Sales Insights for B2B sales

Here’s a couple of insights I gained over the years while working in B2B sales.

Know your products / production capacities very well.

You must know all of your products like the back of your hand. You have to learn the entire catalogue (almost) by heart. What product is used for what and how, its good and bad sides, which products can be combined together, what are different subtypes of each product... You need to know all this stuff, because only then will you be able to continue developing relationships with existing clients, and only then will you be able to approach new clients in meaningful ways. Otherwise you simply look incompetent and you erode the reputation of the entire company.

Sales is not just about sales and closing the deals.

It's easy to get obsessed about finding new clients and closing the deals. But sales often comprise much more than that. Your principal job is to maintain and develop relationships with existing clients. This means keeping in touch with the production and/or suppliers to make sure the goods are of good quality and ready for shipment when promised. This also means trying to sell new products to existing clients. When you add a couple of new products to the things you sell to a client it's the same thing as if you found a completely new client, with the added benefit of the existing relationship. Often, the old clients are the best "new" clients (that is, for the new products).

Making sure the relationships with existing clients are well maintained is what ultimately brings bread to the table, and is the source of livelihood for your company. While finding a new client is always nice, losing an important existing client can be catastrophic and should always be avoided.

Maintaining good relationships also brings it own rewards: sometimes in prices, sometimes in quantities, and sometimes in types of collaboration you might never have envisioned.

Don't underestimate delivery time!

When you work in sales you often want to close the deal with new clients and hence give them an offer that is as attractive as possible, to maximize your chances of successful deal. But if this means giving unrealistic delivery times that your suppliers and/or production can't respect, this is a huge mistake. It's better to err on the side of caution and give delivery times a little longer than what is actually needed to make sure the production can be done, and that there won't be late deliveries. You should be very cautious about delivery times, and never underestimate them, even if it means not closing the deal and losing a potential new client. This is because such a client was probably not worthy of your time to begin with, as they are the type of client that would always force you to rush when he has an urgency, instead of planning his purchases in advance and ordering in such a way that ensures he receives the goods regularly, without putting too much pressure on you.

Spend some time studying the client before approaching them.

Sometimes it's tempting to use a template e-mail and send the same introductory e-mail to countless potential clients. By pure chance and the law of large numbers this can work. But it's much better to spend at least a couple of minutes studying potential new clients before contacting them. This will allow you to know exactly what their needs are and which of their problems you can solve with your products/services. You can still use the template e-mail, but instead of blindly copy/pasting it, you can adjust and personalize it, to adress the needs of your potential client. They really like it when they see how much effort you made to understand their company and their situation, before you reached them. This maximizes the chances of establishing a solid relationship from the day zero.

Approach clients by adressing their needs and offering solutions.

As said before, there's no better thing to say in the intro e-mail then to talk about your client and their company, and NOT too much about your company and products. Your products/services are only important insomuch as they can help your client solve their problems. If you see that your client is reselling some items similar to what your company produces, or that you can produce some of the stuff they use or sell, this is the thing you should talk about. This is a perfect opportunity to offer them your product which they might find more interesting than what they were using before.

Find balance between automation and quantity vs. personalization and quality

The law of large numbers combined with low-effort template e-mails can work. Personalized approach based on studying your clients, adjusting intro messages, or calling them directly via phone works even better. But it also takes much more time to contact 10 new potential clients this way. So what is better? Well, ideally, quality is better than quantity and personalized approach is better, but there are situations that call for massive e-mail campaigns without too much effort for personalization.

Typically the higher the probability of closing the deal with a potential client, the more detailed and personalized your approach should be. You don't want to mess it up when it comes to contacting the companies you have serious chances of doing business with.

On the other hand, if you're looking to enter new markets or try producing/selling products outside your usual program, and when the chances of establishing relationship are relatively small, you don't want to go too slowly or make too much effort when contacting such companies. A template e-mail is perfectly fine, and if your intro email sits particularly well with certain potential clients (out of hundreds you contacted), you still have chance of starting the relationship and developing your business.

Fairs are excellent source of information about potential clients

To get to know plenty of potential clients, and to present your company in the best possible way, it is a great idea to go visit fairs dedicated to your industry.

The thing that many people don't know is that you can take some advantage of fairs without actually visiting them. Most fairs have websites with detailed lists of participants, alongside their short descriptions. These lists are gold for you. They can give you basic info about countless potential new clients, and what's more, these lists are systematic, which allows you too to be systematic in your approach to contacting them.

Grab a phone and call the potential clients alongside sending them e-mails. It's not either/or. It works best together.

When I send numerous template e-mails to potential clients that are relatively low priority, I don't accompany my e-mails with phone calls.

But when I want to reach out to a potentially serious opportunity, I always both call and send an e-mail.

I've found the best practice is to first call, introduce yourself, try to get to talk to a decision making person, or at least get thier e-mail adress (which is much better than sending e-mails to info@companyxyz.com), let them know that you'll send an intro e-mail, and only then actually send it.

When they are expecting an e-mail from you, there's much higher probability they'll actually read it and pay attention to it, instead of ignoring or deleting it.

Followup after initial contact is extremely important.

You can easily get obsessed with contacting as many new clients as possible. While the mindset is praiseworthy, such behavior is almost always a mistake. If you keep doing it like that, it won't be long before you exhaust pretty much the entire pool of potential clients you can work with, without getting a proper feedback from them (interested/non-interested).

Instead you should keep track of whom you contacted and write follow-up emails, until you either get a reply from them, or you realize that they are not interested.

My process was like this: if I send an e-mail today, and they don't reply, I send a follow-up email, after 3 working days. The third mail one full week after the second one. The fourth e-mail 2-3 weeks after the third one.

If they don't reply after four e-mails it's relatively safe to assume they are not interested.

If you didn't call them during the initial approach, you can substitute some of the follow-up e-mails with phone calls. Sometimes just one phone call is all you need to know whether there's potential or not.

Microsoft Excel can be a decent CRM software.

People often ask whether they need a CRM. And my answer is yes, you need a CRM. Or to be more precise, you must have some system, some procedure, some way of monitoring yourself and collecting data about potential new clients, as well as existing clients. For this purpose, however, you don't always need a complicated CRM software. What you need is a basic business software or some ERP that will take care of your orders, order confirmations, invoices, client database etc. On top of that, especially when it comes to monitoring your dealing with potential new clients, sometimes all you need is a couple of cleverly designed Microsoft Excel workbooks, which can often accomplish pretty much the same thing as CRM, while giving you much more flexibility.

Remeber, you must use them consistently and in a disciplined fashion for it to be useful. Otherwise, it's quite easy to lose track of the status of your situation with potential new clients.

Don’t let emotions get the better of you

Perpahs the most important thing in sales is to not let the emotions control you.

Your job is to always do the right thing and do your job properly, and you must not let emotions compromise your decision making abilities.

In practice this typically means the following:

• Don't lower the price too much, even if sales figures are going down and even if the management is pressuring you to sell.
• Don't promise too fast / unrealistic shipment times even if the client insists!
• Don't do stupid things, just to impress the management (or out of fear they'll do something if you don't). Typical example of "stupid things" is wasting time contacting prospects that are 0 chance of success, just to improve your numbers, and to be able to tell the boss how many new prospects you contacted.
• Keep boundaries of your work. Take full responsibility for what IS your job, don't mess with the stuff that are NOT your job (unless asked by boss), and don't let other people (except your supervisor) mess with your job.