- [Neil] Hey everyone, it's Neil Patel
and today's another day of eCommerce Unlocked.
And today we're going to be going over B2B sales.
I know we've discussed B2C sales quite a bit,
but there's also a lot of room in B2B.
See in B2B, people aren't as price sensitive
and they can pay an arm and a leg
for your product or service.
When you think about B2C, people want lower price points,
there are shorter sales cycles,
fewer decision makers, right?
People just go like on Amazon being like,
"I want to go and buy this."
But in B2B, it's a lot more different.
Sometimes there's wholesale channels or distribution
or reselling channels.
You may have to sell to big organizations like schools
or even school districts or nonprofits
or large organizations like Microsoft
or IBM that can take forever to sell into.
There's also higher price points.
But when you're going through this process,
you'll also find that most of it
is done through salespeople.
And it's not as low touch as B2C
hence the price points are higher as well.
Since we've already covered how to market in B2C,
I want to focus today's lesson on B2B
because there is commerce online in B2B as well.
It's not just B2C.
So let's first look at
the general typical B2B sales process.
It goes all the way from someone coming on your website
to they're interested in something,
then they become a lead.
Then you end up having a call with them.
This is what's called a discovery call
where they're just learning, you're learning,
then if it's a good fit, you have a strategic plan.
This is a presentation where you go over your product,
your solution, how it can help them.
And then your last meeting is the decision meeting.
Now what's not shown here is in B2B,
there's a lot of middle steps.
So you may have multiple phone calls.
You may have a presentation with someone
and then their boss may want to see the presentation again.
So you had to do it all over again
or send them the recorded version,
but let's dive into each step.
First off, there's a call preparation.
This is where you receive a lead
and a confirmation appointment.
Right, it's matched to you.
You get a lead, someone's interested in your product
or service, and then you end up setting a call with them.
You also have to check out that lead.
Is it qualified?
Is it a website good?
Is there a budget good.
How big is their business?
Do you think they can afford your product or service?
It's not like B2C where everyone can just pay,
you know, 10, $5, whatever it may be to buy from you.
And sometimes you're selling things
that are 10,000, a hundred thousand.
So the buyer market is much more limited.
Hence you have to see if they are truly qualified.
And you need to get to know their business
and understand that if you can help with their problems.
So some for homework for you or your sales reps is to,
if the lead is junk or fake, cancel it.
If it's good, make sure you prepare
and you want to go towards the next step.
The next step would be a discovery call.
You want to get to know the lead on a personal level.
What are their pain points?
Why are they interested in your product?
What else have they tried?
How long have they been facing this problem?
When are they looking to move forward on a solution.
By understanding their problem,
you can then tailor your sales pitch
around what they're looking for.
So some homework that you want to give them
is a questionnaire that allows you
to better understand their business.
And that can be questions like, what's your budget?
What are you looking for?
When you're looking to move?
What are your ideal features?
All these things.
So that way you can understand if you can provide them
the solution they're looking for.
And when do you get that?
Your next step is to schedule a call with them
and the decision maker, the keys decision maker,
because you don't want to be wasting your time
with someone who can't sign off on the deal
within roughly seven days of getting the questionnaire.
And the way you do this is on that call,
you have a strategic plan.
And that strategic plan,
you want to demonstrate your business, the cost,
your product, how it can help them solve the problem,
how it's going to make their life easier, save them time,
ideally even save them money.
You can create that sense of urgency by wowing them.
If you show case studies, this helps a lot in B2B.
You want to know what appeals to them
and really understand
because that's how you're going to be able to close a sell.
A homework assignment for you
as you want to send a recap presentation to them,
as well as everything that was discussed,
as well as any unanswered questions.
And then you want to go over payment
and pricing within that presentation as well.
Of course, in B2B, bigger price point,
not everyone buys right away.
So then you're going to have to follow up.
Maybe you have a decision meeting
where you go over any last minute questions.
You may have to redo parts of the pitch.
If they are confused or they want to go over anything.
In other words,
you want to identify and resolve
any remaining unanswered questions
or issues that they may have.
So think about everything as objections,
and you want to answer those objections.
You need to understand,
you know, they need to understand
what you're going to be giving them the plans,
the deliverables, the executions,
all of the stuff that they can put in a contract,
or you can put it in a contract.
And the homework assignment for you
is try to get the deal closed
and then break down onboarding,
and then walking into your ecosystem or company.
Now that you know how to close B2B leads,
let's go over where you can find them.
One of the best places that I like going is LinkedIn.
It's not the sexiest social network,
but hey, they have over 690 million users
and it's the best place for B2B.
They have this tool called sales navigator
that'll help you a lot.
It'll allow you to find the ideal people
that you want to target from groups to industries,
to interest, it breaks it all down.
It's a great feature.
You should definitely check it out.
So when you get that data from sales navigator
and you find the ideal person,
also look for the person's job title.
You want to get ideally a manager position
or a director position or a VP position,
because those are the people
that can typically make decisions.
You can either import those leads
into your CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot,
and then start contacting them.
Or you can start reaching out to people on LinkedIn as well,
which works well.
In B2B, what you'll find
is relationships are everything.
It can take you 90 to 120 days to close.
Sometimes even longer
if your price points are in the six figures
or seven figures, so you need to be patient.
And one way to really help build your relationship
is to make sure your profile is filled out correctly.
Good head shots, good bio, lot of texts,
endorsements, recommendations, involvement
in a lot of groups.
You want to highlight projects that you've done well on.
Like here's examples of my profile with skills
and endorsements and recommendations.
It all really does help.
And then of course you want to join active groups
that are related to the industries
that you're going after because by being active,
you'll also start getting inbound leads,
and that'll help.
So one example that I want to go over is knobs.co.
It's a great example.
If you follow the B2B eCommerce space,
they have a really strong conversion process
and they've done exceptionally well.
So check them out and go to their website.
You can learn a lot from them.
This is your chance to analyze someone
who's doing extremely well.
So some action items for you.
Go to neilbattelle.com/training.
If you already not there,
click on eCommerce unlocked week three, lesson three,
and I want you to download
and track your leads within the B2B deal tracker worksheet,
it's XL file.
And of course, download your B2B script,
modify it based on your products.
It'll help you step by step.
Now next week,
which is the last week of eCommerce unlocked,
I'm going to be going over,
setting up ad campaigns on major channels,
understanding metrics like cost of goods sold
and ROI, and much much more.
I'm also going to give you step by step approach
to what works on each platform.
And of course, in depth case studies for eCommerce as well.
Thank you for listening.
I look forward to helping you generate more eCommerce sales.