The days when a salesperson was in charge of the buying process are long gone.
Today’s buyers prefer to conduct research and select what to buy on their own, without any influence from a vendor:
- Only 29% of buyers want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product.
- 57% of buyer decisions are made before buyers even pick up a phone to speak to a supplier.
- And, 34% of salespeople admit that closing deals is getting harder.
Surprisingly, only 17% of the entire B2B buying process is spent meeting with potential clients.
Each company has its own set of rules and procedures, and things can get challenging when you are trying to come up with a foolproof plan for closing B2B deals faster. In this article, you will learn some of the ace tips to close more B2B deals and hit your sales numbers.
9 Tips That Will Help You Close More B2B Sales
1. Follow the New B2B Mindset
B2B buyers are more interested in results than features. The majority of B2B salespeople waste valuable time bragging about their product or service. Instead, your prospect is curious about how you can assist them in expanding their company and improving their efficiency. The prospect needs to know how well you know their industry and whether you have the right solution for their problems.
Modern consumers are well-informed and conduct extensive research before purchasing any product or service. Salespeople must be aware of when and where they can intervene to help. Before you meet with the prospects, do some research on their businesses.
Salespeople are naturally goal-oriented individuals. As soon as you finish a conversation with your potential buyer, you begin to wonder whether or not you were successful in closing the deal. However, you should take a step back and consider what succeeded and what didn’t. This will help you understand why some sales go through and others don’t.
2. Create a Sales Sequence
Sales sequencing is a great way to take the guesswork out of the sales process and let your SDRs know precisely what to do next to move a prospect forward. A sales sequence is a collection of different sales touchpoints that are scheduled to be delivered at a predetermined time and interval. These touchpoints may include SMSs, social messages, phone calls, and other sales activities in addition to emails. The most successful sales sequences strike the ideal balance between automation and personalization.
It is crucial to follow the four best practices to implement the sales sequence successfully.
- Target — Always begin planning your sequencing strategy by identifying and focusing on the right prospects to turn them into customers. To define qualified leads, don’t depend on static data. Make dynamic data your top priority instead.
- Segmentation — Lead segmentation is essential to any sales sequence because it allows you to focus on a particular group of leads, send more persuasive prospecting messages, and increase lead quality.
- Mix — Using several platforms in the sales sequence including email, phone, direct mail, social media post, text, voicemail, or even an in-person meeting is always a good way to ensure the best results.
- Align — Your touchpoints should be aligned to the purpose of your sales sequence. For instance, your sequence may be to pitch a product, convert prospects into customers, nurture the lead through the sales funnel, follow up, or accomplish some other sales goal.
3. Map Out the Buyer’s Journey
If you have created the ideal customer profile and understand how your product will help them, it’s time to figure out when and how your potential customers will buy it. Consider the steps a potential customer would take to get to your product or service to accomplish this. When making a purchase, most potential buyers go through the following stages:
- Awareness — The potential buyer is aware that they have an issue or a pressure point that must be addressed.
- Consideration — The potential buyer considers how the issue can be solved and looks at alternative goods or services that might be useful.
- Decision — The potential buyer evaluates the pros and cons of various choices before deciding on a course of action.
Identifying and monitoring where your potential buyers are in the buyers’ journey should be a part of the sales process. If you can do this correctly, you will be able to strategize the right intent at the right stage with the right message.
To make things simpler, you can use buyer intent data to identify the stage of your potential buyers before you approach them.
4. Embrace Sales Enablement to Help Prospects Make Better Buying Decisions
Just because today’s consumers tend to do their own research online doesn’t mean they can’t communicate with you during the consideration phase.
B2B consumers depend on content to direct them through the purchase process and provide them with the information they need to make an educated decision. And, while they can quickly access information, it isn’t always correct and useful.
This is your chance to shine.
Create a content library for all of your assets for the most popular concerns at various stages of the purchase process. Once you have built a content library, share it with your prospects ahead of time and make it easy to find online.
5. Identify the Opportunity for Repeat Business
Although existing customers are responsible for an organization’s earnings, many companies take them for granted.
Rather than attempting to broaden and retain established customer relationships, sales professionals are pursuing new leads. To increase sales from current customers, it is critical to retain and win their loyalty. Continually checking in to see if they need assistance is a good way to do this. In several companies, the customer support staff is primarily responsible for making sure customers are taken care of and see if there are natural opportunities for up or cross-selling.
6. Lay Competitive Landmines
This is a fun one. Request a battle card for each major competitor from your product team if you don’t already have one. When prospects claim they’re assessing other vendors, tell them that they’re on the right track. Additionally, help them with questions that they should be asking. Recommend to them some parameters on which they should evaluate.
For example, let’s say you are a data provider, and your potential buyers are in the decision stage evaluating other vendors. You can help them by suggesting not to fall prey to the mammoth database quantity. Instead, emphasize the quality. Are they providing machine verified data or human verified?
You can also anticipate and tell them what your competitors might have to say about your product. So if you know your competitors will lay landmines for you by saying something like, “Hey, they don’t have the integration with Salesforce” (which is out of date), call them out. Show them the documentation that explains the new integration of your tool.
The landmine approach often leaves you looking like a trusted consultant who’s maintaining transparency.
You can also use technographic data to compare your product with the one they are currently using. This will help them to understand the gaps in their existing product and help them make a decision.
7. Sell Success Stories
Telling your leads that your product is the solution for all their challenges is one of the biggest mistakes sales reps often make. If you say so, they will assume that you know everything about their business. They will keep correcting you every time you make a mistake about their industry. As a result, you might sound underprepared.
Instead, play it safe and smart by telling them the success story of your existing client operating in a similar industry. You can start something like, “I am not an expert on [their industry]. However, one of our clients operates in a similar space where they were facing challenges in… and we were able to provide a solution… and their productivity has improved by xx%…”
In this case, even if it doesn’t resonate with their challenges completely, no harm is done. But if you’re right, you nailed the vertical and use case. You never know that will trigger them to say, “That’s exactly what we are looking for!”.
8. Subscribe to Your Prospect’s Content
Almost every company shares a newsletter with its subscribers. If your prospects share a blog, email, newsletter, or social media feed, subscribe and follow them. This will aid you in comprehending their company focus and growth. It will also help you understand how they interact with their potential customers. Since you can relate to how your product can help your prospect satisfy their clients, it can provide useful insights that will assist the B2B sales process.
9. Skip Straight to the Real Decision-Makers
Most companies don’t let the team members who will be using your product have the final say on purchasing decisions. That’s why the most popular B2B salespeople go directly to the decision-makers.
No matter how easy or relaxed it might seem, avoid spending too much time building in-depth relationships with lower-level team members. While they might be happy to engage in conversation with you, they lack the financial resources — or the legitimacy — to invest in your product or service. Instead, try to approach those who have the authority and budget to make purchasing decisions.
You can use direct work mobile dials to reach the actual decision-makers and skip answering to the gatekeepers or the acting decision-makers.
Do it in a Right Way, at the Right Time
When done right, B2B sales tips have the potential to be both extremely lucrative and deeply rewarding. As a B2B sales professional, develop a sales process that works for your business, prospects, and overall goals.
You need to be proactive in identifying potential customers’ preferred platforms and sharing relevant content that meets their needs. You should also collaborate closely with your marketing department, using the content they produce as a promotional tool to drive prospects further down the sales funnel.
Doing it right is the key, and you can still be the master of B2B sales in this highly volatile and dangerously competitive era.
