B2B or Business-to-business sales is something you will find in every industry. When it comes to B2B SaaS, it is a multi-billion dollar industry. B2B salespeople deserve a huge credit to make this industry — which in other cases would have been so boring — a profitable business. Generating B2B sales is not as easy as B2C ones. Digital marketing services often have separate departments to cater to B2B sales. So, what is B2B sales?
Let’s see how SEO services in Dubai and a reputable social media marketing agency in Dubai deals with the sales funnel involving huge corporations.
What Is B2B Sales?
When one business is trying to sell a product or service to another business, it is called B2B sales. Closing a B2B sale is usually tricky as it involves chains of approval from different stakeholders within a company. The process could be lengthy and the payment is not as straightforward as B2C as the finance and legal department may have to check whether the final offer is compliant to their company regulations.
B2B sales lead generation usually involves detailed touchpoints, presentations, demonstrations of the product, prototype creation, and long-cycles of negotiations.
What Is B2B Sales Experience?
B2B sales experience is the day-to-day reality of sales professionals selling products or services to another business. An average B2B sales experience is complex as it requires:
- exceptional product or service knowledge
- the patience to go through lengthy sales cycles that could last from a few weeks to several months
- customization according to the needs and expectations of the client business
- negotiations of pricing properly, payment terms, discounts, delivery dates, along with other details of the sales process.
Key Strategies Of B2B Sales
When you know the pain points of your prospects, you can curate a strategy to generate greater sales. Let’s see what are the few key strategies of B2B sales to boost revenue easily.
Understanding Your Target Audience
The key to succeed is to know your prospects better than they know themselves. For B2B businesses, marketers develop an ICP or ideal customer profile, which increases the customer win rate by 68%. Your ICP should contain:
- Challenges of your prospects
- Type of content your target audience consumes
- How the prospect makes buying decisions
- How much does your prospect spend on similar products or solutions
Aligning Your B2B Sales Marketing Team
Selling and marketing should go hand in hand to boost revenue. Aligning your sales and marketing teams allows seamless flow of data between both the teams, and helps in capturing high-quality leads. It is essential to follow these tips to ensure smooth alignment:
- Develop a common ideal customer profile to ensure both the teams target the same ICPs
- Define your goals, including revenue target, order conversions, number of leads, and new acquisitions
- Develop a unified strategy for each buyer’s journey stage to allow coordination of lead generation, conversion, nurturing, and customer retention.
- Work together with the marketing team to create content and get inputs from the sales team to ensure your content is resonating with the target audience.
Alter Your Approach From Selling Products/Services To Solutions
Yet another key strategy to deploy a successful B2B sales strategy is to shift your approach. Selling your product sounds less appealing to businesses. Businesses sense when a salesperson is trying to be “salesy” with them as they are already aware of the professional intricacies when it comes to selling something. The most essential strategy to succeed is to:
- Turn your product features into real outcomes, such as impact on revenue, user experience, and productivity
- Quantify your revenue, potential savings, and other tangible benefits
- Highlight customer testimonials in proposals, demos, and presentations to showcase you care about your client’s words
- Offer guaranteed results to your prospects to build confidence in your products or services
Benefits Of B2B Sales
B2B sales offer benefits including financial benefits, operational and strategic advantages, and customer relationship benefits.
- Higher transaction: businesses make larger and bulk purchases or invest in high-value value which means bigger sales as compared to B2C transactions.
- B2B ecommerce platforms streamline sales and operational processes, which increases efficiency and productivity
- B2b sales focuses on building enduring partnerships which leads to reduced churn and customer loyalty
Real-World Examples Of B2B Sales
There are many different industries and types of companies who deploy B2B sales strategies. Here are a few real-world examples of businesses you will most likely see:
Retail
Retail B2B sales involve businesses selling to other businesses. This type of B2B retails business
Amazon Business is one of the many retail B2B sales examples, as it functions as a B2B marketplace where businesses can compare prices of different products, access shipping benefits from sellers, and receive discounted offers to get the products they need.
SaaS
SaaS companies offer technology solutions to businesses in order to help them improve their operations, customer service and experience, and fulfill other business needs. It involves companies purchasing products or solutions to enhance their businesses.
Salesforce sells the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and other solutions to help businesses manage client interactions and sales pipelines.
Government
Sometimes the government acts as a seller, the B2B sales often involve the privatization of public assets, selling resources with a surplus, or providing services to businesses. B2B businesses sometimes also sell solutions to government agencies to enhance their services.
A global aerospace company builds missile defense systems, fighter jets, helicopters, and surveillance aircraft among many other products for the Defense Department of the United States (DoD).
Grow Your B2B Sales Skills And Knowledge
The key to B2B sales lead generation is to think of the process with a holistic approach and to improve your approach towards your business over time. Selling B2B solutions is complex, but it leaves a lot of room for improvement for each business. It helps in understanding your company’s products and services — but the main goal is always building a relationship of trust with the decision-makers. The key to B2B sales success is actually building strong relationships.
