Sales Strategy for B2B Companies (2022)

B2B sales can be exceedingly difficult if you don’t have a well thought out strategy in place. You see, if you don’t have the correct strategy locked down, your entire team will struggle to get qualified leads and keep your sales pipeline healthy and thriving.

B2B sales is also more than a simple transaction, and it requires intricate sales tools and techniques in order to be successful. 

Here, we  share some of the best B2B sales strategies with you to help you overcome sales challenges and keep you on top of your game as you head into 2022.

Strategic Selling

Strategic selling is a concept introduced by the Miller Heiman Group and is a plan of action that focuses on assisting businesses with deals that are scalable and insights-driven.

The key to this approach lies in identifying various points of contacts within the company you want to approach. Once you have done this and determined the level of importance and influence these contacts have in their respective businesses, you begin to reach out to them individually with meaningful conversation, establishing your value proposition according to the specific person and their department within the business. 

Strategic selling has become an important part of sales strategy as it forces your sales team to go beyond blindly contacting an organisation, and encourages them to do in-depth research and dig deeper into the prospective business and their employee structure. 

By doing this kind of research on an account, your sales team is able to identify the individuals within the company that are the decision makers - without having to go through a variety of channels to reach the top and finally get a meeting. 

Solution Selling

Solution selling, as the name aptly suggests, focuses on the needs of the prospective client more than on the actual service or product sale process. 

Essentially, your sales team will focus on identifying or helping to diagnose the needs of a prospect - as well as their goals and challenges. Once they identify the need, they move on to recommending a service or product that will help the prospect overcome their challenges. It is important to note that a solution selling strategy works well for businesses that offer custom solutions. 

The process of Solution Selling can be seen in the below example: 

• Research: Prepare by researching a prospective client's pain points and identify a solution that you offer that could fix these problems.
• Diagnose: Speak with your prospect and ask the right questions in order to understand their business and what they need.
• Qualify: Based on the interaction and conversation had with the prospect, figure out if they fit your target market. If they suit your customer persona, find out who the decision maker in the business is and get into contact with them.
• Educate: If the prospect qualifies for your service offering, educate them about your processes and how your service will help them overcome their particular problems - and explain why your service is better than that of your competitors.
• Solve: Offer your potential customer a tailored solution that is based on their specific needs.
• Close: Now that you have shown your prospect what you offer and how you can add value to their business, it is time to negotiate and close your deal!

Solution selling works well for B2B businesses because right from the beginning of the sales cycle, you make your prospective client feel valued and understood. By being offered a tailored solution to suit their needs will also establish a trusted and stronger relationship between your business and the prospect - which in turn will lead to more sales.

Account Based Selling

A sales tactic that Gartner predicted would be taken on by 75% of B2B businesses, Account Based Selling is about treating every one of your accounts as a market of one. This means a multi-touch point, multi-channel strategy that is rolled out across the business to establish contact with stakeholders of the prospective company.

This tactic involves the following:

• Selecting Targeted Accounts: List all of the companies that you want to offer your solution to, this should be based on a set of criteria, ensuring you are targeting businesses that will benefit from your services.
• Research and Identify: Investigate and conduct in-depth research on the common challenges that your targeted accounts face and identify the decision makers and influencers within these companies.
• Tailor your Value Proposition: Create a value proposition that is tailored to the company you approached to ensure you address their unique challenges and goals.
• Outreach: Reach out to the various decision makers or stakeholders within the company and begin a meaningful conversation. 

To successfully implement this tactic, you need to have enough information on your target market and existing clients in order to identify your ideal target market. What makes this tactic so popular is that it uses different value propositions that are based on the buyer persona and where they are at within the sales cycle - addressing their goals and challenges head on.

By delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time, Account Based Selling is on the rise as one of the most valuable sales strategies today. 

Social Selling

Forrester reported that 68% of B2B customers research the services they require on social media - this isn’t much of a surprise in today's digital climate. 

Social selling refers to a sales strategy that is designed to introduce your businesses to your defined target audience and then focuses on building and nurturing relationships with prospective businesses. This includes using social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others, where you are able to share informative content that is designed to engage with potential customers and current customers. 

However, it is important to note that there is a difference between marketing with social media and selling through social media. The latter focuses on building relationships with individual prospects across these particular channels - while marketing is about delivering a message to many within the target market. Essentially, social selling is when your sales people will use social media to engage with prospects by answering questions, responding to comments and by sharing content through the entire buying process - from awareness to when the prospect has decided to buy. 

The goal with social selling is to establish your business as an industry expert by having conversations with companies instead of simply selling to them - and the better the conversation the greater your conversion rate. 

In Conclusion

There are a variety of sales techniques that you can implement for your B2B business and choosing a strategy may be difficult or overwhelming.

What we can say with certainty is this: sales strategies for B2B have changed in the digital climate and it is now up to you to put in the time and research into identifying the right prospect for your business, and through digital tactics you are able to reach out to them - with the right message - at the right time. 

Does your business want to put together a powerful B2B sales strategy?  

If so, we can help. Nexa has been generating highly qualified sales leads for businesses of all types for almost a decade. We have both the experience and track record to help businesses in all industries generate highly qualified sales leads.

Contact Nexa by filling in the form below, and begin taking the steps toward sales success.