Generating business in the B2B environment...

After years of working in sales & business development within various areas. I have been very fortunate to learn from some of the strongest performers in their areas of expertise. This has allowed me to be more strategic in my thinking on how to effectively generate business in the B2B environment, without the unnecessary waste of budget and resources.

If you are currently working within business development yourself or are managing a team that is focusing their 8 hours a day on generating business, then it is very likely that you are aiming to build relationships with prospective clients through the old and outdated sales model of cold calls, emails and the spamming of messages across your LinkedIn network. You may also get yourself and members of your team out to all the expos focused on networking with your competition, with the aim of exposure to your target market of potential clients.

So, let's just look at what is likely being wasted here, firstly, time. How much time is being wasted by you or your team doing exactly the same thing as most of your competition? cold calling, emailing and Linkedin messaging. Most of these efforts are ignored and to put it bluntly, you are just another company fighting for attention in the forever growing pool of competitors. Then let's look at the expos, yes they are fun and its great to network and meet like-minded professionals with the hope that you meet a potential client with a real genuine interest in what services you have to offer. This comes with large costs on the booth to exhibit your company, costs for advertising, hotels, flights, food & drinks and there is the time you and the team are not in the office working on your pipeline of prospects.

So how else can we focus our efforts and resources to build relationships with our target market and be more productive and profitable?

When I was lucky enough to be working with a marketing company that helped scale many businesses and help raise hundreds of millions of dollars, I was on the front line of learning how all this was done by those that have been very successfully involved in the business for many years. I got to understand how the use of budgets could be used in a more effective manner, helping position companies we worked with as leaders in their fields. I also grew to understand the importance of differentiation and how this was successfully carried out. The importance of valuable content and its exposure across all social media channels. The importance of aligning the sales and marketing teams, which all, in turn, helps generate that needed business.

Forging a reputation as thought leaders all starts with creating content with an educational & informative value. Including, but not limited to, videos & articles on your company blog, guest posts on other sites and a newsletter that is sent out periodically. That said, its more than broadcasting beliefs and opinions to anyone who will listen, fostering more of a collaborative atmosphere is a great way to gain some credibility and incorporate more of a community around your brand. The content should be covering details of the marketplace and how the landscape may be changing. It should have a focus on pain points your prospective clients typically experience and what solutions are available. Your content should show that you truly care for those you aim to work with. There’s no faster way to lose interest from a prospective client than sharing irrelevant and self-promotional content.

Through content creation, aim to position your members of staff as someone who holds a great level of knowledge of the marketplace. By doing so, essentially you pre-frame those staff members as experts and as someone to be trusted. We all know that trust is one of the most important factors in building relationships, attracting leads and making new customers.

If the conversations your staff members engage in across social channels ask for information on best practices, they should share a blog post from your company blog. If a LinkedIn group is discussing product recommendations, staff can share a webcast or product demo video.

This a great opportunity to get sales and marketing teams aligned. Together, they can create and share content based on questions, comments and topics that are being posted within social networks. Now, there’s no limit on what they can share providing the content adds value to the conversation.

With your staff members applying themselves to social channels in this way, it is what has been labelled as "Social Selling".

Social selling is the new sales model or Sales 2.0.

This is when salespeople use social media to find and engage with new prospects. Using social media platforms to provide value to prospects by answering questions, responding to comments and by sharing content throughout the buying process, from awareness to consideration, until a prospect is ready to buy.

Research by the International Data Corporation found that 91% of B2B buyers are now active and involved in social media. 84% of senior executives use social media to support purchase decisions and 75% of B2B buyers are significantly influenced by social media.

The research also found that sales reps who use social selling find on average 45% more opportunities. In addition, social selling helps best-in-class companies achieve a 16% gain in year-over-year revenue. That’s four times better than companies that don’t use social selling.

Social selling is a great way to build relationships with your potential clients. By providing valuable content to them in this way, you are building trust and helping them make decisions easier and faster. You are positioning yourself as a leader, someone always on hand with all the answers they need. Someone that they can turn to when they are looking for a solution.

So maybe its time for you to think about creating alignment between your sales and marketing teams and have them focus on social selling... The fact is, the use of social channels will continue to grow and the way you apply yourself to these channels will likely make all the difference to the future of your company.

Here are two links that I am sure you will find helpful in understanding the power of content.

Content Marketing

Video Marketing