Winning new customers is at the heart of any thriving business. Particularly when you know, like we do, that when you win a new customer, you will deliver a great solution and, hopefully, continue to deliver for them over a long time.
So, I want to zoom in on the underlying philosophy and operating system that works for winning new customers in B2B, where customers generally want or need a salesperson to help get going. Some people call this sales-led. I reject the “-led” part, but bring this up in order to differentiate it from self-service style business models. Maybe “sales-serviced” is a good way to label it.
Regardless, what matters is there is something about the customer’s business, the solution or the way the customer needs to buy to get value, which means sales-serviced is the best way the solution (product or service) is bought.
The word bought, not sold, matters.
This brings us to the key question, which is how we can help customers buy our solutions?
- Understand the buying journey
- Generate demand (Marketing)
- Help them buy (Sales)
I’ve deliberately put the words Marketing and Sales in brackets. In many ways, the “functions” of Sales and Marketing need to be put to one side initially so that we can focus on what really matters here, which is the customer and growing revenue.
Understand the customers’ buying journey
Identifying and fulfilling the needs of the customer in the best way possible for them and the business is the focus.
The way to start is to map your Customers’ Buying Journey.
You map out when there is an initial awareness of a problem or opportunity in their business. Then map out how they think about it, progress it, make decisions then take action.
This journey usually starts well before you even speak with them. The journey might start with a problem occurring or an opportunity being identified. For example, a business that is doing all its accounts with paper might miss getting their tax return in on time and get fined. That fine might trigger recognition that they have a problem with their system and so they need to find ways to get their tax returns in on time.
The biggest mistake people make is viewing the customers’ journey from their own process. If your buying journey starts with “they called us” then you’re definitely making a mistake. If we jump back to the tax fine example, that customer’s buying journey has begun. But they are just looking to get their tax returns in on time.
The customer will usually have done research, spoken to others and possibly even tried various solutions in their journey to a conversation with you about your solution.
Understanding the customer journey starts best with understanding the customer, mapping out their buying journey and doing research.
It also involves mapping out multiple journeys for each customer segment that buys from you. People buy differently. Some people are happy doing business with someone they found on online, others want a referral from someone they trust.
More Reading & Tips:
- Simple Attribution: this helps you understand what is really driving your buyers. This data point will help you work out which buyer journey(s) to prioritise.
- Many “Buyer’s Journey” content online will show only Awareness, Consideration, Decision. They’ll also focus the Decision on buying a solution. But Buyer’s Journey’s are more than that. Often Buyer’s will try a solution (such as DIY or doing it manually in excel). They don’t always have to make a purchase.
- The following links have some good examples of Buyer Journeys
Generate demand
Once you understand the buying journey, you can then start to think about demand generation. That is, getting people to demand your product or, even more simply, want to buy from you.
It’s easy to overcomplicate this. But ultimately, you are just trying to get people to buy from you.
This is where the job is to ‘generate demand’ – get people to the business who want to buy – not to ‘market’ to people.
And, to get people to the business who want to buy, means finding out how to meet them where they are or will be. This means asking how you currently fit and can fit into their buying journey.
An easy example is, a certain group of customers will typically research and credit cards online then choose. If you can fit into their online research process then you will likely win a certain set of customers. Another group of customers might ask a friend and use that as the basis of deciding which card to use. Another group might shop based on rewards points.
If you have demand, then you will find that people will be asking to buy from you.
Not Leads
This approach moves slightly beyond Leads being thought of as demand. Demand is more about how many buying opportunities have been created through activities you’ve performed. A buying opportunity, in sales and marketing process terms, is when an opportunity gets to be qualified or at least to Leading Contender, where a customer has said your type of solution and your company are how they want to solve their problem.
More Reading
- Demand Gen 101 for B2B: while this talks about consultants, you can effectively ignore the consultants part and use this to understand what demand generation is.
- Traction: a comprehensive guide to all the various channels you might use for marketing a software company, as well as pros and cons.
- Hacking Growth: an experimentation, agile driven approach to improving revenue growth.
Help them buy
The next part of winning new customers is to help them buy.
This still needs to be tied back to the customer’s preferred buying journey. Matching your process and the way you help them to their journey.
This might be helping your champion communicate the problem and the benefits of your solution to others in their organisation.
It might be helping your champion better understand the nature of the problem they face or the benefits of pursuing an opportunity.
One of the most common ways companies don’t match their customers’ journey is where they hide price until after a demo. In many cases, someone is probably doing research and just wants an indication of price to workout whether they can fit it in their budget. Rather than resist giving this information, why not give them an indication? There are merits to getting a call first, but it may also cause friction.
Ultimately, if helping them buy means they do something that isn’t your solution but it’s the right solution for the customer then that’s ok.
- Challenger Sale: how to broadly position and a framework to approaching a specific sale based on bringing expertise to a conversation and leading the customer to a better place.
- MEDDIC and MEDDPIC: more than just a qualification formula, gives you the pathway to debugging why sales aren’t moving or are being lost then, hopefully, improving your chance of closing in the future.
- Foundational sales books: Selling 101 and How to Master the Art of Selling – useful on qualifying and closing sales opportunities.
- SPIN Selling: a methodology for using discovery to work towards a sale.