How to transition to virtual sales in B2B

Prior to the pandemic era securing a meeting appointment with a decision-maker in a properly profiled target customer was already a difficult task. Now is virtually impossible to set up an online call appointment unless it is with someone that you already knew in person or that comes as a referral. In addition, once you get the meeting, the teleconference setup makes it challenging to close a consulting sales process where you need to explain rather complex solutions.

How are we B2B salespeople going to make it through this difficult times?

This question has been all over my days and nights in the past few months since I know that the capacity for me to provide to my family will depend significantly on how I tackle this market transition. I could not simply wait and see what happens at the end, so I decided to embark on the challenge to properly setup my B2B sales process systematically so that it became entirely digital with win ratios equal or better than the historical ones.

Following my oversimplified conclusions, so far, after 3 weeks in this process and 2 weeks to launch.

1. Completely build your offer from scratch, making sure you take into consideration your customer's objections, pains, desires, problems, obstacles and frequently asked questions. You can gather those from surveys on your current customer base, or seeking the web, or even getting polls via LinkedIn. It is very likely that you will get a lot of your current solutions validated, but others will not.
2. Assemble an offer that tackles those objections, pains, desires, problems, obstacles and FAQs. This may include renaming some of your products, splitting solutions so that they are properly perceived and acknowledged, etc.
3. Order matters a lot, so make sure each part of your offer is properly sequenced in your sales funnel sketch. Presenting the more desired and simple solution first, and only after the customer makes the first buy, then you discuss the more complex and sophisticated.
4. Mind your words. The way you communicate your message is very important and you need to use the right scrips to attract, retain, and secure your potential customer interest. Make sure you don't reinvent the wheel here, there are plenty of resources to get yourself suited with direct marketing scripts.
5. Make sure you tell your personal true story. Although this is B2B, behind the desks and titles there is always one person and people buy from people they trust. Your story must tell the buyer the following: why should I buy from you? why are you capable to sell this? Focus on telling your epiphany bridge on when you were not an expert on the subject and discovered this path. Use proven scripts to show the situations you were you experiencing, try carefully to lead the buyer so he makes his own conclusions to realize that your solution is the ONLY path to success.
6. Get comfortable publishing online daily. In your daily publication tackle the frequently asked questions of your target audience. Don't worry too much about quality at the beginning, most likely we are all going to be naturally bad at the start. But stick to the frequency and most likely after a few months you will be a lot better and after one year you will master the subject like few others. This process will help you find your voice and your audience.
7. Offer your best advice out for free. You need to attract attention, so give away for free all those documents and info solutions that you have that you know are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars on savings and potential earnings for your customers. These are your hooks, make sure you use the best ones and give them away entirely for free, do not be stingy.
8. Create customized content for each decision-maker role and each target customer. You need to create hook content that offers valuable information for free for each customer and any critical role in the decision-making process. In my case, I need to create content for Sales/Managing Director, Operations/Pricing/Procurement, and Legal/Finance, each role with important differences in objections, pains, desires, problems, obstacles, and frequently asked questions. Also, my customers differ from each other a lot, and they will only connect with the content if it is done in proper name directed to them only, with their company name in it.

As it looks now, the result from this process will be an entirely filtered lead that has already informed itself through our funnel regarding all that needs to be told prior to the sale. The closing process will take place in a zoom meeting, and will feel more like an implementation meeting. The closing will focus on closing the more simple and easy to understand product first, leaving all other potential sales for future upselling to the customer.

Let me know if you are encountering issues keeping your sales pipeline strong through these times. Please share comments, how are you managing this? let me know if you want some free help to guide you?

PM me or email me to luis.mera@verticeww.com.

Cheers. Happy sales to all.