As any B2B sales person will know, securing that all important sale isn’t always the walk in the park that we would like it to be. For those involved in selling goods or services to businesses, a lot of thought and strategic tactics need to be deployed in order to even stand a chance of securing the sale. Developing a certain way of thinking and talking when you are trying to secure a B2B sale can prove invaluable.
The one thing that you have to avoid in order to succeed is boring your customer or leaving them in confusion with regards to how the goods or services you are selling can benefit them. No customer, whether a business or an individual, wants to be talked at by a salesperson who is just reeling off standard B2B sales patter. This can lead to the risk of the customer very quickly getting bored, and before you know it their eyes will glaze over and you have lost the sale. Likewise, it is not enough to just talk about the benefits of the goods or services that you are selling to the customer. You need to tailor what you say in order to demonstrate how the goods or services can specifically benefit that particular business.
Tailor your talk when securing a B2B sale
In order to increase the chances of securing that B2B sale, you need to make sure that the things you say are tailored to the customer or business that you are introducing your goods or services to. Make sure you do your research and find out about the business and its background before you try to make your B2B sale. This could provide you with valuable information that can help you to tailor what you say even more effectively.
Your strategy when talking to the customer in order to try and secure a B2B sale should include:
Get the customer’s attention: If you fail to get the attention of the customer to start with, anything else you say will probably be a waste of your time and breath. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is get the attention of your customer by telling them something that will intrigue or interest them. This could be something as simple as an industry fact that they are unlikely to be aware of already.
Highlight a problem: Making sure that it can ultimately come back to the goods or services you are selling, you should highlight a potential problem that could affect the business in the future.
Talk about the possible impact: You should make sure you talk about the impact that this potential problem could have on the business in order to get really get them thinking. Focus on all of the negative effects that this problem could have, but in particular on the financial impact that it could have, as finances will be of the utmost importance to most businesses.
Case history: Take the time to talk about a past business that experienced a similar problem in the past. Then tie in how the goods or services that you are selling helped that B2B company to overcome the effects that were caused/could have been caused by the problem. This will enable you to provide proof of the effectiveness of your goods or services to the business you are selling to.
Solution: Finally, you need to talk about how your goods or services could provide that particular business with a solution to either prevent the problem or to address the issue that you highlighted earlier.
By keeping these simple points in mind, you can ensure that you grab the attention of your customer as well as enable them to see how your goods or services could help them. At the same time you will be building a rapport rather than just talking at them, which is a vital part of good B2B salesmanship.
The B2B selling process is not the same as it used to be. Salespeople need to adapt and further develop their strategies to achieve more success. Click here to download our free whitepaper to find out how you can create a more effective sales strategy
Post by: Patrick Murphy
