Increase B2B Sales with this Marketing Strategy (Works every time)

B2B sales, also referred to as business-to-business sales, are sales made from one company to another.

Rather than selling from one company directly to a consumer (B2C). 

So, in B2B, and unlike selling a $15 chocolate bar in a B2C sales transaction, B2B sales are more complex as they typically have a longer sales cycle and generally have higher-order values. 

You can increase B2B sales 3 ways:

1. Gain more customers
2. Increase the dollar amount of the transaction, and
3. Increase the frequency of transactions made by your customers.

An example of a B2B sale is a tech company selling digital marketing software to another company, or a food manufacturer selling 500 pounds of raw cacao to a seller of fine chocolates. 

While many companies sell both B2C and B2B in the marketing strategies, one theme is central to both selling methods:

A customer makes a decision to buy.

With recent changes in technology, B2B sales have significantly changed. Making sales has become more sophisticated, and most of the sales strategies that used to work are no longer operational. While many challenges come with B2B sales, there are many opportunities for you to increase your B2B sales. 

In this tutorial, we are going to focus on gaining new customers to increase your B2B sales. And at the bottom of this tutorial is a plan you can use as your own.

How to Find New Customers and Increase B2B Sales 

Regardless of the kind of business you have, whether B2B or B2C, it is almost impossible to make sales if your target customers are not aware of your products.

This is another reason why marketing is so important to be involved in the sales process. Marketing supports sales because marketing knows how to identify the ideal customer, ensure price points are optimized, and know how to do the market research to ensure there is a product-market fit and the sales department is staying ahead of the customer’s wants and needs. 

To find new customers and increase your B2B sales, go back to the basics: 

1. Conduct market research to identify an ideal target market of customers
2. Create a customer value proposition that your target market wants
3. Decide upon your sales strategy and marketing mix, also known as the 4 P’s of marketing: 1) Product, 2) Promotion, 3) Price, 4) Place.

Winning B2B customers can be a challenge due to the complicated decision-making process followed by buyers before purchasing your product. 

This is why you need a carefully developed sales pipeline and set of follow up procedures. We won’t be discussing the sales pipeline in this tutorial, but you can read more about the sales pipeline and important sales metrics here. 

It can be challenging to acquire B2B clients, but it is still possible when the right strategies are applied. To win more customers and increase your B2B sales, follow these 7 B2B sales strategies;

1. Offer Solutions to Your Target Customer

According to research, most customers want to understand how buying your product will solve their problems, which is not different for B2B customers. Instead of pushing your salespeople to sell products, encourage them to understand their target customers, their pain points, their needs, their problems. After this, come up with how they can address them to make your customers buy from you.

2. Make Use of Technology

With technology increasingly making its way in the business world, many digital customer acquisition strategies are evolving. As indicated in the table below, the use of technology in B2B businesses has highly increased.

Some of the technologies that you can use to boost your ability to acquire customers in B2B business include;

Email marketing campaigns

Digital catalogs

Social media marketing campaigns

Loyalty programs

B2B mobile ordering apps

Also, through technology, you can automate mundane tasks such as filling orders, giving your sales representatives time to manage other vital duties. Additionally, technology will help you tailor your offers to satisfy the customers, save time and meet the market demands 

3. Build Great Relationships With Your Customers

If you want to acquire customers and grow your B2B business, then maintaining a great relationship with your customers is one of the best ways to maintain sales and grow. It is one of the ways that you will compel them to refer other people to your products and services. Though maintaining this relationship may sound easy, it is challenging since B2B customers involve a group of decision-makers. However, since trust is the foundation for the relationship between you and your clients, aim to provide them with excellent communication, offer them quality, relevant information, and timely delivery. With time, you will win their trust.

4. Become Friends and Allies with Great Marketers to Find New B2B Sales and Customers 

You already know every business, regardless of size or industry, cannot thrive without customers. And that is the primary job of marketing: gaining new customers. Customers are the source of increased revenue, growth, and brand recognition. It is vital to keep your number of customers increasing by attracting new customers. To attract new customers and increase your customer base, become great friends and allies with excellent marketers, like the ones at Your Strategic Marketing Partner. 

For more information on specifically targeting new customers, visit out tutorial of the same topic:

How Do You Target New Customers? (6 simples) 

5. Network

Though networking may sound old-fashioned, it is an excellent way of building lasting relationships that will lead to new customers. For effective networking, come up with a networking plan and include your target customers and set goals for each interaction. Additionally, determine the amount of time to spend with each target and the results you expect. This way, your networking will be focused and yield results.

6. Offer Discounts and Incentives For New Customers

Finding an offer that will lure new customers is a clever way of winning them over. An example is giving a 20% discount on a specific product for new customers. This discount gives them a chance to try out your products at a low cost and keep them wanting to return. Once they come back, find a way of maintaining constant communication with them and keep enticing them to buy your products or services.

7. Partner With Complementary Businesses

According to studies partnering with businesses with a similar customer base will increase your sales. It gives you and the other business room to strategize on how you can target each other’s customers and make sales to each other. An example is a nutrition content website partnering with a gym products website. However, it is wise not to partner with direct competitors as it could bring issues due to conflict of interest.

A sample sales and marketing strategy you can use to increase B2B sales immediately

If you did no other sales campaign than this, you will see great results.

In fact, you’d be light years ahead of your competitors and your customers will love you for this, when it is well done.

For this B2B sales strategy to increase sales, you need to write good sales copy, have a great offer, put in careful tracking mechanisms, and provide excellent service to your customers.

This is why a marketing professional should be your best friend in this process.

With that, here’s what you need.

First, we are going to find a great list of your best customers (or soon to be best customers).  

If you have a house list available, segment your customer list this way. If you don’t have a customer list yet, review these two online advertising campaigns to start building your list now: online advertising and LinkedIn.

1. Carve out the top 5% of your customers that have spent the most money.
2. If you have 10,000 customers, carving out the top 5% out leaves us with 500 of the most awesome customers in your list – the ultimate in customer segmentation.

If you don’t have a plan for this ‘creme of the crop’, you are leaving huge sums of sales revenue and customer goodwill for your competition to scoop up.

Do you think some of these top 500 customers who already know you, trust you and like your product have the ability to buy more from you if given a great offer?

Yes. Absolutely. No doubt.

Let’s start by communicating with just 100 (or less) of this target group. 

Here’s what you need:

1. 100 bags of high end candies that won’t melt. We like Werthers but you can choose what you like.
2. 100 envelopes that are big enough for the candies. A priority mail envelope is a great choice.
3. 100 letters, 1 for each envelope.

Here’s your plan. And let’s get you a 50%, 80% or even 100% open rate using highly targeted direct mail.

The plan:

1. Do a small test on 20% of your list. If your list is 500, let’s go with 100, measure your success and work out the bugs. Or you could just mail all 500.
2. Get 100 bags of high end candy as cheaply as you find them at the 99 cent store, Walmart or other bargain retailer.
3. Write a compelling, personalized salesletter with a headline such as this:“Bob, here’s the sweetest deal we have ever made — reserved for our best customers”
4. Reference the bag of candy in the letter.
5. Make a great offer to this ‘creme of the crop’ list of customers. Be sure it’s a very high value offer that your customers want and that you make a great gross profit on. (A service, a product bundle, a hybrid, membership, product of the month club, etc)
6. Send this priority mail, fedex, ups or at least with a tracking number.
7. The day you mail, send each customer a brief personal email with the tracking number so they can expect it in the mail.
8. For best results: follow up with a phone call 2-3 days after they get the package.
9. Track your results: 1) # of responses, 2) total cost, 3) total sales, 4) total revenue.
10. Have fun!

With this one campaign alone you can easily realize up to a 100% direct mail open rate and multiples on ad spend of 2x, 5x, even 10x!

We’ll review more about these awesome return case studies in other tutorials.

This campaign will absolutely open you up to endless possibilities.And if you need assistance along the way, we are happy to help!