BRX Pro Tip: 5 Rules of Thumb for B2B Selling
Stone Payton : And we are back with Business Radio X Pro Tips. Stone Payton, Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, B2B selling really is different than other forms of selling in a lot of ways. But what are some key tenets of B2B selling that we need to be aware of?
Lee Kantor: Yeah. For me, there’s a few rules of thumb that hold true in B2B. And like you said, it’s a lot different than when you’re selling directly to a consumer. And it’s more of kind of they’re going into a store to buy a thing, and you’re just selling them the thing that you have in the store.
Lee Kantor: Number one, in B2B selling, I think it’s important to focus on building relationships and trust. That goes a long way to selling more than just making a sale in a transactionally minded way. So relationships are critical in terms of selling because you have to be thinking in the long term all the time. It can’t be done in a transactionally minded way.
Lee Kantor: Second, having deep expertise in your prospect’s industry and true understanding of their pain points aren’t nice to have. Those are must-haves. The more you understand the industry, the more you understand the pain points that your prospects are having, the better you’re going to be able to solve their problem and to help them get the outcome they desire.
Lee Kantor: And third, when you’re selling, you have to focus on value and ROI. You can’t focus on, you know, the cool thing that your product or service does. The features aren’t as important as the value that the features deliver. So focusing on value and ROI not, you know, the cool package that’s in or how pretty it looks.
Lee Kantor: Number four, B2B sales always take longer and involve more stakeholders than B2C sales, so patience and persistent follow-up is critical. And if you don’t have systems for that, you’re going to run into problems and get frustrated.
Lee Kantor: And number five, don’t neglect meeting face to face. Building real human-to-human relationships and rapport helps you address concerns, answers any questions, clarifies issues. And it’s all done in a more timely manner than this back and forth using kind of digital, you know, emails or texts or more impersonal things. So don’t hide from face to face. If you want to be successful, you’re going to have to spend some time face-to-face with the people you’re selling to.
