How to Create a B2B Sales Strategy That Will Grow Your Business

Creating A B2B sales strategy can be difficult. But, once you get the ball rolling, you will be able to drive success. There are an endless number of strategies that you could attempt, but they can be difficult, costly, or not work in the way you want them to. This is why we have put together a list of some of the best B2B sales strategies that will drive success.

Set Goals

Before getting into any other strategy, you will want to ensure you have a defined set of goals. Goals are essential when it comes to creating a B2B sales strategy. Setting goals will guide your team to share their techniques and collaborate. A helpful way to set goals is using the S.M.A.R.T. method. This means your goals will be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. You can set overall goals that your business wants to achieve, and you can also ask your sales team to set sales specific goals as well. This is a great way to ensure your team is performing well. If your team is not meeting the businesses or their personal goals, you can go over with them how they can improve or if there is anything management can do to ensure they meet their goals. By talking through this, you will build trust and respect with your team. We are going to dive a little deeper into goal setting with the next two strategies.

Define Your Sales Targets

Essentially, a sales target is the number of products and/or services that you need to sell to meet your profit goal. Sales teams thrive on well-defined sales targets. By having targets set, your sales team can set clear goals, measure their success, and pursue incentives that surround the targets. Every business will have different targets based on their goals, category, and many other factors. To properly define sales targets, you will need to set a budget for your marketing, sales, and other expenses.

Identify Your Sales Cycle

The sales cycle is a set of steps designed to help your salespeople guide customers through to a sale. Often B2B sales cycles are longer and harder to move through than B2C because the average contract value for businesses is higher. Therefore, the decision is harder to make. In addition, not every business will have the same cycle, it depends on the product, consumer, geography, and more. Generally, there are a few steps that are a must in your cycle. Those would be finding qualified leads, connecting with those leads, your sales pitch (can be in person, Zoom, phone call, targeted advertisement, etc), follow up, objection handling, close, and check-in. Again, every business has different steps, but these are a few that are included in most B2B sales cycles.

Set A Budget

By setting a budget, you provide your team with a clear sense of direction for your efforts. It will help you track how much you spend on sales and marketing vs. how much you earned. This is important because it will provide a guideline to assess your results, and can be compared to previous years, quarters, etc. In addition, it will encourage your sales team to collaborate with marketing, finances, and operations teams to ensure they will meet the budget expectations. The amount you should spend on sales and marketing depends on the type of business, geographics, target market, and more. Try to check out your competitors and see what they are doing and try to align your spending with theirs. Just make sure you differentiate your business, so you stand out!

Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

I can’t say this enough, but preparation is one of the most important aspects of implementing a new B2B sales strategy. Being prepared will reduce any anxiety, stress, or hesitations that you or your team may have. Also, you will have time to go through your game plan and come up with how you can resolve any issues that may come up. In addition, your team will be able to answer any of your customer’s questions accurately, which is always a plus!

What Sets You Apart from The Competition

Some of the best sales strategies can come from your competitors – it’s not a bad thing! Check out what your competitors are doing on their website, social media (especially LinkedIn), and any other advertisements they are running. When you have compiled all of this information, you can perform a competitive analysis. What do they do better than you? Worse? Or just differently? These are all great questions that can be answered through your competitive analysis. Then, you can see where you can improve your sales and marketing efforts. But, don’t do exactly what they are doing, always differentiate your strategies!

Delegate

Delegation refers to a supervisor sharing tasks with another employee. A lot of supervisors can have a difficult time delegating tasks because they have a lack of confidence or they feel like they are giving up their control. But, delegating is a great way to show your team that they are capable and that you value their work. In addition, teaching staff how to do tasks will take work off of your plate. Plus, your supervisors are not going to work for you forever, so it is ideal to teach others how to do tasks, so when the supervisor leaves, your team is still able to carry the tasks out.

Align Your Sales Team with Your Marketing Team

In my experience, sales and marketing teams tend to butt heads. This means that they are passionate about their work, but it can hinder the business’ overall growth. Ideally, you want to use marketing to lay the groundwork for your sales team. This would include attracting and nurturing leads until they are ready to buy. Then, the sales team closes the deal. One team is likely pushing >70% of growth, while the other team is supporting their decisions. It is important to set out expectations and align goals with the strategies that each team is implementing. A helpful tool to communicate with is Slack. Slack is a free communication workspace, with video calls, instant messaging, and file-sharing capabilities. You can keep your teams engaged while keeping everyone on the same page.

Talk to Your Team 

The most successful businesses will have regular meetings with their team. In these meetings, you can go through new sales strategies, what worked, what didn’t work, what your competitors are doing, etc. By doing this, you can come up with ideas on how to improve your B2B sales strategy from the people who are working in the field. Your team may have different opinions on what will work and what won’t work, since they are the ones implementing a lot of the ideas. This is another way to improve your relationship with your team, as well as get valuable information. Generally, meeting with your entire team on a monthly basis is ideal. This is because you want to give everyone time to implement what was talked about in last month’s meeting and think of new ideas to bring to the table this month.

Generate New Leads

Now that we have gone through a few basic sales strategies that will grow your business, how do you generate more leads? Sometimes it can feel like you have hit a brick wall with leads, and your team might feel like they are out of options. This is how a lead generation software, like Visitor Queue, can help motivate your team with warm leads. Visitor Queue is an easy-to-use software that can identify the businesses that are visiting your website and provide you with their key contact information. Through Visitor Queue, you are able to assign members of your sales team to the clients who are identified. Then, your sales team can reach out accordingly, and guide the prospect through your sales cycle.  

Wrap Up

Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all solution for B2B sales strategy. I know it can be so difficult to create a sales strategy that works for your business goals, but I hope you were able to find some helpful tips here! Just remember, focus on what makes you unique, and trust your team’s opinions. Check out What the Growth!? for more tips on growing your business!

If you have any questions about how Visitor Queue can help your business generate more leads, do not hesitate to reach out!