B2B sales tools that almost no one uses

Many companies, when solving issues of developing a business strategy, developing internal analytics or increasing sales, regularly face questions about the effectiveness of sales department managers and their employees in attracting customers. To solve them, using a number of tools that, as practice has shown, significantly increase transaction conversion, as well as form healthy long-term relationships with customers. We propose to consider them in more detail:

We identify four main types of clients depending on their behavior towards making a purchase decision: an economic buyer, a technical buyer, and a consultant. There can be any number of such employees in the company. The task of the business is to adapt the application to each type of client, find points of interaction with each specialist and discuss your proposal. Most managers, on the other hand, go to one decision maker with one presentation and try to push through the deal.

A potential buyer purchases a product to solve specific tasks of his business, at different stages of which he faces problems or internal difficulties of the organization. Identifying such problems, we fix them in the form of red flags and develop solutions that solve the customer's problems. These solutions strengthen our offer and increase the likelihood of a transaction.

We all know perfectly well that at the stage of acquaintance with the buyer, we can get detailed answers in one company about how to become their supplier, in another we can get a serious rebuff. Let's highlight several types of reactions to our proposal:

The buyer is openly ready to cooperate if our offer can improve or increase the indicators that are important to him;

The buyer sees obvious deviations of the current situation from the desired one and considers it necessary to make improvements, but he cannot do this due to internal restrictions of the company, which he cannot influence.

The buyer is satisfied with the current situation, and he refuses to change anything.

The buyer believes that our offer is much worse than the current solutions, and is not ready to discuss anything with us.

The first two reactions give a good chance to sell, the third and fourth, on the contrary, significantly reduces them. And if there are enough contacts in your potential customer base, I would recommend letting go of clients with the third and fourth reactions for a while.

A very trendy concept, which assumes that both partners should win: the seller and the buyer. But to understand how high its value in sales is, let's look at four possible scenarios:

The deal is beneficial to us and our client. We get enough profit, the customer has a sufficient level of satisfaction to return for a purchase.

Many business sales coaches push sellers into this scenario by teaching them how to make quick deals. But a quick deal is often based on the “promise of golden mountains”, to which the product does not correspond. As a result of such a transaction, at best we lose the client forever, at worst we get lawsuits.

We have often observed how companies take on the deals of large clients who do not pull. As a result, they commit heroic deeds to deliver goods in an extremely short time at a loss, using the maximum of their resources.

The worst-case scenario in which both companies lose time and money.

There are managers who spend a huge amount of time on all the clients they have met. The model allows you to estimate the probability of a transaction, thereby reducing time and focusing on key customers. A client is considered promising if he meets at least three of the four criteria.

The client may indeed be your potential buyer, but if he does not fit the price category, and it is important for him to be cheaper, then no matter how you convince him and give arguments in favor of the quality of the product and its service life, he will not buy!

Often, assistants are looking for contractors, not the head himself. And if you have conveyed all the benefits to the assistant and he likes everything, it is not a fact that he will be able to convey these principles to the head. The employee is already loyal to you, you communicated with him, showed your expertise, and aroused trust. But for the director, you are nobody, he does not know anything about you, so he does not even argue his "no".

- What is the reason for your interest in the product/service?

After this question, the client will tell you where it hurts, and you will not have to probe for weaknesses. And then you already know what to put pressure on and what benefits of the product to talk about.

Find out when your product is needed by your customer. Find out as soon as possible, because he may want it RIGHT NOW. However, you will not be able to physically do this. If the client can't wait, it's better not to waste your time.

Everyone works with it, but not everyone tracks the results on it. Do not forget that conversion statistics from the sales funnel allows you to quickly identify the weaknesses of a company or a specific manager and make adjustments.