Do you sell to other business people? The art of business-to-business sales (aka B2B sales) can be tricky to do successfully. And the B2B sales process is quite different to B2C sales, when you’re selling direct to a consumer instead of a business.
Want to know the best way to convert more leads? Make sure you have a killer sales process in the first instance. An effective B2B sales process is your roadmap to sales success.
If you’re wondering what we mean by a B2B sales process, it’s a series of repeatable steps to guide your sales team. This process focusses your sales strategy. It gives your team of sales professionals ways to boost their conversions from leads to customers.
What is the B2B Sales Process?
A B2B sales process involves a series of steps created to help salespeople sell a product or service to another business. Think of it as an instruction manual to turn potential customers into B2B buyers. The beauty of this sales process is that it’s scalable and repeatable. Once you have a tried and tested, successful B2B sales process, your sales team can repeat those steps time and time again.
A clear sales process is super helpful for you team. It ensures consistency amongst your sales representatives as there’s a predictable system in place. It builds transparency and improves efficiency within the team. Ultimately, it leads to sales success.
A B2B sales cycle tends to be longer than a B2C sales cycle. In it’s very nature, the B2B deal tends to be more complex and the buying decision-making process involves more stakeholders. Often, the B2B buyer that you’re dealing with can’t make purchasing decisions on their own. They’ll need approval and sign off from other decision-makers within the company in order to seal the deal. According to Klipfolio, the average sales cycle takes around three months.
The 8 Step B2B Sales Process
The B2B sales process typically starts at the prospecting stage and continues through to the closing deal stage and beyond. This tends to be the recommended process.
1. Prospecting and Research
Before you start any sales calls or messaging, you need to do your homework. Find leads that you can connect with and nurture throughout the buying process.
Do in-depth market research and work out your ideal buyer persona. Map out your prospective buyer’s journey. Build a targeted list of potential customers to approach. Then decide on the best technique to use, such as cold calling, networking, email marketing and social media outreach.
2. Discovery
Once you’ve identified potential leads, you need to discover more about them. Look into their industry specifically. Understand the customer needs, their pain points, the issues they face and the ways that your offering can help them. It’s your unique value proposition that will persuade a lead to buy from you rather than another business.
Head online for prospective lead generation in the first instance. Connect with them on LinkedIn to gather info on what they talk about or are experts in. Check their company website for news and insights. Brush up on what’s happening in their industry. All this will help your conversation with them.
Learn how you can conduct a great sales discovery call.
3. Lead Qualification
Now that you’re armed with adequate information about your customer profile, you can reach out to your prospect. It’s important to assess how likely they are to continue along the buyer journey. Do they have the budget for your product or service? Ask open ended questions to work out whether your businesses are a good fit and if your offering will meet the customer needs and reduce their pain points.
This process of qualifying your prospects is important. It’s a filtering stage and will stop your B2B salespeople wasting time on building a customer relationship that won’t result in a sale.
4. Pitching
Now comes the bit that sales reps tend to like best – selling their wares to new leads. In fact, 82% of sales professionals cite building relationships with people as the most important part of selling (and the most enjoyable part of their job), according to Hubspot.
This is where you get to show off your research. Make it clear that you understand your prospect’s business. Explain how your product or service can help them, will add value and deliver the results they want. A product demo needs to both answer their questions, and make them keen to ask more.
Remember, your pitch and sales demo no longer have to be on the phone or in-person. An email, video call or online presentation can also be an effective customer experience.
5. Handling Objections
Don’t be deterred if your potential buyers don’t sign on the dotted line immediately. It’s not necessarily a reflection of your sales performance. Your lead is likely to have some questions and concerns, typically around budget, a need to build trust, or a lack of immediate need.
Listen to what they say, and allay their fears. Respond with ways that you can solve their problems. This will help to build trust – the foundation of an ongoing customer relationship – and bring you closer to a deal.
6. Closing Deals
Yes, you’ve done it! You’ve convinced your potential customer to continue along the buyer journey to the sale. The final hurdle may involve some negotiation and final persuasion to make sure you end up with a contract that suits both B2B companies. Whilst this is the end of this process, you don’t want it to be the end of your business relationship. That needs to be nurtured ongoing.
7. Follow-up
Continue to nurture your customer relationship with follow up conversations. Check that they’re happy with their purchase, provide useful information and leave on a positive note. That keeps the door open for for repeat sales, referrals and upselling. This is sometimes the role of customer success teams rather than sales people.
B2B Sales: Best Practice Tips
It’s important for sales leaders and managers to support their salespeople and equip them with the best tools to help them sell effectively. Leaders need to provide clarity and direction to the sales team, ensure a consistent approach and put the right processes in place for effective sales management. A robust B2B sales strategy should underpin this. A few ways to do this include:
- Buyer personas: define your ideal customer clearly and explain it to your sales team. Make sure the teams know the customer’s main challenges and decision-making points.
- Inbound marketing: this is a good way to acquire warm leads. Your marketing team may produce magnets like white papers and guides to attract potential customers. It’s vital to pass those leads from marketing to sales teams.
- Conversion techniques: case studies, testimonials and other social proof are effective ways to convert prospects who are a way down the sales funnel. Equip your team with them.
- Streamline processes: automate manual and repetitive tasks along the sales pipeline so that sales reps can use more time on prospects. Produce templates for standard emails to save time.
- Sales enablement: equip your salespeople with the right technology, functionality and information to give them the best chance at customer success. That could be a CRM, enablement tool or even new AI technologies.
- Motivate your salespeople: train your sales team regularly in new methodologies and techniques. Set SMART KPIs to motivate and encourage them to strive for more and reach your forecast goals.
- Track performance: take note of customer feedback and performance metrics. Use it to optimise your sales process, improve sales pitches and ensure frictionless touchpoints along the buyer journey.
Testimonial: EMS Electrical
“I didn’t even know what was a lead, or customer acquisition… I cannot believe it. Now, I’m using a sales system. That’s a big change.”
Discover how EMS Electrical boosted their turnover by 233%, after working with ActionCOACH.
Ready to Improve Your B2B Sales Process?
Before you make that cold call or write that sales email, do your homework. Having a killer B2B sales process and strategy in place will make your sales team more effective. Did you know that only 33% of inside sales rep time is spent on active selling? Making sure you understand your customer, their pain points and your solutions for them is a vital part of the B2B sales process.
I’ve helped numerous businesses with their B2B business strategy, sales process and plans. I can help you too. Get in touch to find out how we can work together and boost your sales.
