Selling people your product or service isn’t an easy job. After connecting to numerous prospects every day, professionally and personally, you have to convince them that your product or service is valuable to them. Even if they are convinced, converting people with vastly different wants and needs is another ballgame. When this applies to a business-to-business (B2B) environment, closing sales becomes exponentially difficult.
In B2B sales, you have the added pressure of not trying to meet the needs of just a person but a complex and multifaceted company. Instead of convincing an individual, you have to cater to a committee of decision-makers and address their different focuses and goals. Add to that, complex products and long sales cycles.
How to increase B2B sales?
One thing’s for sure, it isn’t as simple as waiting for more customers to come to your door. Your prospective clients want to make sure they have the right vendor for the right price. Because of the complexity of the process, it can sometimes take months to close a B2B sale.
So how do you make sure, as a B2B marketer, that when other businesses are ready to buy, they think of your company? Here are some expert tips that will help your organization step up your sales game, maximize profits and help you grow.
Decrease Response Time
Respond to incoming lead inquiries as quickly as possible. This is the first step to increasing B2B sales. Studies show that the likelihood of a business contacting a lead decreases significantly five minutes after the lead fills out a form. You should ideally respond within ten seconds of receiving a lead. Each minute you delay, it significantly reduces your chances of being the first vendor to contact that lead. There must be a strong sales enablement roadmap which needs to be set up by the marketing team to make sure that leads get delivered to sales without any delay.
Work on imperfect leads
Sometimes a lead leaves contact information that might not be accurate. Sometimes people filling the forms don’t yet trust you or your company enough to hand over personal information. How do you tackle such leads? For starters, don’t count them out. Just because a lead has a non-working email address or phone number, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad lead. There’s usually enough information available in the other form fields like an alternate number or an office address. Upon digging in all these details you might get enough information to contact that lead.
Get Customer Testimonials
A sure-fire way to get your prospects to trust you is to demonstrate that other people like your current customers, already do. Since the chances of improving conversion increases if you can generate enough trust and be authentic, cultivate a trustworthy digital presence by getting reviews from clients on Google, Facebook, or any other relevant review sites. A good review can influence decision makers because it gives an overall picture of your business in a neutral sense. Good reviews from your clients have more impact than you writing about your company on the website.
Prioritize your leads’ needs
Apart from showing how you have been solving similar problems to your leads, another way to connect with them is identifying their unique needs. After basic research, start putting together ideas that will benefit the prospects and work on addressing those needs first. Keep your ideas ready as and when you listen to the prospect to understand their requirements and needs before you start selling. Identify their biggest challenges to understand how your product or service can best benefit them.
Although many experts might tell you that cold calling is dead, it’s still one of the influencing tactics in increasing your company’s sales. The trick is to turn your cold calls from failed sales into hot ones. For example, send some gifts to the office you would be calling in a week or ten days. This way, your prospect is aware of you when you make the call and will at least hear you out. Gifts can be something related to their work or something that’s fun for the whole office.
Sale and Marketing Automation
Any typical sales team has its hands' full handling multiple accounts. Managing so many accounts, day in and day out can make even the best sales representative overwhelmed, if not frustrated. This becomes especially true if you have a small team.
Sales and marketing automation platforms are an integral part of improving business process efficiency. Keep track of every lead interaction, maintaining your lead database, understanding the efficiency of your sales team by getting comprehensive analysis on sales pipeline and the consequent revenue generated are some of the essential factors of B2B lead conversion. Nurturing your leads through personalized content automation allows sales individuals to keep the prospects warm and have a top of the mind recall.
Use More Video Content
The video is one of the most effective means of advertising your company’s product. Most customers would rather watch a video about a product than reading about it. Video formats are more engaging. Depending on your industry, product or service, your videos can have many purposes. 90% of customers believe that demo videos are helpful. Explainer videos outline what your company does and how. Funny videos can help customers think about your product or service. Client reviews in the form of video testimonials can go a long way in persuading them.
Create Case Studies
Case studies are very crucial, especially in the B2B industry. If your business constantly generates data, leverage that and create compelling case studies that highlight your company’s capabilities. This helps you in getting more clients who are looking for similar solutions for themselves. Case studies are measurable proof of what your company does. Since making a case study mostly involves the collation and not the creation of data, you could always create new ones catering to diverse services or solutions.
Sometimes you and your team might follow all the proper steps and still struggle at closing deals. It might have something to do with the way you are ending conversations with prospects. Once you get in touch with a lead, he or she may not reciprocate the same way for all follow-up contacts. You have to make sure all steps after the initial contact are set up. Never leave a lead wondering when, how, or why they’re supposed to get back in touch with you. Make sure you’re directing them along sales funnel, by telling them exactly what they need to do next, and when.
Every sales team is different and these tactics are by no means the only way to increase sales conversions. Every tip has its pros and cons, so you have to identify the ones that you can benefit from the most. Following these tips diligently is bound to deliver some positive results.
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