Want to improve your B2B sales? Track these 4 growth signals.
Sales people have one of the hardest jobs to do, sell !!! Its intimidating, its frustrating, it takes persistence, patience & perseverance to sell. But most importantly its the ability to sell something that makes others life easy.
“If You Are Not Taking Care Of Your Customer, Your Competitor Will.” — Bob Hooey
What separates a good sales person from a great sales person? The way they hack productivity and improve outcomes.
The biggest challenge in sales is not just to find the right customers to sell but to sell them at right time i.e when they need you the most.
You are on a football field and your goalkeeper is defending the wall like the night’s watch commander. He just missed catching the ball by 1 second and you lost the match. That’s what 1 second can do, it can make or break things and it can win customers if you use timing in your sales process.
I am sharing 4 critical growth signals that you can track and find out the right companies to target for your business at right time.
Hiring as a growth signal
We are hiring for “digital marketing” associate at our company. What does this mean?
This mean that the company is actively investing time & more importantly money in digital marketing area. For the next quarter focus of the company is to use digital marketing to improve their digital presence, branding, customer acquisition through digital channels.
Now if you are a digital marketing consultant or a digital marketing agency then tracking companies that are actively hiring for digital marketing roles will help you find the right companies to target and reach out to them at the right time i.e when they are willing to invest money in digital marketing.
Another example for this can be:-
We are hiring receptionist for front desk at our London office.
This clearly shows the intent that the company is expanding its London office operations and also investing money in front desk operations. Now if you have a complementary product or service like a visitor management software that helps receptionist or front desk team then this is the right time for you to approach this company.
On top of it you can qualify companies on basis of their location, how many employees do they have at present so that you know the size of the company.
Our software EasyLeadz.com helps companies track such growth signals and we use our own software to track companies that are hiring for corporate or B2B sales. Since for us the target companies are the ones that are investing in growing their B2B sales and if we pitch Easyleadz to them at this time it improves our conversion.
Funding as a growth signal
One of the critical milestone for a new business is its funding activity. When an investor puts money in a new company / startup then the investor and the startup both expects the business to grow very very fast.
So when a startup has money in its bank there are few things the startup will do immediately:-
- Actively hire more people in all functions like marketing, technology etc.
- Upgrade and improve technology infrastructure to support growth
- Expand its office or move to a new office to accommodate more people
- Invest money in marketing, sales & advertising
So you got the point? There is money in here in all these areas for product vendors or service providers.
You have a co-working space ? Great look out for startups that have recently raised funds. They will be more likely to expand their team and have office space.
You have a advertising tool? Great, reach out to startups who have raised funding recently as they are more likely to invest money on marketing and advertising now.
You are a staffing agency? Supercool, money lies with recently funded startups. They will be hiring more people and if you reach out to them now, you are more likely to get a client for your staffing business.
At EasyLeadz we track startups who have raised money on daily basis. For our own sales we focus on companies who have raised money and are in B2B space or have SAAS as their offerings. We pitch them our product as the startups are more likely to grow fast and need our product to identify customers for their business.
Recent Product Launches as a growth signal
We get to hear this often that a company have recently launched their new website or a new mobile app or Tesla have launched a new electric car.
All these are milestones or lifecycle events for a company that has launched these products or services.
If you track a company who have recently launched a mobile app then you will find out that this company is trying to market its mobile app via different channels like social media, display advertisements, TV ads (if they have money) or events and activities.
For you to pitch your product or service that aids this company in its growth of mobile app, this is the perfect time to pitch.
Similarly, a new car model is launched. Well now the car company will invest money in events sponsorships or TV ads, hire more staff, hire channel partners or distributors to expand into new territories. So with every milestone or a product launch there are several opportunities for vendors and service providers.
All you need is to track these important milestones.
At EasyLeadz we track companies that have recently launched new products and that are in B2B space or SAAS companies. This helps us pitch the companies at the right time as they are most likely to invest in a software (EasyLeadz) that helps them sell their product/service to right customers.
Companies launching soon- as a growth signal
Just like tracking companies that have recently launched their product or services helps us identify the right timing to pitch, tracking companies that are going to launch their product or service is another critical milestone.
If you notice the only difference is recently launched and going to launch. But this difference means a lot and helps companies find the right timing.
If you are a web development agency and you reach out to companies that have recently launched mobile apps you may not hear more YES versus if you reach out to companies that are going to launch their mobile apps.
A company who is planning to launch a mobile app may want to outsource some parts of its development to a third party web development agency, thus opening doors for your business.
While for a marketing agency it would be more relevant to reach out to companies that have recently launched their mobile apps rather than reaching out to companies who are going to launch, since their focus area might be different at this stage (development stage).
Thus, both of these growth signals give the critical information required for pitching your products or services to right companies at the right time.
At EasyLeadz we track companies that are launching soon combined with if they are SAAS and have employee size less than 50. This helps us narrow down our focus on companies who will be very fast in deciding about using a sales prospecting platform like EasyLeadz.
These are the 4 growth signals that provides valuable information to sales and marketing teams about when is the right time to pitch product or service to these companies.
If you reach out to 1000 companies but they are not growing fast or do not have money to spend on product or service that you have then there is no point to pitch. Instead if you know that these are 100 companies that are investing money actively in similar function or have recently raised money and will be investing money to grow their business, the conversion will be higher in later case.
If you have any thoughts on growth signals or you have used any of these signals in your B2B sales then share it with us all here in the comments.
