Being a mum and running a business share many similarities. The constant need to prioritise tasks and juggle responsibilities, and the struggle to meet the demands of different stakeholders, are just a few of the tasks that span both parenthood and entrepreneurship. Being a parent certainly offers many useful areas of expertise that new entrepreneurs can benefit from. However, one thing the experience of being a parent can’t help with is the tricky process of attracting B2B clients.
Operating a company in the B2B sector offers potentially lucrative opportunities to secure big deals and develop a loyal customer base. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs struggle with the first part of this process, which is securing clients and achieving their first sales. In this blog, you’ll find some helpful tips to make building a customer base and securing those new sales a much easier process.
Understand Your Competition
You may have a strong business idea ready and waiting to launch. However, it will be impossible to know whether it stands a chance of success if you haven’t already researched your competitors.
Understanding your competition is a must if you want your business to be seen as credible when you approach potential customers. Without a clear understanding of your competitors, it will be almost impossible for your company to secure a steady stream of customers. This is because, on paper, your company may seem to have a great deal to offer new clients, but you won’t know this for sure until you compare it with the many other businesses already out there and established.
Gaining an understanding of exactly what your competitors have to offer, their pricing, how they promote themselves, and the level of service they provide is a must. You can then fine-tune your offering to make it extra competitive and appealing before you even begin to approach clients.
Based on your research, you should be able to come up with a USP to differentiate your company from its main competition right from the start. This provides a simple, and immediate way to capture the attention of your potential customers helping your company to stand out.
Know Your Ideal Client
Developing a solid understanding of your competitors is a must. However, this is just one side of what you need to do to increase sales for your B2B company. The other task you need to complete is to develop your knowledge of your ideal client.
Understanding your ideal client requires a multi-faceted approach. You will need to establish what your ideal customer is looking for from businesses like yours, the services they require, their business goals, and hopes for future success is essential. Beyond this, developing a firm knowledge of the pain points your ideal customers currently face is a must. This information should be at the heart of your customer offering and should determine your sales strategy. Proving that you understand the issues your sales prospects are dealing with and providing solutions to solve them is really valuable and is at the core of standing out from the competition.
Working on building this knowledge is important and its value shouldn’t be underestimated. Offering a fresh solution that will solve your client’s problems more effectively than your competitors can will go a long way toward making your business a success and winning new clients from the start.
Develop Strategies to Combat Sales Objections
Even with a strong offering and a clear understanding of customer pain points, winning over prospects and getting them to sign on the dotted line can still be challenging.
Sales prospects will come up with all kinds of different objections while you’re trying to pitch to them. These sales objections can cause you to keep going back and forth, failing to move the deal forward. Understanding the different types of sales objections is the first step to overcoming them. When you know what these objections look like and how to respond to them, it can completely transform the way you approach new sales prospects.
With this knowledge, you can then develop different strategies, so that your pitches address common sales objections from the very start. You will also be able to use your time more productively, by understanding when to continue pursuing a prospect following sales objections, and when it is best to channel your time and energy into a new direction. This will help you to work more efficiently, and increase your chances of sales success.
Nurture Client Relationships
Once you have started securing your clients, and begin building a customer base, it can be tempting to continue aggressively recruiting new clients. Working on expanding your customer base and increasing your sales is essential. However, it’s vitally important that this doesn’t happen at the expense of your existing customers.
Everyone has heard the stats about it being cheaper to retain customers than to constantly attempt to recruit new ones. Working on nurturing your existing client relationships to ensure you retain them is certainly a much more cost-effective than having a high client turnover and constantly attempting to recruit new customers.
Striking a balance between client retention and client recruitment can be tricky, but it’s essential to work on both. Ensuring that your existing clients feel valued and trust they’re getting the best possible service is a must to keep your business with a steady income stream and the potential for even greater success in the future. It also provides the opportunity to upsell to your existing clients, which should be much easier when they’re already familiar with you and the high levels of service that you offer.
Final Thoughts
Working on securing your first customers when you launch your business can be a daunting task. However, preparing thoroughly before you begin contacting potential clients can make the process run far more smoothly and will significantly increase your chances of successfully recruiting clients. Researching competitors, understanding your ideal customer, and knowing the common sales objections you’re likely to face can put you in a strong position to secure sales.