Selling to other businesses can be both lucrative and rewarding, but it can also be really tough if you are not showing value. A business prospect is always thinking one thing when talking to the salespeople:
“Is this person creating value for me?”
If you are not creating any value, then you will never be able to close the deal. In this post, I am going to share with you a few tips to close more B2B sales.
- Clarify your value proposition
When someone asks you what you do then you absolutely must have a quick and rehearsed response. When you start a call do you know exactly how to describe what you do? If not, then you’re already dead in the water.
It’s time to actually script out and memorize your value proposition. It is by the way the only part of your business from a sales perspective that you have to actually memorize.
- Focus on your prospect’s challenges
Most salespeople in a B2B space are still selling the features and benefits of their products or services. However, the problem is that prospects don’t buy features and benefits anymore. There was a time when this worked, but this approach no longer works anymore. Prospects now buy solutions to their challenges. So if there is no challenge then there is no sale. It is time to start seeking to really understand their challenges and what’s going on in their world.
- Get face to face
There’s been a big movement towards inside sales forces and I think in some cases that can be fine because it is very efficient. But for companies that are still selling expensive products or services, I mean the ‘high-end products or services’ that really require a serious investment, you absolutely must get face to face with your prospects. You may think that’s “old school” but actually its “new school” because most of your competitors are still trying to close sales on the phone or without getting face to face. It’s time to sit eye ball to eye ball with a prospect and what you’ll find is that you’re going to increase your close rate many times over. So just get in the car or on a plane and don’t worry about the expenses. Just get out there and meet your prospects face to face.
- Be proud of your premium pricing
Low price does not make good prospects want to buy, instead low price makes the worst kinds of prospects want to buy. Always own your premium price point in the market. It’s not about dropping your price because a good prospect doesn’t care about your price, they care about the value that you’re providing to them. So instead of focusing on price, focus on the real value that you provide to your customers and your clients.
- Offer 3 option proposal
Always make sure that every single proposal of your business should have 3 different options. Most of your competitors and probably the person who is reading this post right now is used to just providing one option to a prospect. However, providing just one option is very limited in terms of the possibilities that a prospect can choose from. And by the way, even if you’ve done a very good job in discovering and finding out what the prospect needs, you still can never find out which option the prospect will going to choose. So what you want to have is one basic option which is the most inexpensive option that will still solve the problem, ‘still not on a low price’, but inexpensive compared to your other options. The second option is going to be right in the middle or ‘mid-level’ and the third option is really premium, it’s probably way outside your prospect’s budget, but you never know sometimes your prospect might be interested to purchase that expensive option. At the very least, what it’s going to do is set the value for what you’re actually offering. So this will do two things, it will lower the number of times that you actually get shopped around because you have provided some context and it’s also going to lead to much bigger sales because you’re going to be surprised that some of your prospects will actually go for that third ‘expensive’ option.
So these are the few tips that can help you to close more B2B sales. I want to hear from you. Which of those ideas did you find most useful. Feel free to share below in the comment section. And if you enjoyed reading this post then please do follow my blog for more interesting strategies that can help you crush your sales goals.
The Known Unknowns by Hassaan Elahi 