Starting a new business is one of the most exciting prospects there is, but it is also one of the most daunting ones. Building anything from the ground up takes a lot of time, effort, and knowledge. And thankfully, although we can’t help with the first two, we can help with the knowledge part.
Today’s article is on the topic of building your sales strategy as a startup company. Specifically, this article applies to B2B startups because we know there’s a real lack of education for B2B companies compared to B2C companies. So we want to give you some information that’s targeted directly at what you’re trying to do.
Let’s get started on how to build your first sales strategy!
How to Create a B2B Sales Strategy for Startups
1. Understanding The Sales Cycle
Before you can begin developing any type of plan, you need to understand what you’re planning for. In this instance, to create a sales strategy you need to first understand the sales cycle of B2B companies.
You should also note that the sales cycle will be different based on whether you want an outbound strategy or an inbound one. An outbound strategy is focused on finding clients, while an inbound strategy is focused on getting clients to come to you. Which one you choose should be based on what your business is.
As for the outbound strategy, it consists of seven steps…
Prospecting (finding new potential customers), connection (reaching out to them), lead qualification (deciding if you should continue with the process), pitch (demonstrating what you can do for them), objection handling (overcoming any uncertainty the customer has), closing a deal, and retaining the customer.
The inbound sales cycle is much simpler with just three steps…
Awareness (the potential customer finding out about your product or service), consideration (the potential customer debating on whether or not to work with you), and decision.
So you need to develop your sales strategy while keeping in mind every part of the cycle that you’ll be moving through whether it be outbound or inbound.
2. Outline Your Ideal Customer
The next step of building your sales strategy is all about understanding what type of customer you want to reach. And this step works a bit differently with B2B companies than with B2C. In a B2C strategy, they’d consider age, gender, income, etc. But as a B2B company you need to be thinking of things like…
- Your target customers objectives as a business
- Their competition
- Their day-to-day activities
- And who makes the decisions in their company
Make up a target customer in your mind based on these things and then create your sales pitch around it. Think through how you would handle the process if you were dealing with this customer, and then think as that customer figure out what you can do better.
Use this tip to fine-tune your strategy.
3. Choose A Social Media Platform
Nowadays a good sales strategy, or business plan of any kind, will have to include social media. So based on your target demographic, what your business is, and what you hope to achieve you’ll need to find the ideal social media platform for you and make a plan on how to use it to your advantage.
For many B2B companies LinkedIn is the best choice as this is the social media platform that most businesses and professionals use. Check out our in-depth guide on how to find clients on LinkedIn.
4. Research, Research, Research
And should we say it one more time? Research! As we said earlier in the article, knowledge is an important factor when you start something new or when you’re planning to. So during this phase of creating your strategy, you’ll need to know as much about your new venture as you can.
I’m sure you’ve already researched everything having to do with your business model and what service/product you hope to provide, but there is more to consider. You need to research a lot of things that you may have not even thought of yet, such as…
- Your competition, other B2B companies that are doing the same thing as you. Try to find out ways that you could offer something better, or ways that you could stand out against the crowd.
- Your chosen social media platform. Learn everything you can about it, its features, how to use it in the most efficient way, and take notes from the most successful pages on that platform.
- Especially if you have an outbound strategy, you’re going to need to research potential customers way ahead of time in order to assess what it is that they’re looking for and formulate how exactly you want to pitch to them.
5. Form Your First Sales Strategy
I say your “first” because chances are, your strategy will change over time. Almost no sales strategy will be perfect at first, so micro adjustments may need to be made in order to optimize it.
And another thing to keep in mind is that there are some variables that we can’t control, such as the current economy, market, social media trends, etc. So when these variables change or evolve, you should be ready to adjust your sales strategy to meet the new requirements.
So it can be a good thing if your first sales strategy isn’t the only one you ever make, but it is important to have a plan when you launch your business so you should definitely take the time to make your first one as soon as possible.
To do this, you need to think about all the information that we’ve discussed in this article and use the answers to the questions we asked you to consider to make a sales strategy that is tailored to you, your business, and your customers.
