Is your sales process suitable for the new B2B buyer? Today, customers want to buy but they don't want to be sold. It's time to put aside the speech and take on a consultative role, because the B2B customer wants to be informed and have alternatives to choose the option that meets their needs.
While we know that B2B sales generally involve higher trade exchanges, they also entail long purchasing cycles and high prospecting costs, because markets tend to be smaller and sales more rational.
However, a well -defined, customer-centric B2B sales process can be the difference between a lost opportunity and a repeat buyer or even a brand ambassador.
3 Tips to add value to prospects
It is increasingly common to hear sales gurus use the phrase " add value ," but what does it mean and why is it important to do so from prospecting?
Think about the last time you made a purchase. What factors were most important in china phone number data your decision? Was it the product's features, its benefits, or the service provided by the salesperson?
The customer is the one who defines whether the value we provide is high or low, so we must focus our sales process on them. From how we approach them to how we understand their problems and propose a solution. It is about understanding them beyond knowing their name and birthday.
Typically, in B2B companies there are multiple filters for making a purchase decision, and the decision-makers usually have vast technical knowledge, which requires the seller to have sufficient expertise and active listening.
Adding value through prospecting means directing our value proposition toward the client's needs.
In this sense, it is essential that the sales team is clear about your value proposition for each of your products and/or services, as well as understand how you can solve the pain points of your ideal client. To do this, it is necessary to:
1. Identify high-fit prospects
How many times have you chased a sale that didn't close? In sales, time is money and to establish a good B2B sales process , the entire sales team must know who is a good customer for the organization or at the product level.
Using a CRM and segmenting the contact database is essential to optimize the sales force's efforts. But how do we define a good lead? And when is the ideal time to pass a lead on to sales?
Using a matrix to measure interest and fit is very useful to prioritize the best qualified leads and stop wasting time on those who are not yet ready to buy. By focusing on profitable customers, it is easier to improve sales effectiveness .
2. Understand the prospect's context
To establish communication that empathizes with the prospect, it is necessary for the interlocutor to master their characteristics, what they are looking for, what their needs, motivations and challenges are.
Understanding their context will not only help us determine the messages we will use, but will also be useful to question, under their own interests, what is the consequence of not implementing our solution or what value does our service provide to them in that context?
In addition, it will be key to conduct research to find out:
What's happening in the prospectus industry?
What's going on in your company?
What's going on in your personal life?
What are your concerns and which companies offer solutions to your challenges?
Likewise, find out which channels your prospects use, what language they use, what type of information they share. This way, it is much easier to open the conversation based on their pain points and interests.
3. Messages that connect with the prospect's needs
Imagine you go into a department store to buy a perfume and a saleswoman approaches you with different types of clothing. Besides being invasive, since you did not request her intervention, the product offered is not what you are looking for.
If we really want to spark the interest of prospects, we must understand that they will go through different stages during their purchasing journey, during which it is necessary to adapt our messages and offers. Remember that it is we who seek to participate in the purchasing decision process, not them in our sales process.
That's why, throughout the sales process, we need to establish a bridge between the customer's challenge and our solution. To do this, we can use different offers, for example, an article, informative videos, webinars. Likewise, communication should depend on the stage of the journey in which our prospect is.