6 B2B Sales Strategies to Stay Ahead and Win More Customers

Personalizing your B2B sales strategy connects you with your customers and drives better sales.

There are many ways to tailor your approach to each customer's specific needs and preferences. For instance, CRM software provides a centralized platform to manage customer data, interactions, and progress through the sales funnel. 

Implementing these six B2B sales strategies will help you stand out from the crowd, earn better customer loyalty, and ultimately achieve greater success.

6 B2B sales strategies to drive better sales

Businesses that want to thrive in a competitive marketplace need B2B sales strategies. At least five follow-up conversations result in a sale in 80% of business-to-business transactions. This underscores the need for perseverance in B2B sales.

While there's no cheat code for success, implementing a few tried and tested B2B sales strategies can help you skyrocket your sales.

1. Identify your ideal customer

Finding your target market is the first step in developing a sales strategy. To achieve this, focus on your target customer, understand their pain points, and market a product that addresses their problems.

B2B buyers are typically 57% in the buying process before interacting with a sales rep. Marketing needs to pave the way for customers to engage and interact with your brand at every stage of the customer journey.

Here are the tools you’ll need to identify your ideal customer.

• Outline the characteristics of your potential buyers. A buyer persona template with appropriate demographics, behavioral analysis, and purchase motivations helps you understand your target audience better.

• Use customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Monitor and analyze customer information from your CRM tools to learn more about your ideal clientele. Ninety-one percent of businesses with 10 employees or more use CRM to streamline their workflow. 

• Practice social listening. Listen to what consumers say about your business, product, content, support, and more. Social listening lets you keep an eye on the social buzz around your brand. 

• Employ Google Analytics. Analyze your site data and get demographic information about the visitors, their journey, and the actions they take.

• Conduct market research. Conduct surveys and interviews to gather information about your target market, needs, goals, and concerns.

• Analyze your competitors. Get valuable insights into your competitors' online profiles and marketing methods. By studying your competitors' strategies, you can learn more about their (and ultimately your) ideal customers and find ways to stand out from the crowd.

2. Build a strong sales team

An effective B2B sales strategy begins with an efficient sales team. You need reps who know their stuff, persistently seek customer satisfaction, and understand customer pain points.

Companies that take a methodical, technological approach to training their sales reps have a higher chance of success. 

• Invest in sales training programs. To arm your sales with the right information, skills, and strategies, invest in sales training. Train your team on sales strategy, communication, negotiation, and contracting in multiple formats so they're ready to answer any question on any channel.

• Use sales performance management software. Encourage and incentivize your sales team. You can use sales performance management software to do this. It includes features like quota management, commission tracking, gamification, and analytics to help you track sales performance, identify inefficiencies, and bring solutions.

• Communicate and collaborate better. Keep your sales team informed and in sync. Simplify your team's communication and coordinate efforts with tools such as instant messaging, office phone, file sharing, task management, and video conferencing capabilities.

• Provide sales coaching and mentoring. Your team will benefit from personalized coaching and feedback through sales mentoring. Complement sales training with individual coaching, group mentoring, and performance monitoring to build the right skills and confidence in your team.

• Leverage sales analytics and reporting. Track sales activity to monitor your sales efforts, pinpoint problem areas, and make critical business decisions based on hard facts. Use sales analytics software that provides insights into overall sales, pipeline data, and key sales activities. With these insights, optimize your sales strategy and increase sales success.

• Gamify your sales process. Create a fun and engaging atmosphere for your sales reps, incentivize success, and boost morale. Try gamification tools with leaderboards, badges, and awards to motivate and incentivize your team.

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3. Develop a strong online presence

Build a robust online presence: make an expert website, write helpful blog pieces, interact with the audience on social media, and more.

• Manage your content. Content management greatly improves a company's performance, including but not limited to increased productivity and time management, greater content adoption, higher lead conversion rates, and more.

• Use social media marketing. Meta, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram collectively have a user base in the billions. You can always find new ways to engage with the social audience by maintaining a consistent presence across all social media platforms.

• Try email marketing. Increase brand awareness and sales by nurturing relationships with potential consumers. Distribute newsletters, promotional offers, product updates, or free resources specifically tailored to the recipient's needs and interests.

• Build a website. Design a user-friendly website. To save time and effort, you can use website builders and create websites without any coding knowledge. Don't forget to tailor your website to your audience's preferences and needs.

• Add a live chat option to your site. Communicate with site visitors in real time and answer common questions with chatbots. Virtual assistants allow you to speak directly to site visitors, respond to their inquiries, and provide assistance.

• Host podcasts. Consistently deliver valuable content, foster relationships, and leverage podcasting's flexibility to effectively position yourself as a trusted authority while increasing sales opportunities.

4. Use account-based marketing

In B2B sales, account-based marketing (ABM) targets individual accounts rather than the entire market. This allows you to better maintain contact with key decision-makers and focus your efforts on the most lucrative accounts.

ABM encourages collaboration between sales and marketing to develop account-specific messaging and content. Sales reps improve their chances of winning deals by tailoring their approach to each customer's needs.

Consider the following steps to use ABM.

• Identify target accounts. Choose the accounts to focus on. Use firmographic information such as company size, industry, and revenue to locate potential customers.

• Develop target personas. After selecting your target accounts, create fictional representations of the accounts' most influential decision-makers. Learn about their problems, priorities, and shopping routines. Research, consumer interviews, and speaking to sales reps are good starting points for gathering this data.

• Personalize your messaging. Tailor your messaging to suit your target accounts and personalities. Creating content that addresses your audience's issues and concerns is important. Email marketing and social media messages can be personalized to increase open and click-through rates.

• Use account-based advertising. Use display advertising, social media ads, and other forms of online advertising to target specific accounts. This strategy could connect you to your target customers and generate better leads.
• Retarget missed opportunities. Retargeting allows you to reconnect with prospects who have previously shown interest in your services but didn’t take any action.

• Collaborate with sales. Provide your sales reps with the right resources to close transactions. By collaborating, sharing account insights, and developing account-specific tactics, you'll increase your chances of success.

• Measure and optimize. Finally, evaluate your ABM initiatives’ success and adjust your approach accordingly. Based on performance data, you can refine your messaging and drive optimal long-term success.

5. Implement a sales enablement program

Sales enablement means equipping the sales team with the necessary resources to close more deals. A structured sales enablement role is associated with a 28.7% increase in success rate.

Additionally, companies that implemented a sales enablement plan saw sales increase between 6% and 20%. While companies without sales enablement close only 42.5% of their planned deals, companies with a plan are 49% successful.

Here’s how you can implement a sales enablement program.

• Define your sales process and buyer journey. Thoroughly understand your sales process and the customer journey. Create a flowchart of the process and label each step with the required activities, messages, and resources. This can help you identify and strengthen the weak points in your sales infrastructure.

• Create a centralized content repository. Having all your sales material in one place makes it easier for your reps to find what they need when they need it. This can be anything from a central storage location to a content management system to a sales automation tool. Organize information well so it's easy to find and follows the different steps of the sales process and buyer's journey.

• Develop a content creation process. Have a simplified process for developing, evaluating, and updating information. Control who writes what, who reviews it, and how often it's updated. Ensure everyone on the team is familiar with the process and has access to the materials needed to develop and maintain content.

• Provide sales training and coaching. Train your sales reps regularly on product details and market developments. Proper training increases performance and compensates for knowledge and skills deficits.

• Use technology to streamline processes. Consider using a customer relationship management system to keep track of customer information from your contact center and sales metrics. Leverage an analytics-driven sales enablement platform for content management, user engagement tracking, and reporting. Additionally, facilitate off-site sales meetings and presentations with video conferencing software.

• Measure and analyze performance. Key metrics like success rates, transaction size, and time to close evaluate the success of your sales enablement initiative. Based on this data, you can tweak your program. Ensure your program remains relevant to your sales team, review it frequently, and make necessary adjustments.

6. Consider content marketing

Content marketing attracts and retains a specific audience through regular production and distribution of relevant content. In B2B sales, content marketing educates potential customers to earn their trust and establish the company as an authority in their field. 

Blog articles, white papers, case studies, videos, and webinars are examples of B2B content marketing formats. Creating material that’s both useful and interesting to the target audience is critical to content marketing’s success. At the same time, salespeople can gain credibility and position themselves as industry leaders by providing informative content.

How to get started with content marketing.

• Identify your target audience and their pain points. This foundational knowledge will shape your content strategy and ensure you create valuable and relevant content that resonates with your audience.

• Develop a content strategy. With the right B2B content marketing approach, you can reach your target audience and offer them solutions to their most pressing problems. This sparks their interest in learning more about your business. Your content’s goal should be to make your readers feel good about doing business with you.

• Create valuable and relevant content. Offer valuable and helpful content that directly addresses customer pain points. Educating consumers about your offerings and encouraging them to buy earns their trust and loyalty.

• Optimize your content for search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a must if you want your content to be seen. Add appropriate keywords, meta descriptions, and headlines to your content and optimize it for search engines.

• Use a variety of content formats. Textual content formats may be more attractive to certain audiences. Others may learn better from videos or infographics than from a blog article. Use different forms of content to attract more readers and keep them curious.

• Promote your content on social media. Share your content on social media and get it out to more people. Use social media marketing to reach a specific audience and communicate with your followers by answering their questions and comments.

Looking back... 

Businesses that want to thrive in a competitive setting need to prioritize B2B sales strategies. 

Your chances of meeting your sales goals and growing your business improve when you take the time to define your ideal customer, recruit talented salespeople, create a compelling sales website, use ABM, implement a sales enablement program, and use data to inform your decisions.

With the right strategy and thought leadership, you can increase revenue and solidify your position as an industry leader. 

Looking ahead, add sales automation to your tech stack. Learn more about the six elements for automating your sales processes.