For most marketers, B2B Sales is often a case of trial and error. At the same time, this is one way to blow a marketing budget and quite a defeatist attitude toward maximizing the conversion rate of a business. In other words, every effort should be made to minimize these errors and there are always ways to define or refine a process to increase sales and improve conversion rates in general.
In this article, we take a look at some ideas and strategies to help accelerate your B2B sales in 2020.
How to Accelerate Your B2B Sales in 2020
Timing Your Outreach to Maximize Conversions
Timing your outreach campaigns will enable your business to make the most of every campaign. For instance, “trigger events” or trends can bring your product or service into the limelight for one reason or another. While this is happening, customers are much more likely to pay attention to what you have to say or maybe even invest in whatever you have to offer. Now, that’s not to say you need an event to reach out to customers but rather to emphasize the importance of timing that initial contact. By the way, here’s a list of trigger events for your marketing needs!
Nurture Leads with Great Content
Content is still the best and most effective way to generate leads for any business. That being said, this content must be relevant and tailored toward the target market. Whether you focus on videos or written content, it might seem like a time-consuming process but the content is also a long term strategy when you consider the impact this will have on search engine optimization (great guide from Digital Authority Partners here). Also, is there something you want to tell consumers about your product or service? Creating a relevant piece of content is a quick-fire solution in terms of putting this right in front of the target market.
Following Up on Leads More Effectively
Time is key for every business, and this is especially true when it comes to leads. After all, most leads have a limited time span and sales reps need to be on-the-ball to make these sales. In other words, B2B sales always improve when reps are quick to persist and follow up with customers. In case you might be wondering, this might mean enforcing a rule that reps must follow up every lead at least four times. At the same time, this process starts from the top down, and managers need to instill these practices before the rest of the team can be expected to follow.
Focusing Heavily on High-Probability Leads
Every business owner can appreciate the frustration of dealing with a situation that a car salesman might know as a “tire-kicker.” You know, low-probability leads that do little more than drain your reps and waste valuable time that could be spent on other leads. With this in mind, it’s essential to focus on high probability leads and gain a better understanding of the most lucrative target market.
On a similar note, it often serves better to focus on a small number of deals with bigger or high paying customers as opposed to a large number of small deals that have an even smaller ROI.
Check here for tips on generating high probability leads.
Making the Process More Personal for Each Customer
We are currently living through an era of customization and every customer appreciates that personal touch. What’s more, customers are now de-sensitized to adverts and sales, which means that you need to be much more creative or attractive to grab their attention. But how can you make these sales seem individual or personal?
Well, try to avoid generic descriptions and create a story behind the brand. Tell customers why they should want to connect with your business on a personal level and let them know that you care about their problems or concerns. In some ways, this circles back to the point above about creating content, for you can make these sales more personal by posting valuable content that helps each customer on a personal level.
Take the Transparent Approach to B2B Sales
As already mentioned, customers are desensitized to sales and adverts. However, people still pay attention to honesty and integrity and every other honorable value that a business conveys.
For this reason, take an honest and open approach with your customers and never hide any aspect of the product values or company mission. In the end, this approach will nurture more repeat customers and start creating a relationship between your business and the target market.
As you may know, transparent content like “behind the scenes” footage is also something that will help strengthen the relationship business will have with their customers.
Deploy Technology at Every Opportunity
Automation and technology are not about businesses wanting to be lazy but about streamlining the process to provide a better service to customers. If software or technology can automate certain logistics or simplify a process, you should seek to deploy these systems at every opportunity.
Just so you know, this might involve tracking key information about your leads and prospects or creating a resource that customers will find useful. After all, the closer you can bring these customers to your business, the closer these prospects will be to making a purchase.
Final Thoughts
It’s true, B2B sales require time, resources, and money and every sale will rely on each of these factors. Simply stated, the less you invest in each one, the less return you can expect for your business and the longer you spend on each sales process, the less time you have to focus on other leads. For this reason, the less money or time or resources you can spend on each sale, the more return your business stands to gain and the above steps should help accelerate this process in 2020.
