What’s your B2B sales process? Are you keeping up with the speed of business?
Amid the uncertainties in today’s world and advancements in technologies, businesses are rapidly evolving. As a result, their internal processes are also changing.
For example, in many B2B companies, the sales process is not limited to the sales team only.
Instead, the lines between the marketing and sales teams are getting blurred, and both teams are working together to achieve business goals.
However, it’s critical to understand that no matter how much innovation you’re adding to your B2B sales process, its foundation should be strong.
Therefore, you need a sustainable B2B sales process that is robust and well-defined.
Here’s how to create one.
8 Steps to Creating a Robust B2B Sales Process
Here are eight steps to follow to build a robust B2B sales process:
1. Identify All the Touchpoints in a Customer Buying Journey
By identifying all the critical touchpoints in a customer’s buying journey, you can prepare your sales teams to intervene where required. It would be a good idea to involve the sales teams in this process to gain their perspective.
This step is an ideation stage where you can create the structure for your B2B sales process.
2. Define Different Steps in the Sales Process
Once you’ve clearly articulated the customer buying journey, define corresponding stages in your B2B sales process.
The flow and structure of the sales process can vary across companies, products, and services.
Here’s a quick example of a sales process:
Step 1: Prospecting
Step 2: Making contact
Step 3: Qualifying the lead
Step 4: Nurturing the lead
Step 5: Sending a quote
Step 6: Handling queries
Step 7: Closing the deal
3. Determine the Objectives for Each Step
Once you’ve identified different steps in your B2B sales process, you need to set objectives for each step.
Ensure you answer the following questions for each step to set the right objectives:
- What is the goal of each step?
- What is the sales team expected to do at this step?
- What is the targeted outcome of the step?
4. Develop an Action Plan for Each Step
Once you’ve identified what your sales team is expected to do at each step, build a comprehensive action plan.
Ensure the action plan comprises all the steps that are critical to pushing the customer to the next stage of the buying journey.
5. Include the Right Sales Tools and Resources
To make your B2B sales process more efficient, include the right sales tools. Traditional sales processes are not enough to meet the growing customer demands. Therefore, apart from your sales team, you need the right tools and best practices to meet customer expectations.
See if you can integrate tools at every step of the sales process to enhance the efficiency of your sales team and help them achieve their goals. If you’re tracking all of your activity using Google Sheets or Excel, it’s difficult, perhaps impossible, to scale.
Here are some sales tools you can explore:
- A reliable and robust customer relationship management (CRM)
- Ready-to-use email templates
- Sales scripts
- Impactful and ready-to-use sales presentations
- Product demo videos
- Buyer personas
- Case studies and testimonials of existing customers
- How-to guides
- Competitor data and information
6. Encourage the Creation and Use of a Sales Playbook
A B2B sales playbook can act as go-to documentation for your sales team. A sales playbook comprises information and resources that your sales teams can use to develop their skills and enhance the overall B2B sales process.
A comprehensive and well-drafted B2B sales playbook can help sales teams effectively engage with clients at each step of the buying cycle. It’s especially important to have if you experience turnover of your sales team or you are expanding.
7. Partner With the Marketing Team
B2B companies with aligned marketing and sales teams can grow their sales up to 20% annually. Therefore, ensure you’re partnering with your marketing team as a part of your sales process.
Your B2B marketing team should know what your sales team is doing and vice-versa. Transparency between both teams will ensure marketing is supporting sales in the best way possible.
8. Continuously Review and Refine the Sales Process
Building a B2B sales process is not a one-time project. Instead, it requires constant monitoring, review, and refinement. Moreover, with so many new technologies continually introduced in the marketplace, you must keep testing them to assess whether what you’re using is the best solution for your organization.
It’s important to remember that customers’ needs and expectations keep changing. Therefore, to meet the changing demands, you need to upgrade your sales process.
.png)