Up your Digital Selling game with those simple and effective tips.
– START CONVERTING MORE PROSPECT IN LESS THAN 20 MINUTES
If you live in the B2B sector, you know that things have changed.
In the last 5 or so years it has become more and more like the D2C sector.
Customer Expectations (especially from younger ones) are higher than ever.
There is no more space for cold interactions, icy spreadsheets, and simple quantity/price proposal.
The B2B buyer's journey, too, is becoming increasingly complex.
Changes in the technological infrastructure have greatly influenced buyer behaviour.
Every company that lives on the market must take some fundamental step to cut through the noise and capture a prospect's attention.
Today's buyers are more informed, empowered, and demanding than before.
Buyers want to have a voice, and they want to be seen as people first.
A high-profile Brand Identity is becoming a must-have asset, and everyone is caring about the impact that your company have on ESG themes.
There are many things to think about when you're about to offer a great experience to your buyer, but nowadays everything starts from a single interaction.
After the pandemic devastation, most companies had to digitalize their selling departments to survive.
Who was capable of doing it right, exploited the confusion moment, and sales boosted. All the others follow at great length.
However your company performed during the pandemic, the truth is that now we can say to have all of our company in a back pocket, constantly.
Anywhere, anytime, we can connect with our base of customers or prospects.
But since the arena is all to what our webcam can see, are you ready to present the best version of yourself (and your company)?
Turn your attention away for one minute, and there are new platforms to use, new expectations to meet, and recent trends to keep up with.
Your company faces a huge opportunity to stay up to date and provide exceptional experiences to buyers.
But that requires changing the way you operate your meeting and presentations.
Not every piece of the experience can be changed in a day, of course, but that was not the amount of time that requested to build Rome.
Most importantly, consider the fact that there's a generational shift that is impacting the buying process.
Nowadays, there's a 1 in 2 chance that your contact person is a Millennial, meaning that he is probably a person with more tech knowledge and higher quality.
In a world where we can access any film on Netflix in under a second, please don't let them send you a fax to place an order.
With this level of expectations, no one can afford to be less-than-perfect.
This shift has many implications for marketers, especially when it comes to how we design our experiences.
While economic uncertainty still pervades our markets, digital selling it's the #1 priority to stay competitive, and - in some case - to remain in the game.
What you're offering as an experience to your buyer is the main differentiator that creates lasting
customer loyalty and new opportunities to show that you're a great provider of products and services.
Since markets are overcrowded, and there are too many companies – both new and old – competing for a limited number of buyers' attention, we need to put ourselves in their shoes and watch objectively from their perspective the customer experience we offer to them.
It is no longer about making as many offers each day as possible, but rather about delivering a unique message and connecting with people who will help them achieve their goals.
And since we know that it can be impossible to do it all by yourself, we did it for you by mapping more than 250+ interaction points and moments that matters in our thorough B2B buyers journey assessment (contact us to know more about it).
But we can offer some insights right here, right now.
There are a number of factors that always shape the underlying experience of the B2B buying process that you have to check with your selling team constantly.
First of all, selling it's not a matter of customers; it's a matter of human being, so treat them as such.
«B2B Customers maybe act in more rigid hierarchies and buying structures, but they're as human as the ones that you encounter when you go shopping for Christmas.»
So treat your Customer with respect by delivering as much value as you can, always, even if the prospect stays a prospect.
To do so, don't waste their time, or yours, by:
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setting an objective for a meeting: have always clear what can you obtain every meeting. Not every interaction is about selling. That's just the ending. A successful meeting can be requested even to maintain a relationship or to smooth out friction. By clearly stating what your expectations are, you enhance the chance of reaching the final goal and give you some control of the interactions.
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having a crystal-clear pitch ready and train to deliver on any occasion, without notice. It could be as simple as an entire presentation, or a 30-second answer to the question: so, what do your company do?
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knowing who's on the other side. Spend time before any call to gather as many pieces of information as you can about your prospects: their needs & pains (as a business and as a sector), and what they seek in their providers (the goods or the service, of course, but that's not enough: there could be more soft and fuzzy requests like punctuality, availability, geographic requirements, legislative requirements etc.)
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Investing as much as you can – in terms of money, time and resources, to create a compelling scenography for your calls. Pay special attention to your background and the illumination. Remember: if they cannot visit your company, this is all of your company that they're going to see. If the pandemic never happened, would you meet your clients in a potential buyer in an alleyway? Would you make them sit under an utterly blank wall or with out-of-context pictures? No? So make your background coherent with your corporate branding. Would you meet them in a dark space or make them sit on a chair 20 cm lower than yours? No? So light up the room, and buy an external camera, and put it at eye level so that you can look at them in the eye like humans do.
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Exploiting the potential of your video communication platform as much as you can. For example, Zoom offers the possibility to split rooms into smaller ones if different stakeholders need to have separate but parallel conversations without interfering with each other; Google Meet offers a whiteboard called Jamboard that can be shared with anyone to explain yourself as you would in real life; websites like Mural [LINK] offers you a virtual room where you can collect information and brainstorm; apps like Mmhhmm [LINK] offer you video superpowers to that can instantly make the seller look like a professional news journalist. And those are just examples. What's matter is that there's no need for static, lifeless video calls anymore. Think about inviting a collaborator to do a production tour; you can have different cameras placed around your company or play with your set by placing near you artefacts or company material. Everything you do will tell a piece of the bigger story you're trying to tell your prospect.
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Playing as a team: Invest some time aligning with your team, even if you're an experienced team. Discuss and co-design a shared script. Know when to make the other talk and when to do solos. Remember: online selling is not like a symphonic concert, where every instrumentist can have a script that tells him what to do at every moment. It's more like a jazz concert: everyone has an idea and the skills to execute a common theme, but every interaction is different and will require a different style of adaptation, rhythm and execution, even with the same set of clients. And this is not something that can you take for granted: this needs to be trained.
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Having ready an ice-breaker to defuse the first and always-tricky moments of interactions. It can be a question about the place where the prospect lives or a question about a common acquaintance, but be careful about cultural and linguistical differences or barriers: an ice-breaker that plays with stereotypes or that it's too hard to explain can be an instant deal-breaker even if the conversation continues.
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Listen, listen, listen. Physical powerpoints (or similar) presentations can be tiring; virtual ones can be excruciating. Invest most of the calling time listening to your customers instead of providing a show-off about data, numbers, or other facts that they can easily find elsewhere.
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Think about investing in a proprietary platform so that you can meet your clients in a safe, branded space that really shows off the potential of your company and can go miles explaining all the benefit of having you as a business partner.