Historically, the B2B buying process has always been complex. We can throw in “frustrating,” painfully slow,” and “awful” but we know you get the point.
With multi decision-makers to appease, highly technical solutions, and budgetary concerns, it’s no wonder many marketers find closing deals tough.
Yet many have found that digitizing their customers’ journeys allows them to stay atop evolving expectations. Here are 5 great strategies to help you improve buyer experiences and drive sales.
1. Invest in Virtual Events
According to research, sales reps get approximately 5 percent of potential customers’ total purchase time during the purchase journey.
Many buyers prefer skipping the whole introductory sales pitch and would rather explore on-demand demos or free trials to understand a product/service in their own time.
What does this mean for sales teams?
It means they can take up concierge roles by offering personalized information that potential customers can’t find online.
To that end, virtual events have a huge role to play.
Thought leadership conferences, webinars, customer showcases, and product/service showcases, are excellent virtual events for establishing connections with broad audiences, educating, and driving sales.
To keep these audiences engaged
- Use superior quality virtual tools. If your audio or video quality is low or streaming gets stuck, audiences are likely to switch to something else. Test beforehand to ensure things run smoothly before going live.
- Excellent content. When people sign up for your event, they want value for the time they are investing. With such expectations, it would be unfair to serve mediocre content.
- Invite experts. Rope in reputable industry speakers to offer fresh and valuable insights into your chosen theme. These speakers typically attract viewership, which may grant you access to a wider audience base.
2. Omni-Channel Marketing
Research shows that up to 50 percent of marketers employing omnichannel marketing hit their financial targets. Further, companies that run effective omnichannel marketing observe year-on-year revenue increases, and they have an 89 percent chance of retaining their customers.
At different points of their journey, a customer may hop from one communication channel to another. They don’t want to retell their story every time. They expect the company rep to have a clear understanding of their history and provide speedy responses to their queries.
An omnichannel approach interconnects your channels to provide a next-level understanding of the prospect’s needs and seamless interactions all through. It allows you to tailor messages that align with their place in the journey.
Best practices include:
- Check your Martech stack. What does your stack look like right now? How is it connected? Is there data sitting in departmental silos? How do you intend to access it and provide a transparent viewing of the customer?
- Set up your data. Clean data that is complete, standardized, and ever-ready for use immediately is necessary. Customer data platforms provide centralized views of customer data so you can compare metrics, run reports, glean insights and know what data is missing.
- Understand your prospect’s favorite channels. A quick way to get this information is by asking them directly their preferred mode and frequency of communication. When you stick to this preference, you make them feel honored and in control, which may lead to higher customer lifetime values.
3. Leverage Data to Empower Your Sales Team
Many businesses struggle with executing an effective analytics program while others are deterred from starting by a lack of good infrastructure.
Yet, successful companies have found great value in data analysis by focusing on limited use cases rather than going for broad-based analytic transformations.
They start with low-cost solutions to extract data about target companies to understand purchase triggers, behavior, and other insights.
They then define sales workflows that align with these insights and measure them continuously for effectiveness. Teams are also trained and incentivized to work with these to ensure full implementation and success.
In the beginning, quick and dirty analysis often yields good options to start with. As the business sees increased success, you can upgrade to better solutions that allow scalability and enhanced security.
4. Make Cold Calls
It’s interesting how many salespeople shun this strategy, yet it’s one of the quickest ways to get buy-in from a prospect.
Rather than spend weeks trying to convince prospects yours is the real deal, hop on a cold call to see if they are interested. If they are, you shift into full gear to onboard them and if they aren’t, you shelve your efforts for a season.
Notice I haven’t said delete or forget about the prospects entirely, because when it comes to cold calling, you can’t just reach out to anyone.
You research and build a custom list of prospects that are likely to use your solutions. The timing may be off, but sooner or later they may be open to engaging again.
Best practices here include:
- Sustain the calling. It’s not a one-time event. You’re likely to ring up the prospect several times before reaching them or getting the nod. Avoid pressurizing your prospects into deciding. Take your time, listen to what they are asking and follow up with information that addresses their concerns.
- Make all calls count. If you can’t reach the individual you were targeting don’t do the “oh well…” and hang up. Ask for an alternative decision-maker (researched beforehand) and build your case with them.
- Build a script that assumes variable outcomes. Prepare for the call by coming up with different outcomes that promote your message while remaining relevant to the prospect’s needs. It will boost your confidence and minimize the chances of getting caught off guard.
- Be über-informed. Sound knowledge of your prospect, the challenges they face, and how your solutions may help sort these out allows you to establish meaningful dialogues. You’ll come across as a helpful consultant rather than the usual telemarketer.
5. Refresh Your Website
The best company websites are industry resources that showcase expertise, offer solutions to potential customers, and simplify the process of contacting you.
They are fluid, evolving entities that play the role of “unspoken salesperson” working 24/7 to keep customers happy, encourage engagement, and drive sales. As such, they require continuous monitoring to ensure they stay effective.
An ideal company website should:
- Be relevant to the audiences you’re targeting
- Provide visual appeal and engaging content that may include blogs, industry statistics, and research.
- Include visible CTAs that direct site visitors on what to do aka request quote, contact a salesperson, schedule a demo, or download content.
- Feature current testimonials and case studies with accompanying company logos
- Include links to the company’s social platforms
B2B purchases often involve multiple decision-makers who research brands and solutions to make informed choices.
If your website addresses the concerns these decision-makers have (productivity, financial implication, expected ROI, etc), the better placed you’ll be to land the deal.
Take the time to review your website data—think content engagement, site visitors, and their activities—to see if it’s contributing to your sales goals. If not, it may be time to revamp it.
Cover Photo by Pixabay
