B2B Sales/Corporate Sales Strategies

Business-to-Business sales is a process where a company or organizations sells its products or services to other companies or organizations, unlike a B2C sales where company sells its products to individual customers.

B2B Sales typically has higher order value , longer sales cycle and it is much more complex than a B2C sales.

Based on my experience of 8 years in B2B sales I have tried to segment the life cycle of a B2B Sales process.

What is that you are selling

Knowledge of your product in&out is of utmost importance. Your conviction on your product has to be 100%, hence you need to know the strength and weakness(if any) of your products/services.

You need act as a devils advocate of your product and try to answer all possible questions that may encounter during your meeting with your client.

Prepare for Product Presentation

Create a Powerpoint presentation of your product with 1 message per slide. Do not worry about no. of slides.

Ensure that you use dark background and light colored text.

Do not read from the slides and do not mention slide numbers like 4 of 98 in your slides.

Identify your potential clients

Based on your product /services create a list of your potential clients.

Initial targets must be the low hanging fruits. Try to find reference among your colleagues or supervisor to fix a meeting with the top management of the client company.

After few initial meetings, you will be aware of the complete conversation cycle, probable questions and answers, best and effective sales pitch which is working.

Top down approach

Always use “top down approach” while approaching a potential client, which means you to start from the top management of the company either CEO or Chairman etc. You can get the name of the CEO or Chairman from the website. Pick up the phone and call at the reception “to speak to the CEO of Chairman” or ask for an appointment. Most of the time they will tell you to drop a mail and wait for the date and time of the appointment.

The chance of getting the appointment is higher, if you can briefly narrate your product proposal over the phone and showcase the value it will add to the organization, primarily growth in revenue or margin.

It may happen that the CEO directs you to speak to his operations head or finance head or business head, but approach always should be top down.

Dress Code

You dress code and your body language is the icing on the cake. If not business formal with a suit and tie atleast a blazer is a must. Take special care of your shoes. When you reach the client venue, you should look clean, sharp and confident, which will help you to win all the hurdles to reach the key persons table.

Follow-up

Follow-up with the clients to whom you have presented your product is the key to close the deal at the earliest.

But, you need to be patient and do not loose hope. B2B sales has much longer sales cycle than B2C. So, keep a note on the next followup date and keep on following up with clients whom you already met.

If client is not picking up, follow up with all possible communications means like whatsapp, text message, email, facebook message, instagram message etc etc. You should not leave any stone unturned, till either you close the deal or get a clear communication that the client is not interested in your product.

Payment terms

Your primary aim obviously should be on 100% advance payment. If not 100%, try to get atleast 70% advance payment and 30% upon product/service delivery. Your negotiation skill will improve gradually after couple of agreement signup. You can go upto 50% advance at the most, not less than that.

Bottom line?– If your product can add significant value to the client organization, then only you will be successful in closing the deal. Hence, your only focus should be on the same.