b2b sales strategy

B2B Sales Strategy Fundamentals

Growing your business can be challenging. Study after study finds that the two biggest challenges for startups are funding and growing revenue. This makes a lot of sense, growing your business needs funds. These funds either come from an investor or through your organization’s sales. Having a great B2B sales strategy allows your organization to help drive traction to get funding or even better, to generate revenue and fund your business yourself. Here are a few tips for creating a great B2B Sales Strategy.

 

Focus on Your Customer’s Problem

 
The whole B2B sale starts by matching a customer need or pain to your solution. For a B2B sale, your solution will need to increase revenue, decrease cost/expense, improve productivity, or avoid something bad. These are the key benefits that B2B organizations are looking for.
 

Target the Ideal Customer

 
One thing that drives me crazy when talking with entrepreneurs is that they say that their solution could be sold to anyone. We recommend that they focus on a vertical or niche to sell to initially. Any entrepreneur thinks that is limiting their sales when the opposite is true. Focusing on a vertical will allow your organization to better understand the pain, competitors, terminology, buying process, and provide better referenceable customers. Find the right organization and the decision-making contacts for sales success.
 

Understand the Steps in the Buyer’s Journey

 
How do your prospects make decisions? The key to mapping out your sales process is to understand your buyer’s journey. Understand the steps, information they need, and the people involved. This allows your organization to align your sales and marketing efforts.
 

Build Your Sales Team

 
At the start of your organization’s sales efforts, it is often the founders that are driving the customer acquisition. It is important to plan out the type of future sales resource and related skills that you will need. Too often I see early stage companies hiring for industry knowledge instead of sales capabilities. Making the wrong decisions on roles and employees can set back your organization.
 

Set Your Targets and Goals

 
Organizations will typically have a revenue target for their sales effort. Revenue is a lagging result, there are activities that need to come first that lead to sales. This could include things like booked meetings, demos, proposals, and other steps. You should have targets set on these activities to ensure you are making your revenue targets.
 
Growing your sales team can be a challenge. Check out our white paper on building a sales team.
 

B2B Sales Strategy Fundamentals