B2B sales (selling products and services to other businesses, rather than to individual consumers) often involves lengthy sales cycles, multiple decision-makers, and a strong emphasis on building solid relationships. Compared to B2C sales, B2B sales requires a deeper understanding of the client’s business needs, operations, and budget constraints. The sales process can be more complex and require a higher level of expertise, but the rewards can be plentiful and long-term.
The B2B sales process isn’t all that complicated: find your prospective consumers, explain why your products are the best, and sway their purchase decision with an irresistible offer. The tough part is actually making the sale. Not to worry. By the end of this blog, you should have some exciting new ideas to implement, or at the very least, improved strategies to optimize what you’re already doing.
With the skills and persistence of a sales team, B2B businesses can overcome competition in the market to provide valuable solutions that meet clients’ needs. But first, you’ll need to use tried-and-true tactics to seal more deals.
The 8 best B2B sales tactics
1. Define your ideal buyer persona
A buyer persona is a fictionalized characterization of your best customers based on information about them and how they use your product or service. For B2B sales, buyer personas are useful since they include all decision-makers, not just those at the lower levels. By creating this character, you may concentrate your efforts on persuading managers and executives to buy your product so that you can complete the sale.
Create your buyer persona:
- Conduct market research to gather information about your target customers, such as their industry, job title, and decision-making processes.
- Analyze your existing customer data to identity common characteristics, such as demographics, behaviors, and pain points.
- Create a detailed profile of your ideal buyer persona, including their responsibilities, challenges, goals, and motivations.
- Verify the accuracy of your personas by talking with your sales team and industry experts.
- Regularly review and update your buyer personas based on feedback from your sales team, customer insights, and market changes.
Creating a well-designed buyer persona allows you to tailor your B2B sales strategy to the specific needs and challenges of your prospects, resulting in more effective sales efforts.
2. Grow B2B sales with a sales team on demand
Companies may opt to outsource their sales team for a number of reasons, such as a lack of internal resources, a desire to boost sales, or a need to reduce expenses. For businesses looking to flex and scale as needed, sales teams on demand are a popular option.
It may feel unnatural to put trust in a partner for sales, but businesses that take the time to carefully select a sales team on demand can gain access to expert sales agents with a competitive advantage. The finest hyper-growth businesses in the world rely on Influx to strengthen their sales teams and facilitate more deals. Grow your revenue with a sales team on demand!
3. Focus on identifying and solving customer pain points
Businesses are typically looking for concrete ROI, increased efficiency, automation, or reduced obstacles. Understanding a customer’s pain point allows sales agents to customize their pitch in a way that offers tailored solutions. If possible, provide a demonstration of how your business alleviates frustration. This helps the customer visualize the solution and understand how it will solve their pain point, backed by examples and evidence of success.
4. Nail down a strong email marketing strategy
According to Constant Contact, email marketing generates $36 for ever $1 spent. In a B2B setting, email communication is proven to be among the most effective channels. Because your email audience might be in different stages of the sales cycle, it’s important to create a balance of outbound and inbound marketing campaigns and to segment your audience.
Other key components of a successful email campaign include captivating subject lines, a strong call to action, to-the-point messaging, and powerful images. By creating targeted and interesting email campaigns, you can effectively engage with potential customers and drive B2B sales.
5. Offer value-added services
To increase cross-selling opportunities, offering additional services, such as training, support, or consulting, can help increase the value of your product or service. Enhancing the user experience, value-added services can increase a business’s chances of working with you. This doesn’t necessarily mean bundling, but rather, providing added value for customers who may be looking for those additional solutions that can increase your B2B sales.
6. Sync marketing and sales teams
Aligning marketing and sales teams in a B2B setting is crucial because it helps ensure that synchronizes efforts towards a common goal and that resources are being used effectively. When cooperating, marketing and sales teams can both benefit from increased customer experience, better lead qualification, and supportive collaboration that drives revenue.
Here are some steps to align marketing and sales team through communication, collaboration, and shared goals:
- Define clear roles so that each team understands their responsibilities and what they can expect from each other.
- Establish regular meetings for teams to discuss insights, progress, and planning.
- Collaborate on messaging so that the marketing and sales teams’ interactions with customers are seamless, on-brand, and backed by results.
- Encourage cross-functional training so that each team understands the other’s role and work.
By syncing marketing and sales, teams can work together to drive more sales and build stronger relationships.
7. Utilize content and social channels
Valuable content, such as blog posts, videos, whitepapers, and case studies, helps to educate your target audience and establish your company as a thought leader in your industry. Utilizing social media and content on your website allows you to nurture leads through credibility and education. Take a look at the content journey and map out how leads move from awareness to consideration to decision. Then, plan content for each stage, making sure that it is relevant, valuable, informative, and highly focused to reach your target audience.
Something to consider in your content creation is video. Video is beneficial not only for B2C audiences, but has become a crucial component of the B2B sales process due to its high ROI. According to Responsive Inbound Marketing…
Online shoppers who view demo videos are 1.81x more likely to purchase than non-viewers.
For customers who may be on the fence, video content demonstrates how your B2B prospects can use your product or service. And as a retention strategy, video tutorials, how-tos, and other tips and tricks are beneficial for customers to learn more about maximizing the tools provided.
8. Highlight successful collaborations with case studies
A case study refers to any content that describes how your product or service has helped past customers in an attempt to convert leads into customers. Allowing you to gather data over time, case studies prove how your service made a difference.
To gather case studies, you’ll want to create a compelling pitch that puts the focus on your customer and shares how they can benefit from it. Because case studies are authentic, they can revolutionize your B2B sales by demonstrating your industry expertise and building trust with prospects.
Sales support on demand
Influx sales teams are comprised of highly experienced and skilled sales professionals who have an expert understanding of the B2B sales process. We offer flexible and cost-effective outsourcing solutions that can be tailored to your specific needs, allowing you to scale as needed. Maximize your potential and increase your revenue with a sales team on demand!
