Over the past few years, how businesses make B2B sales has dramatically changed. Sales processes used to be a lot more gradual, predictable, and linear in the past. Now they have become increasingly complicated, and less dependent on the skills of the salespeople who are given the job to drive sales.
This does not mean that the B2B sales process used to be easy before. But now it has become an even bigger challenge as companies struggle in the highly competitive and globalized environment of this century.
How do you stand out from the competition and increase B2B sales? This post is a guide to B2B sales, to convey to you several tips that you can adapt as your B2B sales strategies. We will show you how to increase B2B sales in order to grow your business.
What is B2B Sales?
B2B sales refer to an organization selling a product or service to another organization. It is different from B2C sales, whereby a company or brand is selling its products or services to individual consumers.
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These days, B2B sales can be made online. Companies offer and sell different services to other companies over the internet. Sometimes the order is placed, and payment is collected online, while the actual service is delivered in person. At times the whole process can also be conducted online, in which case we call it B2B ecommerce.
A business can adopt any strategy to make successful B2B sales.
10 Ways to Increase B2B Sales
Here are ten different strategies for you to use for increasing your B2B sales.
1. Align Your Marketing and Sales Teams
A good way to increase B2B sales is to align your marketing team with your sales team, in order to improve the coordination among them. When your marketing and sales teams work together, they can generate more leads and contribute equally to the sales process. Working together gives the team members a sense of belonging and motivates them to perform at their best. This increases their productivity and enhances your brand awareness in the eyes of the public, as people can see your staff promoting your business in a consolidated manner.
2. Define Your Buyer Persona
Businesses with a well-defined buyer persona tend to make more B2B sales than those that do not. This is because when you know exactly whom you need to target, you save time, energy, cost, and resources from being wasted on irrelevant audiences. So if you want to make successful B2B sales, prepare a persona of the exact type of organizations you want to target. Set clear criteria to determine which organizations can be included in your target market and which ones cannot. Then conduct market research to find these organizations within your targeted sector. This will make it easier for you to increase B2B sales.
3. Personalize Your Campaigns
Using the power of personalization can significantly help you increase B2B sales. Even though you are targeting organizations for B2B sales, you must understand that the people reviewing your proposals are still individuals or team members. People like to receive personalized messages and proposals more than they like a generalized offer.
If you send a personalized email or make a personalized sales pitch to every potential client, you have a much better chance of closing that deal. The more you research your prospects before approaching them, the better your outreach results will come out. In short, personalized marketing always wins.
4. Use Social Media to Boost Your Efforts
The value of social media marketing has tremendously risen over the past few years. Every business that wants to generate quality leads and make B2C or B2B sales is advertising its products and services on various social media platforms. To make this work, you first need to identify which social media site is the most relevant and appropriate for the kind of services you offer. Then you need to build your social media strategy.
A good way of integrating social media marketing with your other marketing plans is to figure out how to insert some of your social media posts into your brand website. This will allow your site visitors to have a glimpse of your social media engagement without leaving your website.
If your website is built on Strikingly, you can do this easily by using our social feed feature. This feature allows you to give a glimpse of your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter feed to your audience within your website. This is a highly effective strategy to increase B2B sales.
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5. Build a Strong Email Marketing Strategy
Businesses like to receive emails and newsletters from other businesses that have something valuable to offer. The importance of email marketing can never be underestimated. If used correctly, it can help you to reach large audiences and increase B2B sales. Sending regular emails to your potential clients not only keeps them reminded about your products or services but also encourages them to recommend you to others in their network who might be looking for the kind of services you offer.
Hence, the benefit of developing a strong email marketing strategy is two-fold. On the one hand, it helps you retain the loyalty of your existing clients, and on the other hand, it nurtures your new prospects to influence them to purchase your products. Both of these work in favor of getting you B2B sales.
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6. Include More Video Content
People have a greater tendency to pay attention to your marketing material if you include more videos in it. That’s why video marketing is more effective than a simple content strategy consisting of blog articles and text-filled emails alone. Adding videos to your content includes an element of entertainment in your campaigns.
Someone might open and watch your video just for the sake of viewing something fun, with no intention of buying your product. The benefit you get from such viewers is that they at least hear your brand's name as they watch your content. Sooner or later, you can attract B2B sales by retargeting these viewers and getting them to move down your marketing funnel.
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7. Ask for Referrals
Business referrals and testimonials can go a great length to get you more B2B sales. People tend to trust a brand or company that’s recommended to them by their friends more than one that’s introduced to them in a sponsored or paid advertisement. Instead of simply hoping for your happy clients to recommend your services to others or write positive reviews for your products, it is better to ask them for this favor. In return, you can offer them a discount on their next purchase or provide some other incentive that encourages them to take action.
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8. Share Only Valid Content
This tip is often underestimated. If you share invalid or irrelevant content with your audience, they will likely feel put off by your emails, social media posts, and website. Share content with your prospects that give them value. Show them that you have put in the effort to particularly look into their lifestyle, mindset, and problems and offer something that will make their lives easier.
Modern B2B businesses usually target different audiences with entirely different needs. You cannot expect everyone to like your product or service in the exact same way. Along with being creative with your outreach strategy, you also need to identify the specific needs of the different niches you target. This is the key to making more and repeat B2B sales.
9. Produce Case Studies
A study conducted by DemandGen revealed that 73% of buyers referred to case studies for making B2B purchase decisions. Case studies serve a similar purpose to that of business referrals. They show the reader that the business that’s approaching them with an offer has successfully delivered the product or service to others before. Case studies also reveal whether or not the past clients of that business are satisfied with the product or service. They act as evidence of the merchant or service provider's quality, deliverability, and credibility. Therefore, producing case studies can help you increase B2B sales.
10. Have a Killer Website to Represent Your Business
The first thing anyone who hears about your business would do is search for your brand or company name on the internet. In today’s world, for making B2B sales, or simply for running a business for that matter, it is essential to have an appealing, responsive, and professionally built website.
It is not difficult or complicated to build a website anymore like it used to be about 5-6 years ago. Many small and large organizations are building their website on Strikingly, a growing website building platform that requires no coding skills to work on it.
The process to make a website on Strikingly is so simple that we have users who have literally published their websites within hours of registering with us. The tools included in our free plan are sufficient for you to create a basic website, which means you don’t have to pay anything to get started.
If you are running a B2B business and want to increase B2B sales, sign up on Strikingly to build a website with us today.
