How to be successful in B2B Sales

Business-to-business sales requires understanding multiple stakeholders, longer sales cycles, and building trust for long-term relationships. The approach differs significantly from consumer sales, requiring tailored solutions and a focus on return on investment.

• B2B sales involves multiple stakeholders including end users, managers, and procurement teams
• Finding a "coach" within the client organisation is crucial for navigating the buying process
• Sales cycles typically run weeks to months, occasionally years for government clients
• "Farmers" (relationship builders) often outperform "hunters" (quick-close salespeople) in B2B environments
• ROI, efficiency improvements, and technical fit are primary decision drivers
• Honesty builds trust - never make up answers to technical questions you don't know
• Customise presentations to client requirements rather than delivering generic product pitches
• Qualify prospects carefully - pursuing opportunities below 50% probability wastes resources
• B2B typically involves fewer but higher-value sales compared to consumer markets
• Proposals must directly address specific client needs identified during discovery

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Welcome to the podcast!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to B2B Sales
• 2:45 Complex Buying Decisions and Stakeholders
• 5:19 Sales Cycles and Relationship Building
• 9:02 Technical Fit and Trust Building
• 13:38 Tailoring Solutions and Qualifying Clients
• 18:53 B2B Sales Approach and Summary

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Hello again, I'm Graham Elliott and welcome to another podcast. Now this is the first in a short series of two podcasts where I'm going to just talk about the two different types of sales. So this first one is business to business you might see that written as B2B and the other one is business to consumers. So we'll look at that in the next podcast. So in this one I'm going to just talk through what are the key aspects of B2B and what are the things, as a salesperson, you really need to be aware of. Right before I jump into that, just please remember to like and subscribe. That helps me a lot, doesn't cost you anything and it just helps make the podcast more visible. Okay, so first of all, business to business. Now I'm also including business to government, because essentially the process is pretty much the same. So, first of all, who are your clients? Well, they are other businesses, their organisations, their institutions, but essentially they're more complex setups than simply selling to another person.

Speaker 1: 1:09

What about buying decisions? How is the buying decision arrived at? Well, again, generally you are looking at more than one stakeholder. So stakeholder is simply someone who is affected by the sale. They will have an interest in the sale, so you typically have. It might be an engineer or an end user, somebody like that. You might have a manager who's involved often, although not always from the budgeting perspective, but they might have a deeper involvement in that. There then is the procurement team, so you may well have to deal with the purchasing company. So the kind of things where you might have to just, or the kind of things to think about do you need to be on a preferred supplier list? That kind of things where you might have to just, or the kind of things to think about. Do you need to be on a preferred supplier list? That kind of thing. If you do, you might find that that's a process you have to run through before you get too far into the sales process itself. It will depend on the company, and this is where you're probably looking for that other really important person in the organization which is your coach. Now, that may well be, and it probably is, your primary contact Not always, but often they may also be the end user, they might be the manager, but somebody who coaches you is really important, and they're important because they can make it really clear who the people are that you need to be talking to, and often you need to be talking to and often you need to be speaking to them pretty early on.

Speaker 1: 2:34

A fatal mistake or can be fatal as far as the sale goes is to be talking to a single contact, possibly the end user, possibly the person who may be inquired about your solution in the first place, but not getting visibility about who else is involved. So this could be an issue of budget. They may not have budget available at all, it might not be this quarter, all this kind of stuff. You really have to get very clear on that. So this is much more complicated in business to business than it is in a straightforward consumer sale. Then we get into the sales cycle itself. So generally it will be longer and could well be more and, as I've already said, is quite likely to be more complex than just selling to somebody on the street. It could well take weeks or months for a sale to go through.

Speaker 1: 3:28

Having said that, I've definitely have made sales to a business in less than a day. So I've had an inquiry beginning of the day, jumped over, went and saw, jumped on the call, quick qualification process, went over and saw them. It was a demonstration in that instance and then I think it was by about two or three o'clock in the afternoon I'd already got the order. So things can happen very quickly, but often they don't. So, in terms of setting your expectations, be prepared to move quickly, to close a sale quickly if that's possible. That's always the best way to go. But often you're looking at a much longer process and if you're looking at government, you may well those months could turn into one or two years. So they get into very lengthy sales cycles. So what else do you need to think about? Well, certainly the relationship is really important. You need to be looking at long-term relationships and long-term account management.

Speaker 1: 4:31

This is where there are two types of salespeople, broadly In the course, consultative selling. It's something I dive into a lot more deeply. But you have your hunters and your farmers. You may well have heard that expression, but if you're a hunter, generally those salespeople are very good at going after short-term business. So they will find a potential client, they will talk to them, qualify them, make sure they're a good match and then close the deal. But that tends to happen very quickly and that kind of salesperson is probably more suited to business to consumer selling rather than business to business. Now, that also. None of these things are absolutely setting a stone, but as a generalisation it's good to think that way.

Speaker 1: 5:19

The person who is likely to be more successful in business to business, particularly where they're dealing with large accounts, is the farmer, and this is someone who is much more focused on long term. They recognize that a deal will take a long period of time usually to come about. So their focus is much more on the relationship side of the sale building up good, strong relationships, building up trust with the stakeholders becoming the person, the go-to person for that business. So they're not just looking at a single deal often because they're looking at it from a long-term perspective. You're looking at multiple deals. This is typically a business that will come back to you again and again, maybe for the same solution or sales relating to that initial solution or for other solutions in the same area. So that's a big thing to be aware of For you as a salesperson. When you're looking at business to business, you will often be looking at developing a much longer term relationship with that client. You want to have a client list who will be coming back to you to do repeat buys and, as I've said in other podcasts, in sales courses, these repeat orders, so sales that come in, that you don't have to do a lot of the groundwork that you do on the first one. They are really good to have because your cost per sale drops considerably when it comes to repeat business. Ok, okay, so that's the relationship.

Speaker 1: 6:57

What about the decision itself? What are the key drivers? Well, often with business to business, you are looking at return on investment. That's likely to be the most important. How is your solution going to pay for itself, and how long will that take? So I've worked in organisations where they actually had ROI calculators, so you would feed in a bunch of numbers and what would pop out would be a period in months or years, whatever it was of how long it would take your solution to pay for itself, given the scenario it was being implemented in. So the financial side is likely to be the key driver. Other ones will be efficiency, so maybe changing the way that your client achieves a certain aspect of their business, making it more efficient. Cost reduction could be another one which also impacts finances, obviously. So that's a fine and that would come back to an ro.

Speaker 1: 8:00

The technical fit as well there's likely to be technical aspects to it again depends on what you're selling. So you may well find there's a whole technical process you have to go through with people who are very savvy technically. They really understand the technical side. And again, as salesperson this is definitely my own experience you may well be dealing with technical people who know the technical aspects of what you're selling far better than you do, and this can be an area where you can feel a bit intimidated if you're not that strong technically. And frankly, when you get into certainly my experience with engineering, when you start talking to engineers, particularly if you're new to an area, there is a very good chance that they will be a lot more knowledgeable about the details of what they're doing than you will. So the important thing to just bear in mind there is not to make things up.

Speaker 1: 9:03

If you don't know the answer to something, be honest. Or if you're not sure, be honest and go away and check it and get back to them. So this is where you under-promise and over-deliver. It's about being as good as your word. So if you need to go away and come back with an answer the following day or in a couple of days, just go through the process of just asking them or just saying to them look, I don't know the answer to that. I'll have to go check. Is it okay if I come back to you this time tomorrow with an answer and it'll either be yes or no. Often if people, if it isn't that urgent, then you've got a few more days. But always keep it, keep it fairly short, because you want to keep the momentum going in the sale, and always get back to people. When you say you will, even if you don't have the answer that you were hoping for whether it's, you know, a no to trying to do something that they want to do, or you don't have an answer at all, just get back to them, say, uh, something, something along the lines of I said I get back to you at this time, uh, the situation is, and then, whatever the answer is, or if there's not been an answer, just say look, I've not heard back from the manufacturer. Um, I've escalated it, so I've hit them again and I'm also hitting them at a bit of a higher level just to get an answer for you quickly. So, and then you simply just agree another time when you get back to them.

Speaker 1: 10:21

The importance of this goes back to the longer term aspect of a typical B2B relationship where it's really important to build trust and you may find yourself in a situation where you do have to step back from a sale because you can't meet the technical requirements. So there's a couple of things to think about there. One is to just look at your qualification process, because ideally you want to qualify out the people that you can't provide a good solution for. But the other aspect of that is you might be close but not quite there. So if you're honest about it, there's a good chance, by building that trust, which is really important that that particular company, that potential client, will come back to you again next time because they know that you'll be honest and you won't lie to them. And unfortunately, some people, when they get into, feel they're backed into a bit of a corner and they don't know the answer. They will say what they think the client wants to hear, and that's a big mistake. So don't do that. Okay, so they're the decision drivers that you're likely to.

Speaker 1: 11:28

You know you need to identify what they are and make sure that you can meet those requirements. Then you've got the complexity of what you're selling. Now you will know how complex your solutions can get. They might be very simple. They might be really complicated, but this is often an aspect of business-to-business selling. So you're looking at products or services that may well have aspects of them that can be tailored to a particular need. So they're likely to be technical, they're likely to be high value, or at least one of those things will apply. So it's really important that you understand and that your sales process allows you to get a very good handle very quickly on how good a match you are to what that client wants to do, how well you can meet their requirements and, as I've said before, if you can't meet them, be honest. If you can, then great.

Speaker 1: 12:22

But you need to be really clear and this is where having the conversation. I've spoken about this in other podcasts. I speak about this in more detail in the course to really guide you through this process, but this is where it's really important to have a very open conversation with your client. So this is before you attempt to close. You're having a conversation about all of the requirements that they have, everything they're trying to make. So that will also include the decision drivers that I've spoken about understanding the buying or the decision making process, the timing, everything else. All of that comes out in a discussion. You are not closing the sale at that point. You are getting information and you're also finding answers to objections. So I'm not going to talk about that in this podcast, but I have spoken about it in other podcasts and, again, I cover that in some detail in the training course.

Speaker 1: 13:23

So you're likely to have a more complex solution that can be customized. What's the sales approach that you need to adopt? Well, the first thing is you need to be very relationship focused. So you need to build trust with the people that you are working with. You need to show that you are genuinely interested in delivering a solution to them that will meet their needs. So, when it comes to any presentation you do, it really needs to be very um tailored, very personalized, to demonstrate not only that you have a really strong understanding of what they're trying to achieve, but you also can talk about each of the key aspects of that sale. So it might be meeting technical requirements, it might be achieving the kind of return on investment they're looking for, the kind of cost reduction that they are trying to achieve Basically, all of the key aspects that you have identified when you've sat down and you've gone through this with your client. So it is really important that your information gathering is it needs to be top-notch if you're going to do this well, because it allows you to make sure that you're a very good fit for the client. It means that you will know you've identified what are the really important things they're trying to achieve, what are their primary requirements, what are their secondary requirements? And then, when it comes to presenting your solution, that's what you're talking about.

Speaker 1: 15:02

You are not there to simply pitch, to simply talk through a brochure about your product. That is a good way to turn people off. You need to obviously need to cover what your product will do. You need to do the broch part of it, but every time you touch something on the brochure, you need to tie that back to their requirement. Why is this important? Well, it's important to them because they want to achieve this. They want to achieve that and this aspect of the solution will do that for them. So this is really important and this is possibly the biggest difference when you're comparing business to business, to business to consumer.

Speaker 1: 15:40

So it's really important that you tailor everything and that may turn into a proposal, sometimes in business to business, often, depending on what kind of industry you're in. But often some form of proposal will be required and obviously to do that you really have to tailor that to what the client is trying to achieve. You might support that proposal with your brochures or technical specs or any other supporting information, but they are supporting items. They are not the main offer. Okay, what about volumes and values? Well, typically you're looking at lower quantities but higher value per sale. Obviously, that can be flipped. You might be talking about hundreds of thousands of low value items, but they're bought as a single purchase, so they can be quite a large sale. So that, really, these are the key things about business to business. So I'll recap in a moment.

Speaker 1: 16:41

But it's really important that in the steps of the sale, that you really do understand how to qualify in good fit and qualify out the people who are likely to not buy from you, because you may well if you're going after a sale, you may well be looking at quite a lot of work, a lot of hours going into putting a proposal together. You might be involving other people within your own organisation, so it's not just your time, but from an organisational standpoint, you're committing, but from an organisational standpoint, you're committing significant resources to making this bid. So you really have to be highly confident that you can offer a solution that is likely to win the deal. If you are not confident and look, you need to decide what the cutoff is. It might be an 80% probability. It might be 50% probability. If it's less than 50%, I would really question whether this is something worth investing resources into. So it's really important that your qualification process initially is spot on so that you know that it's worth allocating resources to try and achieve this sale.

Speaker 1: 17:51

Then it's important that you go through the kind of sales steps that I talk about in Consultative Selling I've spoken about in other podcasts. But you have really your fact-finding, the fact-finding aspect, where you first sit down with a client. It might be your primary contact, but there might be a buyer in there. You might be a technical person that you need to get sign off from them, but you need to sit down with, or at least either individually or together sit down with the key stakeholders so that you have a really good understanding of what they want to get from this sale. And all of that goes into the proposal or the presentation. However you present your solution, all of those requirements have to be addressed, so it's really important that you do that well. So just to very quickly recap the kind of client you're looking at other businesses, organisations, could be government Buying decisions. You're looking at multiple stakeholders, so you need to know who they are and make sure that all of them are on board and that they there is sign off to go ahead. Sales cycle is likely to be a matter of weeks, months, possibly even years. If you look in government, the relationship is really good.

Speaker 1: 19:06

Focus on building trust, um build showing that you're professional. So you need to be very professional in your interactions and um your emphasis is this is account management. This is long-term account management, a long-term sales strategy. Decision drivers are likely to be financial, so return on investment, reducing costs, that kind of thing. It might be efficiency and there's a good chance. You need to have a good technical fit as well, so you need to understand what the technical influences are before you do that very early in the process.

Speaker 1: 19:40

The solution that you're offering is likely to be fairly complex, so it's either a product or a service, but something that has options that you tailor to the final client's need. The product complexity sorry, as I've said, is often tailored, it's likely to be high value. So your sales approach, as I've said, needs to be very much about demonstrating that you meet the client's needs. So this could also be a demonstration. So that was something I used to do a lot product demonstrations. So when I was doing that, rather than just go through every button in the menu in the things I was selling there were a lot of those I would definitely tailor my pitch so that I started with just recapping the key things that were important for this solution to deliver for them, and then I would do that as a checklist and then they could add anything that was there and then, through the demonstration, I would just tick off each one in turn, just show that aspect of the unit and then ask if there was anything else. So I didn't do a full demonstration in terms of every possible thing I could show on the product. I would cover the key things and anything else that occurred to me that would be beneficial to them that they might not have raised. But again, I'd keep it very much focused on their requirements. I think that's a really important thing to do.

Speaker 1: 21:07

Okay, so sales volumes and values tend to be fewer orders but higher value, and that is pretty much it. So hopefully that's given you some ideas. Hopefully it's given you a bit of a process. Anything you would like to hear from me, please drop a comment in, please give me a like, subscribe all that kind of good stuff and I'll talk to you in the next one, where I'm talking a lot more about business to consumer and what are the things you need to think about when you are in that scenario. So it's possible you tend to do one or the other, but occasionally you might get in a situation where you're doing both. So good luck with that and I'll speak to you again soon. Bye for now.