Building a business-to-business (B2B) sales strategy is incredibly challenging. Unlike consumers, your fellow businesses come armed with lots of in-depth questions and expectations. Most won’t buy after a handful of interactions.
B2B companies can expect months of back-and-forth as they work towards the final sale.
Your B2B sales strategy helps you survive these long sales cycles, fierce competition, and the challenges of lead generation.
But as the market continues to change, your strategies must be up to date (using the latest technologies and trends). Below, we cover the best B2B sales strategies and why they’re so effective.
In this article:
- What is a B2B Sales Strategy?
- Why Your B2B Sales Strategy Matters
- 10 Best B2B Sales Strategies
What is a B2B Sales Strategy?
A B2B sales strategy is your action plan for selling to other companies. It covers everything from generating leads to converting them into buyers.
Completing a single sale without a strategy isn’t so hard. However, when you’ve got hundreds of prospects or leads, your strategy helps create a coherent, structured approach that guarantees the best results.
Like all sales strategies, in B2B, you should be guided by your customers’ needs. However, B2B buyers are much more discerning than consumers.
Decisions aren’t personal or motivated by emotion; they’re deeply rational, analysing different options for the product or service that delivers the best results.
Let’s explore some key differences:
- B2B buyers seek tailored solutions for business needs; B2C consumers prioritise personal preference.
- B2B requires detailed information and ROI demonstration; B2C focuses more on brand and emotion.
- B2B buyers prefer a consultative sales approach; B2C sales can require less interaction.
- B2B involves multiple decision-makers; B2C often has a single decision-maker.
- B2B prioritises long-term relationships with ongoing support; B2C may not require the same post-purchase engagement.
- B2B buyers look for customisation and flexibility; B2C buyers are often satisfied with standardised products.
Why Your B2B Sales Strategy Matters
The B2B sales cycle is getting longer – in fact, over the past 5 years, it’s increased by 22%. Why? Because businesses are becoming fastidious in their buying habits – consuming more content, weighing up their options, and getting more sceptical about a business’s claims.
Little wonder, considering the shift to online sales. By removing the human element, B2B companies must work twice as hard to create a sales strategy that speaks through the screen. Indeed, 52% of buyer decisions are finished before they ever contact your sales team. The rest is a formality.
A robust, successful B2B sales strategy, therefore, must not only include your online presence but also targeted content that addresses buyer’s questions, pain points, and concerns. It’s about building trust, a buyer-seller relationship, and demonstrating your company’s expertise and reliability.
10 Best B2B Sales Strategies
- Listen To Your Customer
- Use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
- Cut out the Middlemen
- Identify the Decision-makers
- Devise a Mutual Action Plan
- Build a Digital B2B Sales Room
- Create Content for Every Step of the B2B Buyer’s Journey
- Collect Feedback About Your Strategies
- Score Your Leads
- Automate Your Admin
1. Listen To Your Customer
Modern B2B buyers are more technically savvy than ever. That means they expect most of the buyer’s journey to happen online.
The problem: the digital space is often impersonal and distant.
The solution: hyper-personalised marketing across multiple touch points. The best B2B sales strategies constantly analyse new leads for behaviour and intent to identify what they want. That could even include using predictive and prescriptive analytics.
However, you should also listen and track how customers respond to your questions and content. Ask open questions at first to gauge their responses before closing in on the details.
2. Use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System
Collecting and analysing all this customer information is a challenge. That’s where a CRM system comes in. You can track all your customers in a single database – identifying where they are in the sales funnel.
It’ll also help you see how many times you’ve been in touch and any pending issues. Different CRMs come with a lot of different features, so find the best system for you.
3. Cut out the Middlemen
Too often, B2B salespeople get a single lead at a company and stick with it. This person becomes their door to a sale – the gatekeeper. No matter how great the business relationship is, it’s not a great B2B sales strategy.
You should develop numerous contacts within the business you’re targeting. That means you’re not reliant on a single point of contact.
4. Identify the Decision Makers
(Building on point #3) It’s not just about building multiple contacts within a company; it’s about identifying the core decision-makers. After all, they’re the individual ultimately responsible for buying or rejecting your pitch.
Remember, if you’re not making a pitch to a decision-maker, you’re not really making a pitch. You rely on the individual you’re speaking to (the middleman) to convey your message succinctly.
5. Devise a Mutual Action Plan
The problem most B2B sales strategies have is simple: one side is doing all the work. The seller is pushing and pushing for a sale; meanwhile, the buyer has little to no investment.
Mutual action plans (MAPS) solve this issue by aligning the seller and buyer’s objectives and processes. In a well-structured MAP, you should have a complete roadmap leading to the sale. That includes milestones, a timeline, assigned responsibilities, communication channels, and any other information.
With both parties clear about what’s expected, it not only fosters a sense of partnership and trust (the foundation of any sale) but also holds both sides accountable.
6. Build a Digital B2B Sales Room
Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in digital channels. But if that’s email or some other cumbersome communication channel, you’re in for a headache (and a lot of lost deals).
Instead, build a digital B2B sales room where you help guide a buyer toward a sale from their first interaction to their last. Trumpet’s ‘pods,’ for instance, are hyper-personalised using information in your CRM. They’ll welcome your buyer and provide the information they’re looking for in a single microsite.
Moreover, through videos, product demos, competitor analysis, and, yes, mutual action plans, they’ll funnel your prospects toward the final sale. We even integrate eSignatures, so you can sign the deal on the virtual dotted line.
7. Create Content for Every Step of the B2B Buyer’s Journey
Blog posts are fantastic. They’re a bitesize chunk of information introducing a buyer to your industry or an interesting topic. However, blog posts are only ever an introduction; they don’t convert browsers into buyers. That’s where other forms of content do.
Create content that drives visitors through their buyer’s journey – for example:
- Awareness Stage: Blog posts, infographics, social media content, educational videos, eBooks.
- Consideration Stage: Webinars, case studies, whitepapers, comparison guides, product demos.
- Decision Stage: Testimonials, customer reviews, pricing information, detailed product specifications, consultations or free trials.
8. Collect Feedback About Your Strategies
Not sure if customers are responding to your strategy? Ask them! Conducting website surveys, feedback interviews, and other data collection methods provides valuable insights into a particular B2B sales strategy. Based on their feedback, refine your performance until you’ve got a winning technique.
9. Score Your Leads
Not all leads are equal. Some are more likely to convert than others – identifying and focusing on these high-quality leads is the best way to allocate limited resources effectively.
Lead scoring assigns points based on a lead’s behaviour, engagement level, and other relevant criteria. The higher the score, the more likely they are to convert. Some B2B sales tools even include AI-based lead scoring, drawing on information from tens of thousands of past sales data.
10. Automate Your Admin
Don’t waste your sales team’s time completing administrative tasks. Did you know that 47% of surveyed sales professionals spend most of their workday doing something other than selling?
Often, that includes routine admin tasks. Here are some common tasks you can automate:
- Data Entry: Automatically upload and organise customer information.
- Email Follow-ups: Send automated emails based on customer interactions or time intervals.
- Scheduling: Use tools to automate appointment scheduling and calendar updates.
- Social Media Posts: Schedule and post content on social media platforms.
- Customer Service: Implement AI-driven chatbots for instant customer query resolution.
- Reporting: Automatically generate sales and performance reports.
- Lead Scoring: Use algorithms to automatically score and prioritise leads.
Closing Thoughts
The best B2B sales strategies include a mix of the tips listed above. But it’s also about having the right B2B sales tools in your arsenal.
trumpet is the perfect platform to streamline your sales. In a ready-to-go digital B2B sales room, you can gather key insights by tracking buyer behaviour and helping identify intent signals. Not only does that save time, but it also boosts profits.
Book a FREE demo today to learn more about the platform and how to get started.
