Growing Sales in Your B2B Small Business?

As small business owners working in the B2B sector we build our online presence on platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter, as well as our own websites. In essence, we are creating a digital ‘shop window’ for our businesses. We hope that potential clients will notice us, like the look of what they see, perhaps they are curious to learn more and ultimately, we hope they (metaphorically) walk in. 

Unfortunately, for many businesses, despite having what appears to be an interesting and attractive ‘shop window’ the phone doesn’t ring, or the email doesn’t ping! 

In my experience the old business mantra of “Build it and they will come!” does not apply to B2B based businesses and their virtual shop windows. You need to be proactive and get OUTSIDE your shop door to proactively engage with people looking in, and even those passing by. 

Proactive presales activities include email, social media engagement (social selling NOT social marketing) and telephoning. By far the best of these options is the telephone but people lack the confidence to use it. Instead, their emails get lost among the rest of the spam in their prospect’s inbox.

The British have a reputation for being ‘reserved’ and see making a direct call as intrusive. It is not. To be clear, if you have a product or service that can genuinely help the prospect and you are making the call during regular office hours, then that is a legitimate business activity.

Going back to my virtual ‘shop window’ analogy, if you’ve had a real good look at your prospect’s window, and you know that your ‘solution’ would work for them, then you should be able to make that call with confidence.

My top tip for making that initial call is to IGNORE everything you were taught about cold calling in the past! 

Here are just a few of my top tips:

·      Your business name is not important at the start of the call. Who you are, what you do and what the purpose of the call is? This needs to be clear and concise.

·      Do ask “Is now a good time?”

·      If they agree they have time to talk, immediately switch to a question we ALL have in common right now, “How are you coping with the Covid-19 pandemic?”

·      Learn as much as you can about their business, their plans, their challenges before pitching a solution. Personally, I never pitch on the first call AND wherever possible I make the second call a video meeting! It completely changes the ‘dynamic’ of the engagement. 

·      Focus on really listening and don’t even start to think what you are going to say until they have completely finished.

·      Demonstrate genuine interest in them and their business.

·      Ask them if they think it’s worth continuing the conversation. 

·      Don’t outstay your initial welcome.

·      As soon as the call is complete, follow up promptly with any actions or material you have promised to send.

In modern selling, to get them to say “yes”, you must make “no” an equally acceptable answer.

If you’d like help to be more proactive with prospecting by telephone in your business, then get in touch before I call you! 

I run public sales training and social media courses (Twitter for Business & LinkedIn) via Zoom virtual classroom and offer one-to-one sessions too! 

Thank you for reading, I hope you found that useful.

Stuart Allen - The Sales Performance Company.

Worcestershire based and working with B2B clients across the world through live virtual classroom. Helping clients adapt to selling remotely.

Sales Training. Sales Coaching.