10 Secrets of Successful B2B Selling

10 secrets of successful B2B selling
Tuesday, 26 August 2008 3:04

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Dealing with other businesses requires a different approach to the consumer market. Its not
an easy transition, but MIKE PRESTON has divined the secrets to success from Australias
experts.
By Mike Preston
Dealing with other businesses requires a different approach to the consumer market. Its not an easy transition, but we have
divined the secrets to success from Australias experts.
There are almost two million businesses in Australia, and each one is a potential customer if
you know how to sell to them.
Successfully marketing and selling to business requires a specialised set of skills and
strategies. Simply applying consumer sales strategies in the business-to-business context will
not produce results. Because small and medium sized business owners and managers are
generally incredibly busy and cost-conscious, a poorly tailored marketing message or ill
informed sales pitch will quickly put them off-side.
But patience and a marketing and sales strategy that hits the right buttons can mean snaring
business customers that will stick with you for the long haul and often without the need for
expensive mass market advertising.
Fortunately, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Experienced sales and marketing gurus
and high-performing businesses in the B2B space shared their top 10 secrets to successful
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buying behaviour in the technology space, for example, identifying early adopters can be
important.
2. Size matters
sized businesses and the big corporates will be unlikely to be successful with either.
This is true for a range of reasons, not the least of which being that small and medium sized
businesses hate being treated as second-class citizens. A marketing message that gives the
impression it was tailored for a corporate audience sends a clear and negative message to the
business owner expect to be treated like a second-class customer.
More practically, often the small to medium sized business will use a product or service very
differently from a larger corporation. MYOB is the classic example of a company that
appreciates that size matters its market break-down goes way beyond large, medium and
small business to capture a wide range of finer organisational distinctions.
Our products work across a wide range of vertical segments, but for us its the size and
structure of a business that makes a huge amount of difference, chief executive Tim Reed
says. Its things like whether they have specialised staff or is the business owner doing
everything? Do they have section managers or a payroll person? Every business is different,
but those things tell us a huge amount about the types of solutions we need to take to them.
That information is valuable to MYOB because this tells it how and by who its software is likely
to be used. But it is also significant in terms of identifying relevant purchasing decision makers
and influencers for marketing purposes.
The style of marketing and sales information the small and medium sized businesses tend to
be most responsive too also differs. Technical information on performance may impress a
specialist in a large business, but business owners who are often forced to be a jack-of-all-
trades may respond better to testimonial information.
The reason? Small and medium sized businesses tend to be risk averse. If they are going to
invest in a product or service, reassurance that it has worked for other businesses will often go
further than an impressive list of whiz-bang specs.
3. Train your sales staff to understand business
Many businesses design training programs to ensure their staff are thoroughly conversant with
their product or service ranges features and advantages. When selling B2B, however, this is
just the beginning.
Sue Barrett, principal of Barrett sales consultancy, says the more important skill a B2B sales
person must have is the ability to understand their customers business.
In the business-to-customer context, the pitch tends to come first. But Barrett says successful
B2B sales people understand that they can only make a strong pitch once they have a strong
grasp of what the potential clients business does and where it is going.
You need a better quality of skill in B2B sales, Barrett says. They need to know how to
think, not just what to think, so they can engage in a meaningful dialogue about the future of a
business. Just flogging a product wont get you very far.
product or service can help the client achieve their vision more quickly, cheaply or importantly
than they could without it.
This is easier said than done particularly where you are trying to spread limited sales and
marketing resources across a large number of small potential clients. But Brennan IT sales
to be the goal.
One of the key things we and others do is to understand your market and have a very clear
value proposition, ideally per client. We have all been guilty of coming up with a generic
statement to market hoping to gain traction, but it wont get that if its not specific, so per client
has to be the goal, Sims says.
One-to-one marketing is the ideal. It will usually be impossible to do that, but to get as close
as possible you need to craft a value proposition around solid information about the company
and then have sales staff tailor it further to a particular client, he says.
One mistake to avoid is taking a scatter-gun approach. The temptation, especially for
marketers with a mass consumer market product sales background, is to try and communicate
the full range of product and sales options to potential clients in the hope that one will hit a hot
spot.
But this is inconsistent with the tailored, one-on-one approach that is most likely to work in
B2B. Instead, identify one or two products that are most likely to be useful and focus on them.
If they are embraced by the client, further products can be introduced down the track if
appropriate.
To make things a bit easier, use research and your anecdotal experience to identify the issues
and products or services that will tend to be relevant to clients. For example, Entity Solutions
sells administrative services to independent contractors and placement/recruitment services to
big corporates. In each case, CEO Franceschini says, the company has a firm idea of the kind
of needs they will be addressing.
We know the big corporates are focused on compliance, so for them our approach is all about
peace of mind and credibility on statutory compliance. For the independent contractors
administrative convenience is the issue and so for them the message is structured very
differently, Franceschini says.
5. Direct marketing and cold calling can work in B2B
A certain contempt has attached to direct marketing and cold calling, particularly in the
consumer space where most people see it as an unwelcome intrusion into their private lives.
The situation is different in the B2B context. Most of the companies SmartCompany spoke to
that sell B2B say they find direct marketing (usually by email) and telemarketing to be a
relatively cost-effective lead generator.
According to Brennan ITs Sims, direct marketing success is not just a matter of buying the
biggest contact lists without solid market research, the communiqus are likely to fall on
deaf ears.
The issue with consumers occurs when a business calls them about something theyre not
interested in, and its the same in the business market if a call or email is irrelevant, Sims
says. You need to do your research and understand what clients issues are and the
qualified customers who are searching for a product like yours come to your website first.
Carolyn Stafford, principal of Connect Marketing, advises businesses to seek professional
assistance in putting together a website.
is essentially just a brochure in electronic form, Stafford says. It is such a critical thing, that
you need to make sure it is properly designed and provides rich and changing content to
visitors it is not something you can set and forget.
7. Information based PR and marketing is cheap and effective
SmartPath and Brennan IT publishe white papers. Entity Solutions participates in a
benchmark survey of the independent contractor sector it works in, and MYOB surveys its
small and medium size business customers.
The reason? By providing information that potential clients may find independently interesting,
they hope to bring them within the orbit of their brand.
The benefits of doing so are numerous. MYOBs small business survey earns it significant
media attention because it is a relatively detailed and comprehensive snapshot of attitudes in
the sector, while it also provides the company with valuable intelligence on its client base.
For example, its move into web hosting has been partly driven by a survey finding that a
majority of small businesses dont have their own websites.
Our survey doesnt talk about our products at all, but we think it helps us build a brand by
associating us with the qualities we want to place on our products, MYOBs Reed says. It is
a most effective channel to market because you get broad exposure for next to nothing.
A website chock full of interesting information will also be more of a magnet for customers,
both because of the content itself and the search engine optimisation boost it brings.
For others, the key use of research and reports is to be able to put something other than
marketing guff in front of the sceptical eyes of direct marketing recipients.
There is an awful lot of fatigue in corporate land in terms of being sold to. Theyve seen the
sell a thousand times before, but if you can send information to a decision maker that is
relevant, informative and helps them carry out their work better, theyll accept it, SmartPaths
Hare says.
8. Run seminars and webinars
A related marketing tool also popular among successful B2B sellers is the seminar. Like
surveys and reports, it prioritises information over the hard sell, but it has one additional
strength the opportunity for face-to-face meetings with current and potential clients.
The seminars dont need to be about your product it is more important to deliver information
that is interesting and relevant.
MYOB often runs seminars, both on its product and related business subjects. Chief executive
Reed says it is a particularly effective form of marketing to small and medium sized business.
It is cost effective because it is one-to-many, great for marketing to small business because
accountants that recommend our product are a big part of our strategy but it took 5 or 10
years to earn the confidence of that channel, he says.
It can also be hugely useful if you can turn your existing customers into advocates for your
brand, a process that can be helped along by offering discounts or benefits for referrers.
10. Only use advertising if it is tightly targeted
Given the costs involved, it may come as a relief that advertising is not central to most B2B
strategies. Indeed for several firms it plays no role at all.
Entity Solutions Franceschini says his firm stopped advertising around five years ago.
We just dont think advertising is a very effective way of getting to a business audience. We
would rather do things like talk at a workplace relations conference or bring out a white paper.
Even if we were to advertise in an industry magazine, people will see it and probably not give
it a second glance and they know its been paid for, he says.
Unless youve got a huge budget and youre going to do a concerted campaign to get
traction, youd get far more value spending the $100,000 on a sales person.
Brennan ITs Sims says the difficulty in measuring return on investment in advertising is
another big negative.
We think its hard to get a message that will pay a return. Were focused on the mid market,
so there arent a great variety of mediums available and we dont have a big budget. If we do
advertise we try and be very targeted and look for measurable returns, Sims says.
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