If your B2B sales strategy ROI is low, then your entire sales ROI is also likely to be low.
As the core of B2B sales success, your strategy is exceedingly important! Without a winning strategy, all the other pieces of sales success fall out of place.
To help increase your strategy ROI and resultantly make more sales in less time, we’re sharing exactly why your B2B sales strategy ROI is low. On top of that, we’re also sharing what you can do to immediately turn your strategy around and increase sales NOW.
Unless your strategy is in order, then achieving your sales goals is nearly impossible. More specifically, you likely:
- Have potential customers regularly ghost you;
- Feel completely out of control during the sales process; and
- Continue to spin your wheels without going anywhere.
The bottom line is that B2B sales strategies are central to sales and therefore business success. If you're currently not manifesting the results you want, then getting your strategy in line is priority #1.
What Are B2B Sales Strategies?
A sales strategy defines your overall sales approach. A sales approach is the way in which you carry out or execute the selling process.
You can think of it like this: Your selling process defines ‘what’ you do to close deals, while the strategy outlines ‘how’ you close deals. And, the how is just as important, if not more important, than the what!
Why?
Because how you approach sales impacts the way that the B2B buyers feel during their buying process, and the way you make buyers feel is what motivates them to make purchasing decisions.
From now on, think of your strategy as the way in which you approach the entire selling process. And most importantly, never forget that the ‘how’ is just as important as the ‘what’!
Here’s the Key to a Successful B2B Sales Strategy
In short, there is a single key to a successful business-to-business sales strategy. Whether or not you incorporate that key into your strategy determines whether or not you have a high ROI and achieve sales success.
Here’s the key: You need to portray and carry yourself as an absolute expert in your field.
More specifically, you need to approach the sales process as if you’re an expert surgeon who is:
- Irreplaceable;
- Highly trustworthy; and
- Necessary to customer success.
Unless your entire sales strategy emphasizes the fact that you’re an expert, then not only will you not close deals, but you’ll also be treated as a vendor.
Moreover, the core reason why you have such a low B2B sales strategy ROI is that you don’t approach sales as if you’re an expert at what you do! Without approaching sales as if you’re an expert, you will:
- Use all the wrong sales techniques;
- Botch the selling process; and
- Ultimately lose your potential customer’s respect.
The key to strategy success, and therefore overall business and sales success, is approaching the sales process like the expert you are. You can have the best product or service in the world, but unless your strategy oozes expertise, it’ll all go to waste.
Here’s Exactly Why Your Current B2B Strategy ROI Is so Low
If you’re currently pounding the pavement with your sales strategy but still not getting anywhere, you’ve come to the right place. Below explains exactly why your strategy ROI is so low. More specifically, below explains how you approach sales in a way that de-emphasizes your expertise.
Start here to increase your B2B sales strategy and overall sales ROI! And just remember, at the end of the day, YOU are the expert who your customer base can’t afford to lose.
Your Business Vision Is Unclear
First things first: Every expert has a vision.
For example, doctors envision a world in which more people live healthier lives, and then they make moves in order to turn that vision into reality. The fact that doctors have a vision is evident in everything they do. As a result, the people whom they work with respect them as total experts.
What’s your vision?
Without a clear business vision, then nobody will see you as a trusted sales expert. Perhaps, you won’t even see yourself as an expert!
That said, the first step to increasing your strategy ROI is to clarify your vision. To clarify your vision, think about the impact that you’re trying to create through your business.
For example, Steve Jobs had a vision of a world empowered through technology. At first, he had no idea that he would create products like the iPhone, but the iPhone ended up being the vessel for that vision. Thanks to his vision, he’s now one of the world’s most infamous CEOs.
Furthermore, without a clear vision, don’t expect a high strategy ROI.
Clarity, Clarity, Clarity
Many CEOs and B2B sales teams have a vision, but it isn’t clear. It’s as if there’s a dense fog in-between where they are now and where they want to be in the future.
Sound familiar? Not having a clear vision is one of the most pervasive issues in the B2B business world.
To be straight-up, having an unclear vision is virtually meaningless. It’s almost as bad as not having any vision at all!
To clarify your company’s vision, think back to the reason why you started your business in the first place. What impact did you want to make on the world, or what evident customer need were you trying to solve?
The answers to these questions should certainly help you clarify your vision.
Is Your Unique Value Proposition Clear?
Hidden within every business vision is a unique value proposition (UVP).
A UVP is the unique value that your B2B company brings to the table. It’s the thing that makes your existing customers say, “We chose company X because they were different from all the other options”. So, the unique value is something that makes you stand out from your competitors while captivating your target customers.
For example, your unique value can be anything from having the best customer experience to the greatest product or service quality. Ultimately, as the name says, the whole idea is that your unique value proposition makes your company unique in the market!
Once you know what your UVP is, your job is to interject it throughout your entire sales strategy. By doing so, you start to attract your ideal prospective customers while confirming your expert status.
Every expert is an expert because they bring something unique to the table that nobody else can bring... So, what is your unique value?
Lead Generation Is Weak
According to most sales and marketing teams, lead generation is their Achilles heel in the sales cycle. It’s the point in the selling process in which they experience the most amount of headaches.
However, the hard truth is that most salespeople inflict these headaches on themselves! How? Because they don’t have a firm strategy that emphasizes their expertise to stand on.
Moreover, if you have a low strategy ROI, then it’s probably because you approach lead gen as if you’re a vendor. And as the first big step in the selling process, if lead gen is weak, then the entire rest of the selling process suffers.
That said, you can simply increase your strategy ROI by approaching lead generation as the expert you are. What B2B customer wouldn’t want to have the chance to hear from an expert?
Not Every Lead Is a Qualified Lead
How often does this happen to you: You’re going crazy with cold calling and emailing trying to get leads into your sales pipeline, but you’re just not getting anywhere. But then, all of a sudden, a lead responds to your email! Suddenly, disappointment turns into pure elation. After an initial meeting with the lead, you realize that the lead isn’t qualified, but you keep pressing forward because you’re just happy that you were able to capture a lead in the first place. Eventually, the lead falls out of the pipeline and you’re back to square one.
Here’s the thing: Not every lead is a qualified lead, so don’t simply throw a line out into the sea and accept whatever you catch. Instead, be the kind of expert who waits for what they deserve, and doesn’t accept less than that.
Focus on Quality Over Quantity
When it comes to B2B sales leads, quality > quantity.
Like I mentioned above, would an expert sales professional accept any lead regardless of how qualified they are, or would they wait until they capture an ideal customer from their target market?
Unless you become the kind of expert who waits for what they deserve instead of simply accepting whatever they can get their hands on, then the potency of your sales strategy will never increase.
Be Straightforward and Follow-Up
The single-most basic sales tactic sales reps can use to immediately increase their sales strategy ROI is to be consistent with their follow-up.
Believe it or not, most sales professionals make one or two cold calls, and after not hearing back, they simply stop trying.
What kind of expert would let a potential opportunity slip out of their hands so easily? Only the kind of expert who isn’t all-in on serving customers in order to bring their company’s vision to life.
Sometimes, the potency of your sales strategy can go from 0 to 100 in a second if you simply take 1-minute to follow up!
The B2B Sales Process Is a Disaster
Do you feel like you’re jumping through hoops during the selling process? Is your process so complicated that you feel like you’re constantly putting out fires?
To put it simply, you can have the best sales strategy in the world but completely undercut its potency if your sales process is a disaster.
Why?
Let’s say that you have a complicated sales process with multiple steps, phases, and hoops to jump through. Because you have all these different moving pieces, more problems inevitably begin to arise. As a result of having additional problems on your plate, you now have to go and take care of those problems instead of actually focusing on the selling process. Because your focus is taken off of the selling process, even more problems begin to arise!
So as you can see, complicated sales processes are like breeding grounds for problems. And when there are so many problems on your plate to deal with, your sales strategy ROI inevitably starts to drop.
The simple and obvious solution... Simplify and shorten your process!
The Simpler the Better
The simplest selling processes are the best selling processes. When you keep things simple:
- There are fewer potential fires to put out;
- You can focus solely on understanding customers and their pain points; and
- You emphasize the fact that you’re an expert at what you do.
If you think that complication and complexity are the keys to success, then think again! Going the complex route will only set you and your sales team back.
The Shorter the Better
Take a moment to put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes: If you had a pain point that needed solving, wouldn’t you want to find a solution for it and get it solved in as little time as possible? Wouldn’t you want to find someone to help you, and then run with it?
Probably!
When you overcomplicate the selling process, it inevitably gets longer than it needs to be. When it’s longer than it needs to be, your time gets wasted, the potential customer’s time gets wasted, and you undercut your expertise.
Think about it... Wouldn’t an expert doctor want to help their patient find a solution ASAP?
Similarly, you should keep your process as un-complex as possible so that it stays as short and sweet as possible.
Prepare Your Process Ahead of Time
Would you believe me if I told you that many sales teams don’t even have a defined selling process? Instead of showing up to the party prepared, they simply wing the sales process and still expect to get good results.
Not preparing a process ahead of time is like asking for sales to turn into utter chaos! Because, when you’re not prepared, fear starts to kick in and create disaster.
So, instead of winging things, show up completely prepared. That is, at least, if you want to avoid disaster and have your sales strategy still shine through.
You’re Neglecting Customer Relationships
At the end of the day, B2B business is about building relationships with new and current customers. If you want any hope of business and sales success, then relationships should always be at the forefront of your mind.
Unfortunately, many salespeople get totally lost and/or distracted throughout the sales cycle. Instead of paying attention to customers and their needs, they’re getting caught up in the weeds. As a result, the customer-supplier relationship inevitably begins to fail.
You can have the best sales strategy ever, but if you neglect customer relationships, particularly those with the decision-makers, then your ROI will go right down the tubes.
If you focus instead on forming solid, long-term relationships with customers, then your ROI will certainly make a positive jump!
Personalize the Buyer’s Journey
A recent Salesforce survey revealed that 76% of B2B buyers say that there is a lack of personalization in their buying experience.
Rather than feeling as if they’re an individual with a sales rep’s full attention, they feel as if they’re just a number on a list or a box to be checked.
One of the simplest ways to personalize the buyer’s journey and improve the ensuing relationship is by customizing their buying experience.
The way to do that:
- Asking in-depth questions about your customer’s own business vision;
- Working one-on-one with different stakeholders in the deal; and
- Forming a personal relationship as well as a professional one!
Moreover, showing the prospect that you sincerely care about their success is the best way to personalize their experience and ultimately increase your strategy’s potency.
Listen More Than You Speak
Here’s the thing: The selling process is about understanding customers and their problems. If you don’t understand them, then the entire selling process is a bust.
And while many sales reps want to understand their customers on a deeper level, they take action contrary to that fact. More specifically, they spend a majority of the sales process talking about themselves instead of listening to prospects!
What makes you think that you’ll understand the customer if all you do is talk about yourself? On top of that, what makes you think that customers will want to form a relationship with you if they can’t ever get a word in?
Talk all you want, but it won’t do your customer relationship or sales strategy any good.
Stop Being a Robot
Believe it or not, most B2B buyers want to work with fun and interesting salespeople, not robots!
However, instead of letting their real persona shine through, many salespeople reduce themselves to robots during the selling process. By that, we mean that they don’t let their true personality shine through whatsoever.
What makes you think that a potential customer will want to have a relationship with you if they can’t even see your true colors?
When it comes to customer relationships, stop being a robot! Never be afraid to let your true personality shine through.
Energy Is Missing
Have you ever walked into a sales pitch and been completely captivated by the salesperson giving the pitch? Was there something about them that completely won you over in an instant?
If you’ve been there before, then you know exactly what we’re talking about!
But, what exactly makes these kinds of salespeople so enthralling? Simple! They bring positive energy into the room!
You can have the most perfect sales strategy ever invented, but if all you do is radiate negative energy, then the strategy gets completely overshadowed.
Imagine you walk into a doctor’s appointment and although they’re a supposed expert, there’s a coldness or negative energy surrounding them that you just can’t ignore. Despite their expertise, wouldn’t you go looking for a new doctor?
Bringing the right energy to the room can change your strategy ROI in an instant and in the most positive way.
Where Is Your Motivation?
One of the key reasons why many sales reps carry negative energy into the selling process is because they don’t have a lot of motivation. They don’t lack motivation because they’re lazy, but rather because they’re overwhelmed with fear.
Bringing the right energy to the room starts with increasing your motivation. Increasing motivation starts with learning how to manage your fear.
Fear is the antithesis of a solid sales strategy. You’ll never increase your ROI and achieve your sales goals if you continue to let fear get in the way.
Final Thoughts on Why Your B2B Sales Strategy ROI Is Low
As the centerpiece of the overall sales master plan, your B2B sales strategy impacts every sales tool in your toolbox. So, getting it in order should be priority number one from here on out.
The good news is that, if you’ve had a low ROI up until this point and had no idea what was causing it, then turning it around is now 100% within your power! It’s not your team members or potential buyers throwing you off. Instead, it’s your strategy, and it is completely in your hands to turn it around.
Ultimately, increasing ROI is up to you and you alone! How much longer will you wait to up your strategy game and start making more sales in less time like you’re truly capable of?
B2B Sales Strategy Framework for Sales Growth
The B2B Sales Strategy That Leading Sales Pros Live By
