5 B2B Sales Strategies for Post Covid 19 Success

One year after the Covid-19 pandemic, what sales strategies are you employing? Why not leverage these five B2B sales strategies for Post Covid-19 success.

Covid-19 pandemic took all businesses back to the drawing table.

It didn't matter whether they were making profits or losses; every business needed to review its sales and marketing strategies as soon as the pandemic hit.

Digital buying and selling became more appealing, and we saw a dramatic shift into that space. One year down the line, have these businesses succeeded in the online space?

Let's look at five B2B sales strategies for post-Covid-19 success you can implement in response to the rapidly shifting marketing dynamics.

1. Invest in Sales Automation Systems

Most of us think that a sales automation platform is useful for receiving, processing, and delivering orders.

This is true but incomplete.

Automation platforms also offer multiple tools to aid lead generation, conversions and bring repeat business with little human input.

The systems efficiently collect and process data, provide consistent communication with leads/customers, keep track of orders, and monitor consumer behavior.

All this works towards increasing your company's efficiency and boosting productivity by as much as 20 percent.

Here's how automation can work for you:

● Acquire CRM software to monitor your sales funnel and process insightful data on the customer's sales cycle.

● Use email-marketing tools to run your lead nurturing processes.

● Add chatbots to your website to speed up communication with your customers at every stage of the sales cycle. They answer most queries in the real-time, score and qualify leads, and offer discounts.

● Provide special discounts to repeat customers and run promotional campaigns.

● Leverage data analytics to re-target site visitors. Ensure your retargeting ads emphasize the rational benefits of your solutions, rather than emotionally driven points.

● Track recurring orders email notifications to boost sales.

2. Improve Your SEO

Research shows that up to 94 percent of B2Bs engage in online research before making business purchases.

Today's B2B buyers are savvy and prefer analyzing solutions on their own before reaching out to B2B sellers.

If your business is not ranking highly on results pages, B2B buyers interested in your offerings won't find you easily. They will end up in your competitor's basket.

SEO is a dense topic with many moving parts and varying aspects, so we'll focus on the most important areas.

● Be keyword clever: determine the keywords/phrases searchers use when looking for solutions similar to yours. Implement them in your URLs, metadata, page titles, web pages, headings, content, image descriptions, and emails.

● List your business on online directories to leverage local searches. Focusing on local SEO improves rankings and allows customers to find you.

● Create stellar content in your blogs, infographics, web pages, social media posts, guest posts, videos, animations, and ebooks/white papers. This content will be instrumental in educating your audience and influencing purchase decisions.

● Improve site loading speed to make it easy for customers and prospects to navigate pages and find what they need.

3. Cold Calling

While Covid-19 presented different dynamics for businesses but one thing remains constant-businesses want to stay afloat and make profits.

Cold calling presents an opportunity for your brand to showcase your ability to help them do just that. Here are cold calling practices to consider:

● Qualify your leads: research the impact of Covid-19 on their business. Are your solutions relevant to them? If so, how?

● Create a calling guide to guide your conversation. Outline key points and questions and pay attention to how the prospect responds.

● Make the call about the prospect. Encourage them to tell you more about their needs to help you match their needs to your solutions.

● Watch your tone. Speaking too softly, way loudly, or too fast is a turnoff, so aim for a moderate but authoritative, well-paced voice.

● Avoid multitasking. People can tell if you're distracted and will most likely hang up on you. Give your listener your full attention to ensure you pick up little cues.

● Avoid bringing up the price on your first call. Aim to generate such value that the prospect will want to engage with you further.

● Handle difficult leads with grace. Fight the temptation to get angry or respond rudely. Breath. Then let them know you want to help them attain better results. Then highlight the value of your offerings.

4. Manage Your Online Reputation

One thing most prospective buyers do before settling on a seller is to look up their online reputation.

With conversations about brands taking place regularly, the prospect will want to know how your current customers perceive you and your offerings

Reputation management, therefore, is a crucial element for business success and one that shouldn't be ignored.

You want to protect your reputation in order to emerge as a knowledgeable, trustworthy, and reliable brand. The type of brand that customers want to do business with.

Here are some ways to help maintain a clean reputation:

● Maintain professionalism as you engage with customers-online and in person.

● Encourage positive reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers.

● Invest in social listening and social media tracking tools to know what people are saying about your brand/offerings and where these conversations are taking place. Examples of these tools include Sprout Social, Falcon.io, Buffer, and Hootsuite.

● Always respond publicly to negative reviews. Ensure your responses are quick, calm, and demonstrate professionalism. Then reach out privately to the reviewer and resolve the issue.

5. Go Virtual

Even though virtual events have been around for a while, most marketers didn't consider them as a viable way to engage with leads or customers.

This perception took a turn with the coming of Covid-19.

Compared to live events, virtual events are cheaper to run, have a wider reach, and take on many forms.

You can organize webinars, round-table discussions with colleagues or industry experts, product demos, 1:1 meetings, online trade shows, or Q & A sessions.

Here's how virtual events can contribute to your business' success:

● Broadcasting your offerings: product demos, discussion forums or webinars let you highlight the features and benefits of your products/services.

● Improving engagement: virtual events allow you to engage with visitors to identify their needs. You can then tailor solutions to deliver the best experience for them.

● Tracking power: marketers can easily track the success of the event through recorded information like registration, click-through information, downloads, and shares. They can also calculate ROI and create data-informed follow-up strategies.

How do you ensure your virtual events are successful?

● Set objectives. What do you want to achieve through virtual engagements? Create the events (and content) revolving around these objectives.

● Assess your infrastructure's ability to provide a satisfactory client experience. While you're at it, will you be using any virtual event management tools?

● Ensure all members of your team are aware of their roles in running the event and are ready to execute them.

● Promote your virtual events beforehand to increase awareness and allow audiences to plan for them.

● Ensure you have the right tools to capture data and track leads long after the curtains go down.