The need for B2B sellers to demonstrate deeper value for their online buyers in a remote buying environment further demands different fundamental sales tactics.
Up until some years ago, selling over the phone was commonplace, with the evolution of the virtual selling market and the enhancements that came along the way to power digital buying and selling experiences, sales teams and marketers slowly adapted to a shift into multichannel sales and marketing journeys.
While cold calling still plays a critical role in most of these strategies even today, it is now a small part of a larger mix of sales and marketing channels and tactics pursued by B2B teams.
The online selling/B2B landscape today boasts of constantly evolving trends with the onus shifting to the actual salesperson to try and break away from the regular drips and sequences and do something that stands out to win potential buyers.
Through 2022, as B2B sales teams pick up a different kind of pace and slowly get back to a kind of pre-Covid semblance, what should they keep in mind?
Not All Your Remote Buyers are Going to Meet you in Person
Even though B2B events are crimping back to life this year, with most brands offering hybrid experiences to enable engagement with their remote audiences across the globe, B2B salespeople have to understand how valuable which segment of their audience is in terms of size and reach. As a sales team or rep, getting back to the events channel to boost customer engagement and customer conversations is a great way to build a pipeline but the shift to virtual events and hybrid experiences due to the pandemic has resulted in some kind of permanent change. While a lot of B2B technology brands are looking at returning to the events landscape with increased participation in 2022, not all remote buyers are.
This is where B2B sales teams have to now build a deeper understanding of which part of their pipeline or audience can meet face to face through the quarter or year while keeping a different strategy in place for the rest of the remote pipeline that’s distributed. Using events as a hook when you know certain prospects from your target list are participating or planning to attend some events virtually can be a useful tactic to engage with them.
The typical sales cadence standards have to evolve in a dynamic market, understanding how the audience is adjusting back to a post pandemic era can help build the right sales structures and models.
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Remote Buyers Don’t Want to Talk to a Sales Rep
For anyone in B2B, this is stale news by now: most B2B buyers prefer going through most parts of the B2B buying journey without interacting with a sales rep. There is usually enough information online for B2B buyers to research, review and evaluate between products and services. It’s a commonly accepted behaviour that in B2B, prospects want to interact with sales reps only when they have a specific question or towards the latter stages of the buying journey.
However, while different studies may indicate shifts in these preferences, what is important to consider is why B2B buyers reach out to or respond to a sales rep. If studies suggest that buyers are looking to connect with reps at certain points of the journey or for certain kinds of questions only, building out campaigns and cadences that speak to exactly these touchpoints or triggers can shorten the follow up cycle and lead to quicker closures.
Furthermore, sales leaders should work closely with marketing and web optimization teams to build better online journeys and interactive touches that can replace the typical sales rep reach out during a B2B buying cycle. For instance, can a chatbot be prompted to do what a sales rep would to a certain type of visitor based on predefined parameters. Can your email sending tool host an automated cadence that can be personalized to follow a sequence and reach out to B2B buyers the way the sales rep would, with the right interactivities?
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Optimize Use of Videos and Related Interactive Media to Drive Further Conversations
B2B buyers are inundated with sales and marketing messages. Moreover, these messages are not just restricted to email or calls; it includes multiple other online channels. For a sales rep to break away from the noise, the right messaging at the right time is now more of an accepted norm and rule – but it’s not enough.
It’s common for sales teams to prioritize efforts on channels they know their prospects are most active on, but going a step further and using another tactic to deepen engagement using that channel is the need of the hour.
For instance, when you know LinkedIn is a good source for potential B2B prospects, joining the crowd and sending an InMail is like a call to having your message ignored.
Your prospect is already getting a ton of these.
A short video recording of what you want to say might break the ice and momentum. Or, a link to a short and relevant podcast episode could do. Understanding where your prospect can be best reached out to is only part of the game today.
Sometimes, it Takes a Little To Succeed in a New World of Selling
B2B sales is said to be a complex journey but today’s salestech and sales hacks can easily enable salespeople to build easier buying and selling journeys. Pre-empting customer need and responses, personalizing communications and sales conversations, saying the right thing using the right tactics can help B2B salespeople stay apart from the rest and win longer customer contracts.
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