Why the best sales professionals have a buyer-first approach

B2B selling has changed under the pandemic, with business restrictions concentrating minds on how virtual selling tools can deliver even better results, writes LinkedIn’s Liam Halpin.

Successful business-to-business sales professionals always put the buyer first. And it isn’t hard to understand why. B2B buyers are consumers, after all. They search online for the best products and prices. They have little appetite for advertising, especially when it’s irrelevant. And they want to be treated as individuals.

This means that it’s never been so important for sellers to put themselves into the buyer’s shoes, to understand their needs and to develop a real partnership based on trust.

That can pose a challenge in the current environment. Because of the pandemic, salespeople are increasingly using technology to connect with potential buyers. Email and online ads can be used to contact large numbers of prospects. But without insight into the people you are selling to, this shotgun approach won’t get you far, even if some people do click on your ad or open your email.

Selling in a virtual world

Digital technology can support B2B sales. In fact, there is evidence that most buyers prefer this approach. A recent survey from McKinsey showed that only 20 to 30 per cent of buyers want to go back to the way things were before the pandemic struck. Succeeding with digital technology simply takes the right mindset, and sup- port from the right tools.

You need to talk to the relevant people. So go online to identify your prospects. Tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator are places where you can find up-to-date information on your potential buyers and be alerted to signals that they may be ready to engage with you. Finding prospects from this type of source means that, as well as finding the names of prospective customers, you learn something about them at the same time.

When you have your list of potential customers, it doesn’t mean it’s time to start selling. Sending out mass emails at this point will be ineffective, and even counter-productive, as you could simply irritate your best prospects.

 

“The important thing that we have had to realise as business leaders is that there is no going back to the way of selling that existed before the pandemic, and that many B2B buyers prefer the new normal”

Prioritise your prospects

Instead, you need to identify those prospects, and find organisations that need what you are selling and individuals who will be open to what you have to say.

There is a lot of freely available information online that will help with this. Monitor what people are posting on LinkedIn, the news in the trade media and announcements on the websites of prospect businesses. When you have identified the organisations with the most potential, you then need to find the right people to talk to in those organisations.

That’s not always simple. The average B2B sales process takes six months to conclude and involves seven people at a target account. All of these people are likely to have at least some influence on the final outcome, so getting to know them is essential.

Again, LinkedIn can be really helpful here. You can use it to identify individuals with particular interests or roles, unravel how people connect together, including how they connect with your competitors, and discover who has recently been recruited by organisations you are targeting: new recruits may be particularly grateful for advice from a trusted partner – which is what you want to be.