Business-to-business (B2B) sales — it’s pretty self-explanatory: they’re transactions between business, rather than transactions between businesses and consumers (B2C sales).
Businesses must generate and nurture leads to build its client base and make money. After all, how can it succeed if it doesn’t?
Clients matter in B2B
B2B clients really are big business. Often, they place big orders and will put a sizable amount of money your business’s way. If you can deliver the order on time and to their standards, they’ll continue ordering from you and you can send out large, regular invoices to the client. They may even stay with you for life. Not only that, they may also recommend you to others. Word of mouth referrals still carry a lot of weight in business.
The days of easy B2B sales are gone, however, and the sales cycle is much longer. It’s no more a simple question of sending out a salesperson to a prospect, having a quick chat with them and then sealing the deal. Buyers are researching more and more online, viewing lots of content and chatting to more people before deciding whether to part with their money or not.
This makes it even more essential for businesses to communicate well with their prospects. Communicate poorly at any stage in the cycle and you could lose the prospect easily to a competitor. There are plenty out there. If you communicate well with your prospects, however, you could bolster your sales and your revenue.
A good level of communication is needed between a salesperson and a prospect to avoid that prospect agreeing a deal with a competitor.
Attention to the details
One of the keys to making sales is to get as close to the decision maker (business-wise) as possible. If you can dodge the ‘gatekeepers’ and contact the person who has the final say directly, you can save a lot of time and frustration. You can also sell further products or services to them. This is why accessing direct contact information of the decision-maker is important to both businesses and salespeople.
Using a sales tool created by Lusha will help your business gain direct contact details from platforms such as LinkedIn which then can be integrated in your own systems to help verify email addresses quickly. Ultimately, the software allows sales teams to save time, boost their productivity and, most importantly, connect with prospects.
Tips for good communication with prospects
There’s a variety of ways to nurture leads and communicate with your prospects. Given the nature of sales funneltoday, solid content marketing plays a powerful role in this. Here are some ways to communicate and connect with your prospects through your marketing:
Communities
A community is a real chance to chat to your prospects and existing customers and show you appreciate them. You can build their loyalty towards your brand and develop their trust in you, as well as foster a sense of togetherness. A lot of businesses have communities on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter — the choice is yours, but be there for your people. Creating a community is an amazing opportunity to build your business further.
Email marketing
Email marketing is a stellar way to keep in touch with existing customers and potential ones. You can update them with a regular newsletter which provides them with an insight on events in the business, shares new blog posts with them, new offers or anything else you think will be of interest to them. The beauty of email marketing is that this is one-to-one communication with your prospects. If they sign up for a newsletter, you can send them an autoresponder email that thanks them for subscribing.
Webinars
Webinars are a tremendous way to showcase expertise and give you the opportunity to expand on blog posts, allowing you to repurpose the content. It’s an engaging visual medium and, often, will feature a presentation by a specialist on a particular topic. Generally, people sign up for webinars via email, which the business providing the webinar can use to follow up with the person, who may be interested in working with the business in some way later.
Meet face to face
Content marketing is all well and good, but the stakes are high in B2B sales. Both parties have a lot to talk about and some things just can’t be discussed in emails or over the phone, so it’s appropriate to meet up with your prospects. If your product(s) or service(s) align with their needs, meeting up with them in person to answer their questions and allay any concerns directly will build their trust. You’ll be a step closer towards the sale.
Meeting up with prospects is essential to hold a good level of communication, sometimes things may be misinterpreted via email or phone call, so a face-to-face meeting is useful for both the salesperson and prospect.
B2B sales require clear communication with prospects to build a relationship with them and earn their trust continuously throughout the process. Prospects spend a lot of money and will do so for a long time, but the communication has got to be superb, not to mention the delivery of the service or the quality of the product. Make that happen and you can make the sale and look forward to good times for your business.
