The Top 8 B2B Sales Tips in 2017

Every aspect of business, no matter how talented you become in a certain area of it or how successfully you are operating things, can always benefit from improvement. There is no limit to the ways your business can grow. Any successful business professional will tell you that they continue to make time to study new things and implement new strategies. And in this post, we will discuss the top eight B2B sales tips to take advantage of in 2017.

1. Maintain a High Volume of Cold Emailing: Just as recent as two years ago, many B2B businesses were doing a lot of cold calling. But now, businesses have caught on to the effectiveness of cold emailing. So why should you be opting for cold emailing instead of cold calling? Lots of reasons. When you cold call a new business, there is no guarantee that you are going to be able to get in contact with the person who will seal the deal for you. Email is direct. Do a little research, find the person in charge, and send them a brief cold email. Then do this over and over again. Cold emailing works when the initial emails are crafted the right away. Take advantage of the information other professionals who have successfully cold emailed have provided online for free. Study how they wrote their emails and follow a similar style. But sending three cold emails a day isn’t enough. Aim for higher numbers for higher wins.
2. Don’t Spam Your Prospective Clients: This just seems painfully obvious, but it is an important point to bring up, especially after just mentioning that you should send copious amounts of cold emails a day. And while, yes, you should send as many cold emails as possible, none of those emails should be considered spam. Don’t just copy and paste the same message and send to one hundred different prospective clients. Personalize each message. Include their name in the greeting. Mention a sentence or two about their business or what you have noticed about them. Then pitch them what you have to offer.
3. Be Responsive And be Swift About it: There is nothing desperate about responding to a prospective client quickly. When they reach out to you with a need, don’t take your sweet time getting back to them. That’s what your competitors do. Do you know how many clients choose certain businesses over others simply because said business got back to them first or sooner than anyone else did? Don’t lose out on new clients by holding out on your response. As soon as you get a call or email from them, respond quickly.
4. Go Into Every Pitch With a Purpose: Don’t just cast a net and hope for something to swim into it. Before every call, conference, email, or in-person meeting, have a very clear objective. Have an expectation of what you want out of it. If you don’t have a vision, you’re far less likely to secure any kind of deal or new client. Plus, having an idea of what you expect wastes less time for you and your prospective client and they will see that. Show them that you are proactive and excellent at time management so they can see that you could manage their accounts with the same quality.
5. Send Out Thank-You Notes: Written thank-you notes. Not an email. Not a call. Not a LinkedIn message. A thank-you note written by you and sent in the mail. Not long ago, offices and business professionals got so much mail that they couldn’t read it all. Now business professionals get so much email that they can’t read it all. So send them a thank-you note in the mail where they will be sure to see it. Plus sending a handwritten thank-you note is a way to personalize the experience and make it meaningful. It shows your prospective client that you have a vested interest in them.
6. Follow The Three C’s Strategy: When you are trying to secure a new client, follow this method: connect, convince, collaborate. In order to secure a new client, the first step is obviously to connect with them. But connecting means more than just having an in-person meeting with them or chatting over the phone. You need to connect your prospective client’s needs with your solution (products or services). Secondly, you need to connect with your prospective customers in a way that shows them you view them as people and not just consumers. Once you have done the connecting, move on to convincing. This does not mean pushing a sale down their throat or reverting to begging. You need to convince them that your solution is worth pursuing. That there are many benefits and rewards that come with choosing you to buy from. Prove to them that buying from you rather than a competitor is the best choice they could make. And lastly, you have to collaborate. Don’t just make the sale and ignore them afterward. Stay in contact. Show them that you are interested in collaborating with them by presenting them with new ideas and working together to achieve a mutual goal.
7. Don’t Prioritize Sales Over Success: But aren’t they one in the same? No. You could easily have an entire team of salespeople who are able to make a goal of one sale for the day, lock the sale down within the first hour of the day, and then slack off until it’s time to clock out. Remember that just because you have made the ten sales you wanted to for the week all by Tuesday doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set new goals for the rest of the week. Your objective should be to exceed your goal, not just meet it. However, on the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of business professionals and salespeople who set outrageously high expectations for themselves and then end up frustrated and discouraged when they don’t reach them. This leaves them exponentially more likely to just give up. So rather than setting the bar too high, set incremental goals in order to fulfill your long-term goal.
8. Know Your Target: Don’t be foolish enough to reach out to a prospective customer without know anything about them or their business. Before calling, emailing, or connecting in another way, spend a few minutes researching their background (and more importantly, identifying their needs). However, it is important to master the art of balance. At the same time it is absolutely vital that you understand a bit about a prospective client before connecting with them, you need to spend hours researching about them before calling. This just wastes an inordinate amount of time and in far too many instances, actually gets in the way of spending your valuable time speaking to them. Put in the necessary effort to research, but don’t allow research itself to be your sole activity. Make a commitment to contacting them immediately after learning about them.

Curious about the many other ways you can succeed in your B2B (and B2C) sales strategies? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us today with any questions you have or take a look at our blog to read other informative pieces on ways to connect with your clients.