B2B sales can be a difficult process if you don’t have the right strategy.
You will struggle to get more qualified leads to keep your sales funnel going. However, you will have to fill it in advance due to long sales cycles.
The B2B sales process is more than just closing a deal; it requires the application of complex sales strategies aimed at finding the ideal compromise between all parties involved in the transaction.
B2B lead generation remains a priority for any company, be it a large established organization or a small start-up.
Table of Contents
1. Strategic selling
Strategic selling helps organizations close complex deals based on the interests of the many people involved in the deal.
The essence of the approach is to identify various contacts in the company, based on their impact on the entire sales process. You then determine the level of support these contacts can give you in making decisions within the company.
For example, imagine that you want to sell a company a tool aimed at automating project management. In this case, your first contact might be an operations manager or marketer looking for tools to improve team productivity and efficiency.
Turning to him, you may realize that a marketer is the very person who will contribute to the implementation of your software in a company. This way you tailor your value proposition to the needs of the marketing department. As a result, you will be able to build a conversation on a meaningful basis.
You then provide the marketer with the information they need to convince the operations manager. Or, even better, arrange a joint meeting with the marketing and operations manager, and possibly with the head of the IT department.
With the help of a marketer, you can be sure that the operations manager will approve the transaction, and the IT specialist will support this decision.
This is strategic selling.
Why does it work?
This strategy forces sales managers to connect with more than just one of the company’s representatives but also pushes them to deeper study of the client’s organizational structure. By analyzing the potential client in advance, the sales manager will be able to quickly identify those people who really influence the decision or make decisions.
2. Selling Solutions
As the name suggests, this B2B sales strategy focuses more on the needs of the potential customer than the actual process of selling the product. More specifically, the salesperson focuses on identifying the customer’s problems and goals. The sales manager then recommends products or services that will help the customer overcome these challenges.
This sales strategy is especially useful when your company offers (partially or completely) customized solutions for its target market.
For example, you offer cloud storage. Here’s what the solution-selling process will look like:
• Preparation – find the potential client’s pain points and analyze the solutions they have already tried;
• Diagnosis – Talk to a potential client and ask open-ended questions to understand what they do, what data they want to store, how much space they need, and more;
• Qualifications – Based on your conversation, see if the potential client is right for you and if they are interested in moving their data to the cloud. Find out who makes the final decision. See if they have a budget and how long they can pay;
• Training – If the potential client is the target, then tell him how the cloud storage you offer will help them overcome their current problems and why you are better than others in the market;
• Solution – Offer them a customized solution based on their needs, as well as specific examples of how you have helped similar clients;
• Closing the deal – you’ve made sure they need your solution and are working to connect them to the cloud. Discuss the terms and close the deal.
Why does it work?
Selling solutions work for B2B because, from the very beginning of the sales cycle, the customer feels they are valuable to you. The fact that they are listened to and come up with a solution that suits their goals helps build a closer relationship between you and your potential customers, which leads to higher conversions and thus more sales.
3. Social selling
Most B2B customers look for solutions on search engines and social networks. Social selling focuses on the latter.
The social selling approach is based on building a business around a specific target segment and then interacting with potential customers to drive sales. Today, this usually means using social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and others to share relevant content in order to attract potential buyers or develop existing ones.
Social selling is about building a more personal connection with leads through social media, rather than sending impersonal emails to leads.
Why does it work?
Social selling is useful for B2B because it builds relationships with potential customers first and then focuses on sales.
By promoting information that will be of interest to leads in the channels where customers are most active, the sales manager is more likely to have a more meaningful conversation with them about the products they really need.
A clear advantage of this approach lies in tracking the actions of competitors: how other companies promote their products, and what customers think about them.
In conclusion, we can say that the choice of strategy depends on the specific situation of each organization: what is the target audience, and what methods of interaction with potential customers may be suitable. The most important thing is to find an approach that will provide you with maximum B2B lead generation. In addition to strategy, it is extremely important to choose lead generation tools. Getsales.io multi-channel outbound platform can be a sales automation tool that completely automates processes when choosing, for example, a social selling strategy, and also allows you to achieve a confident level of generating predictable leads and qualified leads. This all-in-one solution has been in the business sales CRM tools market for many years. You can verify the effectiveness of this all-in-one sales platform on the Getsales official website by visiting the section with their partnership. Make effective decisions for your company and grow your business with GetSales.