B2B Salesperson
“Death of a B2B Salesperson,” A recent report by Forrester Research, found that by a factor of 3 to 1, B2B buyers, like their B2C counterparts, self-educate to learn about offerings prior to making purchasing decisions. Thus, Inbound Marketing has evolved to be a key new business strategy for many organisations.
Inbound marketing, in simple terms, is the process of helping potential customers self-educate and, in the process, find your company to purchase from. This frequently happens as the customer research potential solutions to their perceived problems, prior to being ready to make a purchase. By making contact early the seller can successfully turn the customer into preferring your brand. This ultimately leads to more revenue.
The value B2B salespersons bring
Contrary to the popularity of inbound marketing, the life of a B2B salesperson is not destined to become a dinosaur. Rather, their role needs to be redefined in the new world.
Below are a number of ways that the B2B salesperson can adopt in the buying process.
- Map the customer journey. Firms need to map the customer journey, or buying process, considering customers’ use of the emerging digital media to search, learn and educate themselves on fulfilling their requirements.
- Redesign your sales funnel. Companies need to rethink its sales funnel. Traditionally, salespeople focused a significant portion of their attention on the beginning of the funnel: finding sales leads and converting them into prospects. Today, they may have to redirect their efforts to points further along the process: closing hot prospects, providing follow-up service, and cultivating long-term relationships.
- Reimagine, retrain, and redeploy your salespeople. For 50 years, pundits have repeatedly proclaimed that salespeople would soon be rendered obsolete by the emerging media or technologies of the day. Each time, salespeople survived. How? They evolved.
Today’s B2B salesperson should be an educator, negotiator, consultant, solution configurator, service provider and a trusted advisor. They are integral to discovering the ‘something more’ that customers want. As customers will tell you, “A salesperson must be able to successfully articulate their value proposition to bring value to the organisation that they are selling to.”
How a CRM can help your B2B Salesperson
A CRM system benefits an organisation through the visibility of its sales activities. This visibility is fundamental to managing sales performance and control of the sales process. This visibility enables management to understand why, when, who and how opportunities are being won, stalled, or being lost. If it cannot be monitored, it cannot be managed. The visibility offered within the CRM system also allows management to make educated business decisions based on hard data. A CRM system will enable structured data to be used to access performance. This assessment should indicate which salesperson is out performing others.
How ProAptivity can help your B2B Salesperson
ProAptivity are an independent CRM solutions provider. We focus on the implementation, training, and support of highly customised CRM software solutions. Our CRM software supported by our sales training provide customers with the tools needed to deliver successful sales process management.
Fundamentally, we help organisations embed CRM best practice throughout their organisation. This helps organisations become more competitive, customer focused and ultimately more profitable.
If you need help in understanding why my business needs CRM, maybe some of our eBooks could help! Alternatively visit Maximizer CRM for more information. Contact us today in Belfast on 028 9099 6388 or at our Bedford office on 01234 214004. Alternatively email us on info@proaptivity.com. Contact us today for a free CRM consultation that will assess if your business is CRM ready. We have extensive experience working with a wide range of companies and industry sectors since 2011.
Source: Harvard Business Review
