March 25, 2022

How to Make the Most of Your B2B Sales Strategy to Bring in the Leads

This article will explain how to generate leads for B2B sales. First, we'll cover what B2B sales is, a little bit about the process of sales, and then go into detail on how sales development services work. We'll also give you some tips on how to generate leads for B2B sales via cold calling and other means.

Key Takeaways

1.   Pursue as many conversations as you can

2.   Make buyers trust you with social proof

3.   Craft relevant and engaging content

4.   Engage your customers with chatbots

5.   Master outbound calling

6.   Use webinars to your advantage

7.   Leverage social media to interact with leads

8.   Create many landing pages

9.   Participate in trade shows

10.   Make email marketing more efficient

What Are B2B Sales?

Business-to-business sales occur between businesses instead of between businesses and consumers. Typically, B2B sales involve

  • higher transaction values,
  • well-informed buyers,
  • multiple communications channels,
  • approval from many stakeholders and a longer sales cycle.

What Are the Stages of a B2B Sales Cycle?

A successful sales process is customised to your company's needs. A B2B sales process consists of steps that facilitate the conversion of prospects into customers. Here's an example of what a B2B sales cycle looks like.

Identifying and prospecting leads

Sales pipelines need to be replenished continuously. The process involves the generation of leads and prospecting. Although lead generation isn't everyone's cup of tea, it plays a crucial role in B2B sales. You can generate leads by finding qualified prospects through cold calling, social media, inbound marketing, website forms, email campaigns, events and more. 

Discovering more about the prospect

Having assembled the leads, you'll need to gauge their interest in your pitch. Discovery calls allow salespeople to do this and lay the foundation for engaging buyers. During this time, reps should gather information about the lead, such as their business, motivations, pain points, needs and wants.

Qualifying your leads

It is not worth pursuing every lead. The best way to allocate your company's resources is to focus on leads that are most likely to convert to customers.

Making the presentation or pitch

When making your pitch, focus on relevant points of value. Engage the prospect's curiosity; it is best not to over-explain your product or service. The sales pitch also shouldn't be used to highlight all of your product's impressive features. Instead, emphasise how you can help prospects with your product.

Negotiating

The negotiation stage can make or break a deal. Due to this, it's even more crucial that sales reps know how to use negotiation tactics to close sales and generate revenue.

Closing the deal

This stage is about finalising all contracts and items, but mistakes can still occur. To prevent deals from falling apart, train your reps on all the technicalities of closing deals.

The results of your hard work come to fruition when your prospect is converted into a customer. Once a deal has been closed, the customer can start using the product.

Making a follow-up

After closing the deal, your sales team must focus on customer satisfaction and retention for mutual success. Schedule regular follow-ups to stay in touch and answer any queries or resolve issues.

Sales Development Services

Sales development combines analytics tools, nurture campaigns and telephone prospecting exclusively to generate qualified prospects and prepare them for the sales process.

A company can use highly trained sales representatives to increase revenue by outsourcing sales development services. This allows companies to concentrate on negotiation while getting insights at the beginning of the sales process. Some sales development services include lead generation, qualification and management, appointment setting and marketing. 

How to Generate Leads for B2B Sales

You can use the following strategies to make your B2B marketing lead generation easier and generate as many new B2B sales prospects as possible.

1.      Pursue as many conversations as you can

Relationships are key to sales. So, engaging in as many real conversations as possible with potential customers is important. When a lead inquires about a particular product feature in an email, don't simply refer them to your website. Instead, respond to their question and suggest you hop on a phone or video call to show them how the feature works.

2.      Make buyers trust you with social proof

Since buyers may be sceptical of your product, social proof will help them make a more informed purchase decision. Consider displaying social proof on your website, posting reviews on social networks and publishing case studies.

3.      Craft relevant and engaging content

The most common B2B content marketing types are blogs, digital books and research papers. Ensure all content is well-planned and targets the right audience and buyer persona. For the most impact, write about topics that resonate with your audience's pain points, problems and vulnerabilities.

4.      Engage your customers with chatbots

When people have questions or requests, they want a fast response. By integrating artificial intelligence into customer service software, chatbots make it possible for B2B companies to engage their target audiences quickly. As prospects interact with chatbots, you can collect lead information, such as their names, emails, contact numbers, pain points, suggestions and more.

5.      Master outbound calling

Most of your sales occur over the phone, so an outbound sales strategy can help you maximise each interaction. Your team must have effective cold callers, meaning they must be knowledgeable about the products they sell.

6.      Use webinars to your advantage

Before making a purchase, B2B customers like comparing products and providers. With a webinar, you can demonstrate your product simultaneously to several people, explain its benefits and applications and answer their questions. Plus, webinars are usually easy to attend and easier to register for than online demos.

7.      Leverage social media to interact with leads

One of the most popular B2B channels is social media, which many organisations use to promote their content. To generate B2B sales leads using social media, you should establish a professional relationship with prospects. Get involved by sharing posts, leaving comments and participating in discussions. Before talking about your product or service, you must build relationships organically. Otherwise, you may end up unnoticed or removed from their connections.

8.      Create many landing pages

Provide a variety of landing pages to direct sales leads to the most appropriate product or service page. The use of landing pages can be incredibly effective at generating new leads for B2B companies. By using them, you can redirect website visitors and gather leads.

9.      Participate in trade shows

At trade shows, companies display products, technologies or services. The majority of booths offer video displays and interactive demos and prototypes. With these elements, more people will visit your booth, remain longer and show a greater interest in your products. You can generate B2B sales leads by having attendees give you their contact information or by networking.

10.  Make email marketing more efficient

Boost B2B sales with automation that ensures better workflow, quicker lead processing and better lead generation. Email marketing automation can confirm shipments and orders, send abandoned cart notifications, and welcome subscribers immediately.

Identify and Generate B2B Leads Efficiently

Creating B2B leads and boosting sales can be challenging. However, it's not impossible, particularly if you partner with top B2B lead generation companies.

Book a Demo with Sarah today and learn how Linked Hacker can help you generate pre-qualified B2B leads.

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