44% of startups today operate in the B2B sector. Like with any other business, sales are the most crucial aspect for these growing enterprises. They must navigate the ever-evolving B2B markets and create a sales process that can scale their growth.
Theoretically, the sales process for B2B businesses can be broken down into 3 simple steps:
- Finding the target customers
- Creating aspirational value for your product in their mind by convincing them that it is the best fit for their requirements
- Provide them a good offer and a solid return on their investment
As simple as this process sounds, the execution proves to be difficult for most small companies. They often find it difficult to identify their target customer base or they are unsure of how to create a value-based selling strategy.
However, there are a few proven strategies that can make B2B sales easier. These are especially beneficial for companies that are starting out in their growth journey. Let us explore these strategies:
1. Define a Buyer’s Persona
By defining a persona for your ideal buyers, you can target your marketing and sales activities toward the right sources. Your persona must ideally include crucial information regarding your buyers such as the industry they work in, their pain points, the size of their organization, etc. By identifying a persona, your sales efforts will be more productive, as they will be directed only towards those prospects who are likely to make a sale.
2. Align Marketing & Sales Efforts
Marketing and sales are the cornerstones of your startup. If the efforts of these teams are combined, your sales can witness a major boost. There must be transparency and clear communication set up between the teams for their work to seamlessly align.
3. Direct Resources towards Lead Generation
Leads are the potential clients that can convert to paying customers for your business. Hence, lead generation must be a top priority for your SMB. You can generate more leads for your business through creative and targeted marketing, enhanced SEO efforts, and a top-notch website.
4. Leverage the Power of Social Media
Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. have become powerful channels for business. One of the best ways for B2B startups to boost their sales is by establishing a solid presence on social media platforms. Due to the advanced features of such platforms, all nurturing and sales activities can be done through social media.
5. Identify and Fix your Customers’ Pain Points
Customers are the backbone of your business. You can achieve a sure-shot rise in your sales by addressing the pain points of your customers and taking measures to resolve them. Pain points can be identified by analyzing client data, and your sales technique can be accordingly modified to convey how your product can resolve their problems.
6. Optimize the Work of your Teams
Your sales are directly influenced by the work of your teams. An efficient and productive workforce can close more sales and close them faster. Thus, it is vital for you to optimize the work of your teams. By automating redundant tasks and streamlining your operations, you can preserve the bandwidth of your teams for the closing of sales.
7. Enhance your Nurturing Efforts
All clients, whether existing or potential, require to be nurtured. In today’s times, when buyers operate multiple platforms, you must reach them where they are the most active. Through omnichannel efforts, that involve a combination of emails, messaging, and calling, you can enhance your nurturing efforts and build lasting client relationships.
These measures have been tried and tested over time, and they have shown their results in scaling the sales velocity of businesses. However, can small companies easily incorporate all these strategies? SMBs are faced with problems such as limited staff, budget constraints, etc. which makes the adoption of so many strategies difficult for them. What is the solution for them in this scenario? The answer is sales CRM!
How does CRM help Small Businesses?
CRM, which stands for Customer Relationship Management, is the ideal tool for SMBs to grow and expand. It streamlines the end-to-end operations for businesses and optimizes their entire workflow.
Such software comes with a multitude of features and functionalities, all of which are designed to resolve specific pain points of businesses. CRM tools are a one-stop-shop for growing businesses. If we revisit the strategies cited above for boosting sales of startups, each of these can be implemented better for small businesses with the help of CRM.
Your ideal buyer’s persona can be fed into your sales CRM tool, through which your leads can be qualified right from the get-go. Only the right leads will proceed in your sales funnel, and those which do not match your target audience will be removed. Lead generation and management are taken over by CRM, thereby ensuring that no potential sale is missed by your company. It helps optimize all marketing, as well as social media nurturing efforts through automation.  Besides, it collates all personal and sales data of your clients and analyses it to create valuable insights. These insights will help you serve your clientele better and provide an enhanced customer experience. And last but not least, it automates all redundant and time-consuming tasks over which a lot of teams’ time is wasted. It hence makes their work highly productive, and even allows you to track and monitor all their activities.
Given the multitude of functions that it takes over, it is a safe assumption to make that sales CRM is perhaps the best thing for the growth of small businesses. It is the most valuable investment that a business can make toward securing its success and growth, and it can help small businesses attain new heights!
