11 Tips And Ideas To Improve Your B2B Sales Funnel

Are you tired of waiting for months to close a B2B sales deal? You’re not alone. The sales cycle can be a lengthy process that involves generating leads, nurturing them, and finally closing the sale. 

According to the research by Klipfolio, it takes about 75% of businesses at least four months to complete their sales cycle. But what if you could speed up the process? 

In this blog post, we’ll share some tips and ideas to improve your B2B sales funnel and help you close deals faster.

Use the best lead generation tools

Technology has made it easier to complete various tasks. It has enabled the availability of various tools which you can use to enhance your lead generation process. 

Software such as Datanyze, Cognism, and LeadFeeder allow you to gain access to a large number of business profiles, communicate with these customers, and complete your sale. 

These tools extract leads from social media platforms, email marketing, and signup forms from your company website. Such software is useful to nurture your leads throughout the entire sales process.

Study your leads

Before contacting your leads, you have to understand your target audience. This will help you prepare your sales pitch accordingly.

There are so many ways to do so. For example, you can follow their profiles on social media, observe their posts, likes, and comments to understand their interests and activities.  Also, try to  dig deep into the ways the businesses you’re looking at as your potential clients deal with their customers.

Use AI-powered chatbots

The technology of artificial intelligence (AI) is useful for automating certain tasks, letting us focus on more important ones.

Engaging in communication with prospects via calls takes 70-80% of a sales rep’s time, as per Hubspot. Chatbots resolve this issue to a greater extent. According to Invespcro, these AI-powered chatbots are able to handle 80% of customer queries, which saves your time and reduces the number of tasks you need to fulfill yourself.

Implement direct communication with customers

B2B purchase decisions are more complex than a normal buying process, and  business queries require careful attention.

Chatbots do manage most customer queries, but these diverse matters often require in-person communication.

You should employ appropriate means to facilitate direct communication with customers about certain issues. Make sure that you have customer service 24/7 that provides support via live chat or phone calls or call center services.

By managing quick responses to complicated questions, you can close your sales deals more quickly.

Automate sales tasks

There are so many tasks that sales representatives have to complete. These include:

• Generating leads 
• Converting them to customers 
• Closing  sales
• Building business relationships with new clients

And if you automate them, you’ll save time and quickly get fruitful results. For this purpose, you could use an excellent customer relationship management (CRM) tool like Salesforce.

This CRM tool helps you store contact information of your prospects and your interactions with these leads. It also automates the process of email marketing, scheduling  calls and appointments.

Based on the previous history of your sales, it provides useful reports and analytics and also forecasts future results to assist you in making important decisions.

Activate your effective sales channels

Digital marketing is a quicker, more convenient, and more effective way to promote your business and achieve meaningful outcomes. Use digital sales channels which produce effective results.

First comes email marketing which delivers an average return on investment (ROI) of 38 dollars per dollar spent, as per Litmus.

By using email marketing tools like Mailchimp and Mailmunch, you can segment your leads and create different follow-up email templates tailored to different groups. Store these templates and use these for your target customers. You can send emails to these leads automatically with the help of this software.

Next are the online B2B marketplaces, which are the fastest-growing digital sales channels as per Digital Commerce 360. Selling on a B2B marketplace like Alibaba, SeeBiz, and DHgate has many benefits, as you can easily find potential customers and negotiate deals with them.

Marketplaces automate various important tasks, such as marketing your business and shipping your products. It requires a very reasonable investment on your part.

Last but not least, social media platforms are very important in reaching potential customers and attracting them with engaging content. You get a huge following on social media platforms, so  you should create regular posts of updates regarding your business, informative content, and promotion of your products and services. By boosting these posts according to your budget, you can easily find leads, or they can reach you. And then, you have to approach them with a pitch to convert them into buying customers.

Engage the audience with webinars

The era of lockdown has gone, but it’s left a profound effect on our everyday lives – the way in which we run our businesses is changing.

The norm of visiting trade shows for lead generation and product advertising is transforming into virtual conferencing. By conducting webinars, you directly talk with your customers to educate them about your brand and promote your products with a complete demonstration of their outstanding features. You can also discuss other useful topics related to the industry.

91% of marketers have been successful in their marketing efforts with webinars, as per Wyzowl.

Present a proper sales pitch that guarantees leads

At the stage when your priority is generating leads, you could shift the focus of your business from promoting your business or product to the needs of your target prospect .To do that, prepare and present a convincing sales pitch. 

Make your potential customers feel that they’re important to you. According to Gartner, 86% of B2B buyers expect sales reps to have extensive personal information about them. So giving importance to the needs and requirements of your prospects is essential in increasing their interest in your products.

Following this approach to leads, you’ve got to gather all available information about your target audience and get fully prepared to respond to their queries, and try overcoming sales objections. You should be able to handle all the issues smoothly  and provide extensive replies to all their answers.

Leverage upselling and cross-selling

The terms “up-selling” and “cross-selling” are very common in the B2B sphere.

Upselling is a very successful sales tactic in which you recommend a better product with a higher quality (which is, of course, more expensive due to its benefits) that your buyer has initially aimed to buy. You position the product as more useful in terms of generating a good profit margin for the buyer’s business and providing long-term benefits to consumers.

Similarly, cross-selling is a dynamic sales tactic in which you recommend more products similar to the ones your customer has already bought or is aiming to buy. You can explain how using these similar products can help your buyers in filling their inventory with more stock, for example, or how it  can boost their sales and profitability.

Be honest about pricing

Sales representatives often make the mistake of hiding proper information about the price in order to close a sale.

If your potential clients seem willing to strike a deal, finding out about any hidden charges will likely put them off. 

So, avoid unhappy customers by telling them complete information about the product and its price. You should inform them about all the charges beforehand.

Deliver engaging content

Great content is the best sales tool in the world. – Marcus Sheridan

Content marketing is a very effective way to convert leads into sales. B2B buyers heavily rely on content, consuming about 13 pieces of content before finalizing their buying process, as per FocusVision.

According to Aberdeen, businesses which pay a lot of attention to quality content  on their website are able to drive an average of six times more traffic than websites that don’t.

There can be various types of content, including blogs, case studies, and videos. You can use them to spread brand awareness and trigger sales, as quality content has a high potential of convincing prospects to take immediate action.

Use content distribution in your sales strategy to create content targeted at specific leads. Personalized content is going to powerfully influence the target audience.

Follow-up with your customers

Your sales funnel doesn’t just end with acquiring customers and closing sales. This is because your customers may decide to either buy from you again or prefer to buy from another business. Therefore, it’s essential to focus on retaining your existing customers because it’s as important as acquiring new ones.

That’s why it’s crucial to engage with the customers who have bought your products by asking them for feedback on using your products or services. This feedback not only makes them feel valued but is also useful to you in identifying the weak areas of your services and making improvements to them.

Moreover, you should offer relevant products to them by using your sales channels. For instance, whenever you launch a new product of a similar type, you can contact your buyers via WhatsApp or any other messenger they prefer by sharing product images, videos, and other relevant content. Keep contacting these customers and focus on improving your retention rate.

Another important factor in strengthening relationships with your customers is to provide them with excellent customer service. 

These follow-up tactics can help you increase your brand loyalty and also result in positive word-of-mouth marketing from your satisfied customers.

Conclusion

With these aforementioned tips, you can close your B2B sales in a quicker span of time rather than spending months in lead generation. Use these methods in a proper way to get quick and good results.