, mentoring, and making data-driven decisions to help drive positive results. It also includes aligning sales tools to the needs of the selling motion.
Finally, this Sr. sales leader should be able to drive the marketing teams to focus on account based sales in order to find the target audience. They should be the first one to tell marketing if the paid ads are resulting in quality leads and / or leading to reps closing deals.
What Is a B2B Sales Team Culture?
While changes to the consumer’s purchase journey have been widely acknowledged, the business customer’s expectations are often overlooked.
So how can we improve the business client’s experience so that they’re confident enough to come on board?
1. Collaboration
Not even the most skilled contract negotiator is an expert in every area of the business.
However, by introducing colleagues who are experts in their fields into the sales dialogue, the salesperson is utilizing the surrounding resources to maximize their chances of not only closing the deal but doing so more quickly. With their questions answered, the focus shifts back to the sales rep to progress the deal.
The customer can immediately see that there will be a clear structure and expertise available to support them if they decide to do business with you.
2. Transparency
If the client has to describe their question in full to every person they’re passed to, it could lead to frustration and result in them walking away.
If everyone has access to the complete client history, whoever’s asked to contact them already knows the question and can have an answer prepared.
3. A Sense of Common Goals
Striving towards a shared goal brings not only better financial well-being but also professional enrichment. For example, a technical person having direct contact with a prospect may be a little out of their comfort zone, but it can show them that they too have an integral part to play in the closing of a deal.
A results-driven, high-performance culture won’t manifest itself overnight, especially without some work. At Vengreso, we have five unique sales culture elements that strive to drive success.
Your #b2bsales team culture can attract or repel your b2b buyers. How? @M_3Jr explains the factors that affect the seller-customer relationship in this article. #entrepreneurship #customerexperience Share on XB2B Sales Lead Generation
Sales teams can obtain leads from their marketing team, or they can source them themselves through prospecting. At Vengreso, we advocate for omnichannel prospecting, which means reaching out to prospects through multiple marketing channels. In B2B sales it requires strong sales training to drive the right sales techniques which will attract more customers.
How To Find New B2B Customers
There are dozens of ways of creating leads, but this doesn’t mean you should use them all. A major factor to consider is the nature of the product or service you’re offering. Certain channels are great for emergency purchases, such as people needing to find a local plumber, but they may not be as effective if your product development companies or service doesn’t fall into that category.
Let’s take a look at some of the most effective methods for generating B2B sales leads:
SEO is also great for boosting your B2B sales. By optimizing your website with the best SEO keywords and and keyword rank tracking of positions it gained in Google, you can attract more leads and convert them into customers.
1. Social Selling
In the digital selling era, B2B salespeople must use social media to find, engage, and connect with prospects to start sales conversations. We have a social selling guide that examines the most effective social selling strategies, such as how building social proof for your business will help improve sales. One way to generate that would be to get some IG likes to boost your business profile. You can use tools like Planoly to help you optimize your social media goals. Exploring VideoAsk alternatives can also enhance your social selling efforts by enabling personalized video interactions with prospects, fostering deeper connections and engagement. Which leads us into our next point.
2. Video for Sales
Video for sales is the most effective channel to connect with B2B customers. When sellers use personalized video messages they connect on an emotional level and stand out from the crowd. We aren’t referring to videos produced by your marketing teams. No. We are referring to using video selling in the B2B sales process by the individual seller.
3. Email Marketing
B2B statistics consistently show that this gives the highest return on investment (ROI) than any other lead generation method. However, for it to be effective, your sales emails need to be targeted to the correct person within each company.
4. Direct Mail
Like email marketing, you’ll need to find out who the decision-makers are (within a firm) and address your mail directly to them. Generic letters are highly likely to go straight into the trash. So try gift marketing instead.
5. Phone calls
Again, preparation is everything. Before beginning your marketing call, make a list of appropriate contacts within a business and then call them directly using call tracking solutions.. Often, reception staff is asked to filter such calls, so you may never get to speak with the decision-maker.
6. Joint Ventures
Joint ventures can be an extremely effective and profitable way of creating B2B leads. Find a company that offers complementary, but not competing, goods or services to enable cross-marketing. For example take Buddy Punch, they offer an online time clock for business customers. They might compliment cross-selling with an accounting advisor or similar service.
For example, if your company offers corporate accountancy services, linking up with a business consultancy would allow each company to recommend the other’s services while adding value to their respective customers.
How to Engage B2B Customers
Gathering data about your client’s online movement through their buying process is only part of the story. Until they make a decision, they could shop anywhere. So how can you get them engaged with your firm?
It can be as simple as having a sales conversation with them. That’s how you get real insight into their needs, ambitions, limitations, and even their personality. Giving them a great, one-to-one experience could tip the balance in your favor.
Watch the video below to learn Effective Sales Engagement. If your sales reps are having a hard time connecting with prospects or you are not hitting your sales goals, that’s probably a good indicator that it’s time to try a new sales methodology.
B2B Sales Skills
It’s estimated that in our digital age, a B2B buyer completes around 70% of their buying journey without contacting the vendor. Therefore, if your attempt to involve yourself in the buyer’s journey is ill-conceived, not only do you face rejection, but they’re also likely to warn others to steer clear.
So how do you avoid that?
Digital Prospecting
A significant part of prospecting is carrying out your own research of your targeted prospects. A valuable source of information about professionals is LinkedIn. You can absolutely use LinkedIn for B2B sales and must be included in your B2B sales process.
Personal Branding
Personal branding is about building a reputation as being a valuable source of information without pushing sales. That way, buyers will naturally look to you during their research into your product or service. Get yourself known as a problem-solver by helping buyers with issues they’ve identified. Engaging in social selling can help you introduce your firm as having the answers to problems.
Networking
You’ll need to learn which networking channels your target buyers use. Then, you should get training on networking skills to enable you to leverage your presence in those channels.
Engaging
You need to use content that buyers will find informative and that will help them in their research. There are many digital tools that you can use to encourage engagements; one of the most popular ones is the webinar. By signing up for your webinar, the buyer has already reached out to you. A webinar is a great medium because it’s viewed as an educational session rather than a sales pitch.
Once it’s clear that the buyer is adequately engaged, it may be time to take the business relationship off the screen with a phone call.
Want a complete understanding of how #B2BSales works in the modern #sales landscape? This article by @M_3Jr got you covered! #businessowners Share on X
B2B Sales Funnel
The B2B sales funnel typically has four levels, which we’ll consider from top to bottom:
1 – Awareness
The prospect understands what business problem their purchase must solve, and they’re looking for solutions online. You can start building a profile of them using the analytics of their movement through your website. This is a critical element to the B2B sales process.
2 – Interest
Once the prospect has established that your product may solve their problem, they’re going to want more detailed information about it. Here’s where you can use content and a call to action (CTA) to start the engagement process.
By giving them the opportunity to download an e-book or sign up for a webinar, you’re encouraging them to engage directly with your firm.
Once they’ve done that, it could be time for you to contact them via email or a phone call to consolidate that initial contact. However, before you do so, personalize the experience for them as much as possible. Learn as much about them as you can as a professional, their company, and significant recent changes to their industry which may (or may not) be driving their purchase requirement.
3 – Consideration
Now that you’ve got the prospect to this third stage of the sales funnel, you’ll probably have to provide a demo of your product or provide evidence of the efficacy of your service.
Because the prospect is starting to think in terms of decision-making, now is an ideal time to find out if they’re the only person making the decision or if there are more parties involved.
4 – Decision Time
At this stage, the prospect is ready to commit, but they need some additional reassurance that they’re making the right decision. You can provide specification sheets and relate those specs to their stated requirements and provide client testimonials.
A well-trained sales rep will be able to overcome any common objections that may arise, such as cost or timing.
B2B Sales Process vs. B2B Sales Methodology
All sales organizations have a B2B sales process. It informs everyone in the team what steps need to be taken and when along the path to closing a deal. At times this sales process can help your B2B sales personnel drive higher prices on deals you otherwise thought couldn’t be driven.
What your sales process looks like depends entirely on the size, sector, and product or service offered.
The sales process forms the structure, but the sales methodology is the philosophy or culture behind how the process is executed.
It’s essential that the whole sales team is on board with the combination of these two elements so that they can carry out their roles as efficiently as possible via the sales techniques that will make the biggest impact.
B2B Sales Strategy
Through their online research, buyers are often already well-informed about what type of solution they need for their business.
Your sales strategy should be constructed around prospective customers. You can easily obtain important information about their aims, management structure (who are the decision-makers?), budget, and the timeline for buying.
However, there are certain aspects that are essential, whatever the profile of your potential client:
- Learn about their company, so you can have an informed conversation with them, and they can see your diligent approach.
- Understand their needs, then relate back to them how your product or service has them covered.
- Like all B2B buyers, they want to see ROI (return on investment). Demonstrate to them the bottom-line advantage that your product will bring.
- Respond quickly to questions and pre-purchase technical support. They need to know what kind of support they can expect to receive once they become your customer.
- Provide multiple product or service options that range in price points and feature/service level. Buyers who feel they’re being pushed to a single product are more likely to walk away and consider other options, including those offered by your competitors.
- Do everything possible to speak face-to-face with the decision-maker if that’s not solely your current contact.
Business to Business Sales Growth
Once you have the contract, you’ll need to proactively manage the account.
New products are launched and there may be changes in the client’s business or their industry as a whole. By maintaining the relationship, you’ll have excellent opportunities to upsell. Upselling may solve problems that have arisen since the initial sale, or you may be able to sell add-ons.
Analytics is now a mainstay of any sales operation. Whether prospecting for new business or managing an existing account, analytics will enable you to understand buyers’ behavior. If you pay attention to this, you can use it to improve your team’s sales success.
Tips for B2B Sales Reps
To sum up, here are some valuable tips that will help you turn a qualified lead into a business sale.
1) Connect With Decision Makers
You may not always manage to contact the decision-makers in the target company right away, but don’t waste time with employees who have no purchasing power. As soon as you can, connect with those who do. You can leverage the best text expander tool for that!
2) Rehearse Your Sales Pitch
When you’re confident in your delivery, you’ll be able to pay more attention to what the prospect says and jump between multiple points in your B2B sales pitch accordingly.
3) Research Your Prospect
Before you contact them, have some understanding of your prospect’s business and their specific sector. It can equip you with insight on potential pain points that you can address with them.
4) Remember, It Can Be a Long Sales Cycle
Just as you have your sales processes, B2B buyers have procurement processes.
They usually have numerous touchpoints before a decision is made. They may even have a policy of only spending money at certain points of their fiscal year. It’s important that you understand these factors.
Check out this Modern Selling Podcast episode for tips and tricks to navigating B2B sales in uncertain times:
Do you have the Skills for B2B Sales Success?
At Vengreso, we have helped thousands of sellers to level up their digital selling skills and become masters at prospecting.
Is business-to-business sales hard? No problem! You can take advantage of our FlyMSG Sales Pro for individuals, a sales training program aimed at sellers, business owners, and entrepreneurs.
Are you a sales leader of a team of 15 or more sellers? Try FlyMSG Sales Pro for Teams, or Contact us today for a customized training program.
