b2b sales strategies for 2021

Blog: NASSCOM Official Blog

What are the sales strategies that should be adapted in 2021-2022?

Let me point out that today’s salesperson or sales strategy is more adopting digital markeitng strategies.

The fundamentals of buying behaviour have changed. One of the new sales approach’s fundamental principles is to give prospects ( customers) what they need at the right time, listen to them, and advise them. This can be neatly done through digital sales enablement.

The old style of pushing and trying to convince them to buy your product as per your sales quota is no more working!

Let us look at the new sales strategies that support inbound customer inquiries. What do inbound sales or pull marketing and generating sales?

New call-to-action

The new call to action in sales is a listener and then a coach to the customer.

Ability to listen is one of the critical skills for today’s’ salesperson.

The new sales approach is integrated markeitng and sales process for a seamless inbound sales process.

This integrated approach consists of

1.Creating quality content,

2.Targetted to qualified visitors to the site,

3. Present the company and its products (or services) and

4. To do guided selling, towards the solution they are looking for.

5. If there is a conversation, then it should start with consultative sales

What is created and published on digital channels will be

to attract potential customers with quality content
to have high-quality traffic with optimized keywords and appealing UI
to get the maximum call to – actions, such as form fill up, download, and chats
convert leads to different stages as per the company sales process online

Inbound sales strategy is the option for 2021 – 2022

Pandemic is not allowing to meet people or eve to do cold calls. Emails are blocked by spam filters.

However, B2B buyers are using search engines and social media to get to know the market, suppliers and quotes.

It is necessary to adopt a strategy that allows the potential customer to find your company.

With inbound sales strategy in place, content markeitng is the best option that can support the inbound sales strategy.

Content mareting starts with content strategy, content layers in the websites, digital content collaterals, social media content and digital content sales enablement.

A qualified lead, ( a contact) will be happy to share their contacts coordinates, and it is the salesperson who needs to nurture them and convert to the sales stage.

Let us look at what the inbound tools of a salesperson?

Sales stage one – Search and Find

Understand/listen to the customer problem or the real reason the customer is looking for? This capturing of need can be performed through mutual conversations only. Here also, we should Go digital. Present it well with questionnaires or easy choose options. Present it will well with voice or video call.

Present it well, with the industry challenges and real pain points that you have already solved with other customers

Present t well with use cases problems and challenges

All thee to be captured and a solution architecting needs to be prepared.

During this stage, markeitng automation such as CRM plays an important role. Multiple meetings and tracking the conversation will help to increase the efficacy of the sales process. This automation will also help to do lead nurturing to lead conversion process.

The CRM,s and the sales automation help the salesperson organize the different types of leads such as hot leads, warm leads and cold leads. bASed od the stages, personalized communications can be established with these leads

Marketing automation software will enable lead nurturing so that the salesperson can respond to the needs, aspirations and interests of each contact can be met personally.

During the process, marketing automation software can also help the salesperson about buyer behaviour within the company website, email, and social channels. It includes all the digital interactions taken by the prospect concerning the solution that this company is offering.

Keyword tracking and tracing digital is the coolest intelligence tool that helps salesperson.

Sales Stage Two – Once search and find is over – It is Evaluation –

A well set inbound marketing process will provide intelligence about the lead so that the salesperson will plan his sales process effectively.

Well set inbound sales process will provide sales enablement for the contact so that the salesperson will be a sales coach and establish trust with the customers.

Content enabled digital sales enablement is the ultimate tool for a salesperson to close the sales digitally.

In b2b sales scenarios, pre-sales’ power plays a critical role in the till the last mile of the purchasing decision. Companie will have pres-departments who normaly provide solutions pitching and what all supporting documents required by the customer.

Here, the same process can be established through digital content sales enablement., will ensure the customer is completely informed about the products or solutions they are looking for to buy.

W well-set Content-focused, Digital sales enabled will provide preemptive or predictive knowledge sharing with the customer, supports the evaluation.

Now, let us look at some KPIs of digital sales strategies:

The average cost of acquiring a customer

How to do it?

Streamline markeitng -sales process
Get the prospect intelligence well in advance.
Optimize the sales process
Synchronize the content-sales enablement
Reduce the resources used
Do preemptive actions
Keep every salesperson in the loop with custom dashboards.
Reduce the time spend from lead to order process
Spend maximum time in negotiating & close the order

Profitable customer:

One of the critical sales is to acquire customers that will generate profit for the organisation in the current situation.

Just fillip up quota will not suffice the situation. Increase in profitability is the key now. So salespersons must focus on

most profitable products or services and connects with customers who can pay a mutually agreed price.

How to do it?

Present the products and solutions that profitable for the company
Workaround the value proposition that solves the customers’ problem
Do an extra-mile support service in terms of the warranty, aftermarket services, or maintenance support to make sure customer loves to work with you.
Hold the price to ensure, and you make a profit to survive.
Prepare sales proposals that ensure win-win deals.
Succeed in sales strategies for 2021 and 2022. There won’t be any change in the est year.
Concerning the b2b sales strategies with a sales cycle of 2 months to 2 years, the following are the recommended strategies you plan.

Now let’s make sales strategies for 2021

Step one – Strategic planning:

Get data – buyer behaviour

Develop sales strategies driven by digital content empowered with digital sales enablement process. Need some investment in content cretio, curation and content authoring that conenct with the sales stages and your buyer behaiour

Research and develop optimized market segmentation. Do not focus on mass or colossal list. Optimise the market segment based on digital variables, psychographics and digital psychology.

Develop digital sales processes that sync with your business strategy ( use existing assets, optimise it well). I found a majority of the companies use 30 to 40% of the software’s features.

Organization:

Align sales and marketing seamlessly. Ensure sales folks are skilled up with markeitng skills, and markeitng is skilled up with sales skills. There won’t be much different anymore, build a culture on digital value propositions, digital networking and digital sales enablement.

Motivation:

Do not plan the usual quotas. Instead, focus on profitability. Focus on deals. Motivate the new process in place. Reward the new adopted sales process and optimised selling behaviour. Reward good deals with profitability. Reward the markeitng and sales process that is optimized in terms of time. Time is the most vale factor for the reward.

Infrastructure:

Enforce remote working—MOnitor process efficiency.
Plan and deploy systems and automation in place for content powered digital sales enablement.
Skill up sales and mareting force to sell customers digitally—Skills-up the power of digital -pre-sales process.

sales strategy for 2021

Summary – B2b digital strategies and Targets for 2021-2022

Measure marketing and sales optimisation. Keep a benchmark and work towards it. Monitor the performance of digital sales enablement with time as the critical factor – example

time to lead to opportunity,

time to contact mapping,

time to lead to proposal time to

proposal for a first negotiation point

time to over negotiation to win the order

Skills up marketing guys to optimisation
Sales guys to become business coaches, deep conversation and pre-sales enablement
Establishing the marketing and sales process to have intelligence in buy behaviour and in-depth needs of the buyer
Aligning – marketing and sales to provide high operation and conversion rates.
Get customers deals that are profitable, not chasing sales quotas.

Raj Mohan : Linkedin

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