B2B sales and marketing
B2B stands for (Business to Business), whereby a business has created a solution that it sells to other businesses or organizations.
In most organizations, sales and marketing are two separate departments. Marketing raises awareness of the existing solution to business and get potential leads while the sales team goes after the leads from marketing to sell and close the deal.
However, when it comes to small B2B, these lines are slightly blurred, you might find the sales department raising awareness as well as selling the solution to the respective business.
When it comes to synergy, sales and marketing departments have to work together for the growth and success of the company.
The sales team needs to understand the strategies the marketing teams used to create awareness and attract leads. This way they know how to follow up and proceed throughout the sales cycle.
Aligning sales and marketing to have them work together is a continuous process of communication, growth and using strategies to acquire high-quality leads hence sales.
As a B2B, being able to reduce the sales cycle, increase sales and repeat purchases while attaining great profitability is the ultimate goal. So how can you do this?
Some sales and marketing tips:
- Pricing — Pricing rules, especially the total ownership as well as the product effects and operational efficiency. This is what decision makers and influencers consider. Using pricing in attractive packages is crucial such that the customers know exactly what they get.
- Safety — In the B2B industry, safety is crucial and tops saving money. No business wants a product that will compromise their security. Ensuring that your product has taken strict security measures as well as well as bringing forth this to a lead/client is a point forward in the sales cycle.
- Become a preferred supplier — There are several benefits of being a preferred supplier, one being credibility. Research shows that 70% purchases are from the preferred supplier list. Therefore, a business needs to show its product quality, price, customer satisfaction, timeliness, product availability and proof of financial stability.
“The only way to consistently grow in B2B is to be better than very good.” — Seth Godin
4. Constant communication — with the changing purchase cycle as well as competition, it’s important to constantly communicate with the lead/ client to maintain their interest and build a relationship. In addition, providing useful content to them depending on the stage of the sales cycle they are at is as important. It increases the stickiness of the brand.
“It’s fascinating how the fundamentals of business-to-business marketing are the same today as they were 50 years ago. It’s still about relationships although today we have new tools and techniques at our disposal.”- David Meerman
5. Interactive web content — The website being the core of your digital marketing, having it more interactive can capture as well as retain the attention of potential leads longer. Moreover, allow the customers to explore as well as lead the way to where they want to go and not vice versa.
“Content isn’t king. It’s the kingdom” — Lee Odden
6. Sieve the leads — Identify the kind of leads that have landed on your platform. You want to focus your resources on high-quality leads and not the dead-ends. An email campaign can be designed to weed out the bad leads or the companies that are seeking different solutions than what you are offering.
Leads are the first stage of a sales cycle hence very important. Using a tool like Nestmetric makes it easier to acquire quality leads. In addition, you can leverage on Nestmetric integration to get a particular score for your users, that is their likelihood-to-buy. With this, you can send targeted communications such as an email to them to initiate sales.
As a business, understand how the decision makers and influencers of your target think and make a decision on who to go in business with (you or the competition). What matters the most to them especially in sales once you have their attention. Statically, 35–50% of sales goes to the first B2B firm that contacts a vendor. Be haste!
You can try out Nestmetric:
Customer intelligence software to see your users and what they do in your apps to better understand and make the most out of your customer communication.
