When you think about B2C, people want lower price points, there are shorter sales cycles, fewer decision-makers, right?
People just go like on Amazon being like, "I want to go and buy this."
But in B2B, it's a lot more different.
In B2B marketing, people aren't as price-sensitive, and they can pay an arm and a leg for your product or service.
In this article, we're going to be going over the B2B marketing online sales process and how to effectively run it to close more and better deals.
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So, let’s dive straight into it.
In B2B, sometimes there are wholesale channels or distribution or reselling channels.
You may have to sell to big organizations like schools or even school districts or non-profits or large organizations like Microsoft or IBM that can take forever to sell into.
There are also higher price points.
But when you're going through this process, you'll also find that most of it is done through salespeople.
And it's not as low touch as B2C hence the price points are higher as well.
We know that eCommerce is mainly perceived as B2C, but there is actually commerce online in B2B as well. It's not just B2C.
So, before we see in detail the B2B eCommerce marketing, let's first look at the general typical B2B sales process.
B2B sales process
It goes all the way from someone coming on your website to they're interested in something, then they become a lead. Then you end up having a call with them.
This is what's called a discovery call where they're just learning, then if it's a good fit, you have a strategic plan.
This is a presentation where you go over your product, your solution, and how it can help them.
And then, your last meeting is the decision meeting.
Now, what's not shown here is that in B2B marketing there are a lot of middle steps.
So, you may have multiple phone calls. You may have a presentation with someone and then their boss may want to see the presentation again.
So, you had to do it all over again or send them the recorded version, but let's dive into each step.
Call Preparation
First off, there's a call preparation. This is where you receive a lead and a confirmation appointment. Right, it's matched to you. You get a lead, someone's interested in your product or service, and then you end up getting a call with them.
You also have to check out that lead. Is it qualified? Is it a website good? Is there a good budget? How big is their business? Do you think they can afford your product or service?
It's not like B2C where everyone can just pay, you know, £10, £5, whatever it may be to buy from you.
And sometimes you're selling things that are £10,000 or a hundred thousand pounds.
So, the buyer market is much more limited. Hence you have to see if they are truly qualified.
And you need to get to know their business and understand that if you can help with their problems.
So, some homework for you or your sales reps is to, if the lead is junk or fake, cancel it. If it's good, make sure you prepare and you want to go towards the next step.
Discovery call
The next step would be a discovery call. You want to get to know the lead on a personal level.
What are their pain points? Why are they interested in your product? What else have they tried? How long have they been facing this problem? When are they looking to move forward on a solution?
By understanding their problem, you can then tailor your sales pitch around what they're looking for.
So, some homework that you want to give them is a questionnaire that allows you to better understand their business.
And that can be questions like, what's your budget? What are you looking for? When you're looking to move? What are your ideal features? All these things.
So that way, you can understand if you can provide them with the solution they're looking for.
And when do you get that?
Strategic planning
Your next step is to schedule a call with them and the decision-maker. And particularly with the key decision-maker because you don't want to be wasting your time with someone who can't sign off on the deal within roughly seven days of getting the questionnaire.
And the way you do this is that on that call you have a strategic plan.
And that strategic plan, you want to demonstrate your business, the cost, your product, how it can help them solve the problem, how it's going to make their life easier, save them time, ideally even save them money.
You can create that sense of urgency by wowing them. If you showcase studies, this helps a lot in B2B marketing.
You want to know what appeals to them and really understand because that's how you're going to be able to close a sale.
A homework assignment for you as you want to send a recap presentation to them, as well as everything that was discussed, as well as any unanswered questions.
And then you want to go over payment and pricing within that presentation as well.
Of course, in B2B, bigger price point, and not everyone buys right away.
So, then you're going to have to follow up. Maybe you have a decision meeting where you go over any last-minute questions. You may have to redo parts of the pitch if they are confused or they want to go over anything.
In other words, you want to identify and resolve any remaining unanswered questions or issues that they may have.
So, think about everything as objections, and you want to answer those objections.
You need to understand, you know, they need to understand what you're going to be giving them the plans, the deliverables, the executions, all of the stuff that they can put in a contract, or you can put it in a contract.
And the homework assignment for you is to try to get the deal closed and then break down onboarding and then walk into your ecosystem or company.
Alright, now before we move on with the next B2B marketing strategies for high web traffic, have you ever thought about how much you should invest in marketing to generate constant business growth? Click the button below to calculate the ideal marketing budget you should allocate for higher visibility, engagement, and profit.
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So, now that you know how to close B2B marketing leads, let's go over where you can find them.
LinkedIn for leads caption
One of the best places that we like going to is LinkedIn. It isn’t the sexiest social network, but they have over 690 million users and it's the best place for B2B.
They have this tool called sales navigator that'll help you a lot. It'll allow you to find the ideal people that you want to target from groups to industries, to interests, it breaks it all down.
It's a great feature. You should definitely check it out.
So, when you get that data from the sales navigator and you find the ideal person, also look for the person's job title.
You want to get ideally a manager position or a director position or a VP position because those are the people that can typically make decisions.
You can either import those leads into your CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot and then start contacting them. Or you can start reaching out to people on LinkedIn as well, which works well.
Relationships are everything
In B2B marketing, what you'll find is that relationships are everything.
It can take you 90 to 120 days to close. Sometimes even longer if your price points are in the six figures or seven figures.
So, you need to be patient.
And one way to really help build your relationship is to make sure your profile is filled out correctly.
Good headshots, good bio, lot of texts, endorsements, recommendations, and involvement in a lot of groups.
You want to highlight projects that you've done well on. It all really does help.
And then, of course, you want to join active groups that are related to the industries that you're going after because by being active.
You'll also start getting inbound leads, and that'll help.
So, one example that we want to go over is knobs.co.
If you follow the B2B eCommerce space, they have a really strong conversion process and they've done exceptionally well.
So, check them out and go to their website. You can learn a lot from them. This is your chance to analyse someone who's doing extremely well.
If you need help with your B2B marketing or B2C marketing to grow your business in terms of visibility, engagement, and profit, contact us today and speak with one of our digital marketing experts to see how we can build the bridge between the point you’re standing at right now and your goals.
