Building relationships
Is the key selling point in the B2b market. And when I talk about relationships, I mean SOCIAL ENGINEERING.
You must understand that those who might want to cooperate with you already have their own suppliers of solutions, products, services. And you have to become one of them or the only one. How to win your piece? How to make you abandon the familiar, trusted?
B2b sales will result inpartial or complete transfer of the client to you.
How should such a transition be justified? The probability of such a transition at the first or second touch is minimal. Most " test" advertising campaigns break against this wall .
An individual approach in such sales is also “not an option”. The average check and margin of each such sale does not allow using professional sellers and working closely with each potential client.
I know several professional salespeople. They are real professionals in their field. They work with a small number of clients per year. Learn habits. Conducting correspondence. Even one sale is enough for them to close their financial year. They are ready to study the client, meet anywhere, anytime. They are subtle psychologists. Even when the client understands that they are looking for ways to him, this approach captivates.
Can you do the same?
In fantasy, yes, in reality it is not cost-effective for most projects.
How to sell? How to enter the b2b sales market?
Great question !!!
Any American will answer it like this: start working, recommend yourself and you will be recommended. You will grow with regular customers, and then you will quickly grow to your ceiling of desires / opportunities / skills.
Another answer is to know all potential customers. Touch everyone. And tightly lead to "grow", to insulate those who managed to catch on.
But, these are all words. But in practice?
Example from the Accounting Services market:
The company is located in the south of a fairly large city. The population is about 600,000+. This company provides on-site accounting services.
They would like to contact and work with all business owners in their area. What does the company usually do then? Makes spam mailing of postcards, tries to buy ads, and pays for Yelp.
BUT! Companies are not looking for new accountants online, they are looking for them by referrals. Company owners don't Google the accountant around them.
So how do you work with them?
From experience, this approach works: first, we calculate all the companies that would be interesting, usually there are more than 3-4 thousand such companies in the customer's area of interest. To do this, we use Linkedin, data on licenses, we look at advertising companies that run these companies, again in the county there is often data available for work.
Then we look at those who make decisions in these companies. Most often it is either the owner or co-owner, less often directors and managers. We draw up a detailed map of these people, collect and sort them according to the options for reaching them. After that, you can start touching, which are individual and maximally matched to the client's avatar. Touches should use all the knowledge of the client, where he studied, worked, experience, acquaintances. Lots of leads. Which can work in a personal approach to everyone. Sincere interest, we give rise to reciprocal interest.
We get to know each other using different approaches to understand which ones are more conversion. We do the work that the customer would do, but we do it more massively. After meeting, we begin to warm up potential customers. It is necessary to deliver them messages, documents, stories, cases that may interest them. This is not spam. This is really entertaining and useful info for a potential client. Each has its own design and this is not a banal mail marketing. We communicate in messengers and chats, letters and messages on LinkedIn. The process is structured so that for each potential contact there is the next action. Everything should be brought together and taken into account by a common system. When the number of potential customers in the world is 1M + and more than 1000-3000 dialogues are made per day. It is impossible to work without a system.
The main task is to accustom the potential client to the name of the customer and to the fact that “HE KNOWS THIS GUY”! At some point during the warm-up period, clients start communicating. With simple words. Banal phrases. But, this is a signal for the seller to start working. We make sure that, of course, the goal of this very gentle conversation as a result is KNOWLEDGE. Through Demo or meeting, sending an offer or miscalculation for any work.
This is how sales in B2B are built. Gradually. No pressure and no push. With pleasure from communication. And the anticipation of cooperation. This is mass work. But, with an individual approach.
That is why those who expect to collect applications and interested parties with a bot collect negative and bans. This path is not suitable for those who are not ready to quickly respond to questions, quickly propose solutions, communicate and BUILD RELATIONSHIP.