How you can devise an effective sales strategy in B2B?

Clients or customers are the fulcra of any firm’s business. No company can exist or operate without serving customers or clients. It is therefore of paramount importance to any company to expand its existing client or customer base while maintaining its old client or customer base at the same time to derive more revenue and profits.

The B2B business model differs greatly from that of the B2C business model.

Here are a few key differences between the business models that require different sales and Marketing strategies to be developed for the B2B business model.

B2B Marketing

Targets firms’ requirements.

There is no sentiment involved in B2B marketing. A firm will remain your client only as long as you address its requirements satisfactorily. Your clients will only be interested in how much ROI they get by doing business with you.

Clients prefer companies who do not lock them down with contracts, give them good ROI, and meet their requirements satisfactorily.

Business clients are very hard to acquire but once acquired, they’ll stick with you for a long time. Clients will think 100 times before they get into a contract with you.

They will see if your services or products can satisfy their requirements, they will read your company’s blog and testimonials, and also see what firms think about your company on social media forums.

Only if clients/firms are completely convinced about your products or services, they’ll enter into a business contract with you.

However, B2B marketing is a long and complex process where an entire organization has to make contract decisions. Money is usually spent on white paper presentations, team meetings, social media campaigns, product or service demos, and webinars/seminars to acquire new clients.

Your marketing team plays a more prominent role in acquiring new clients for you than your sales team.  It has Highly technical products or services are made for business clients to satisfy their requirements.

B2C Marketing

Targets customers’ (people’s) requirements.

There are a lot of emotions and sentiments involved in B2C marketing. Acquiring new customers and retaining old ones requires a thorough analysis of their needs, tastes, buying trends, preferences, emotional responses (like birthday wishes), and sentiments.

While QoS or quality of products is also important in B2C marketing. Your customers may also stick with you because of the discounts, loyalty bonuses, sponsors, and freebies offered.

People or customers are relatively easy to acquire. Their subscription or purchase decisions are partly influenced by their emotions, sentiments, and their sense of fashion.

Their business value is usually less than B2B clients. You need to be in constant touch with your customers and address their queries and complaints to maintain them. It is relatively easy to lose your customers.

They can switch over to your competitors just to try something new or “just for a change”.

B2C marketing is a relatively short and simple process where only an individual has to make buying or subscription decisions. Money is usually spent on email campaigns, paid ads, conventional ads, product demos, and webinars to acquire new customers.

Your sales team plays a more prominent role in acquiring new customers for you than your marketing team.

A firm usually sells mundane products or services to customers like broadband services, one-time-use products soaps, shampoos, CFLs, food items, etcetera to customers.

The most technical product a customer can buy is a car or a bike. In some rare cases, it’s a Beechcraft or a private helicopter.

The latest methods that clients employ to get appropriate service partners or sellers

 As mentioned earlier, business clients are hard to convince and get into a contract. The advent of the internet has benefited many people but has made the life of a few difficult. The advent of the internet has made the life of B2B marketing teams difficult.

A couple of decades back, B2B marketing was a relatively simple process. A company used to maintain a blog that described its products or services and which ranked in search engine queries.

That company was “auto-discovered” by clients/firms. The sales team of that company used to paint a rosy picture about the company’s products or services and finally, its business clients used to enter into binding and risky contracts.

Well, all that has transformed. Ever since search engines like Google, YouTube, etcetera became globally popular and ever since social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etcetera became used world-wide, clients have employed new and smart strategies to search for suitable service providers or sellers.

Given below are some search strategies that are commonly employed by clients while searching for a suitable service provider or product (technologically advanced product) seller to satisfy their requirements.

The Effective Sales Strategy have made it difficult for firms to convince their clients to agree with them. These are the factors to consider before building a effisales strategy. They are:

• Firms are very clear about their requirements. They mostly look for a specific solution to their problem/requirement and not for a generic solution. This means that B2B service providers or B2B sellers have to be specialized/expertise in their domain. This is not a business that any Tom, Dick, or Harry could do.
• Firms check all search engines and social media platforms for potential service providers or sellers. This means that firms need not trust all the information that companies’ sales or marketing teams give. They can verify the information themselves.
• They read companies’ blogs for white papers, case studies, and client testimonials. And also search social media platforms for previous client testimonials and to ask other companies’ opinions about a particular company.
• They attend team meetings, product demos, webinars, and conferences with potential service providers or sellers and only then discuss and enter into contracts with them. Clients prefer companies who do not lock them down with contracts, give them good RoI, and meet their requirements satisfactorily.

Satisfying all these requirements and search effective sales strategy of potential clients is not at all easy. That’s why B2B service providers or B2B sellers have to be expertised in their domain and “proactive” to acquire new clients.

Smart B2B marketing strategies to clear clients’ filters

These are some of the effective sales strategy in B2B that you can employ to win client contracts. “Leaving no room for ambiguity” and “being proactive” are the two main ‘mantras’ in B2B marketing these days.

Have a robust and easy-to-navigate company blog

A company’s blog is like its identity card for the world. The more robust, informative, appealing, and easy-to-navigate a company’s blog is, the more easily that company can secure client contracts.

A company’s blog should:

Clearly and completely explains the products and/or services the company provides.

• The blog should have white paper presentations on its products and/or services and how they have solved/met common industry problems/requirements.
• It should describe the process the company employs to get into contracts with its potential clients. This will avoid ambiguity at every stage of the contract process.
• The blog should have product demos and webinars about its products and/or services. This will instil more confidence in the minds of the company’s potential clients.
• The blog should have answers to FAQs on its domain.
• It should have clients’ case studies and testimonials.
• They should have 24/7 client chat-support bot installed to quickly resolve clients’ queries and complaints.

If a company’s blog is convincing enough, some potential clients will not even browse through social media platforms to get opinions on that company. As the saying goes, “the first impression is the best impression” and your potential client’s top management may okay your contract quickly.

Synchronize your sales and marketing team and make each representative an S.M.E.

Certainly your company’s sales and marketing representatives should be SMEs in your company’s domain. They should be able to understand your clients’ requirements easily and come up with personalized solutions for them. You should be able to market your company’s products and/or services unambiguously. They are after all, the face of your company.

Your company’s sales and marketing representatives should be up-to-date with your company’s new products and/or services. They should also be able to contact one-another for updates on products and/or services if necessary. You should also be open to ideas and suggestions posed by your sales or marketing team.

So How it is going to help?

If their ideas are feasible and solution-oriented, you should implement them in your business model or blog as soon as possible. After all, learning is a never-ending curve and the more up-to-date a company is, the better chances it has of surviving in the market.

Stein Ove Sektnan, the MD of U.A.B. took to tweeting on Twitter to market his company’s services and so far, (since 2014) he has got 46 likes, 15 shares, and 50,000 followers on Twitter! His Twitter marketing campaign has been a roaring success so far.

However, If you run a B2B service or sales firm and are looking for potential clients, just contact Best Data Provider. We have databases on various firms and will give you promising leads.

We analyse your requirements or services thoroughly by holding regular conferences with you. Once we understand your requirements or services clearly, we search our databases (on firms) using appropriate filters and give you promising leads.

We use tools like HLR Lookup to verify the validity of companies’ contact numbers and contact e-mail IDs. We are a database marketing firm that provides database marketing services at very reasonable costs. Our blog contains numerous positive testimonials from our clients. We are one of the top database marketing firms in India.

Conclusion

As stated before, reaching out to potential clients and leaving no room for ambiguity at every stage of the contract signing process is the key to Effective sales strategy.

Research has shown that companies which follow the above effective sales strategy in B2B are 119% more successful than companies which don’t. Companies which use sound B2B marketing strategies also bag contracts 19 times more valuable than companies which don’t use sound B2B marketing strategies, according to recent surveys.

The B2B facts and marketing strategies mentioned in this article are 100% up-to-date and highly valuable. If you scrupulously follow them, your B2B marketing strategies will become highly successful and efficient. Your professional life will become “jingalala”!

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