11 best B2B sales strategies to build a better sales pipeline and close more deals

Have you ever wondered what sets apart successful B2B brands from the rest? Or which sales strategies you should employ to consistently hit your targets and secure high-value deals? If yes, then you’re not the only one.

B2B selling is the art that requires a unique set of skills along with a concrete strategy that is customer-centric and focuses on building long-term relationships with customers rather than hard selling your products. Top companies understand this and invest in developing sales strategies that revolve around this fact.

And you can follow in their footsteps. So, in this blog post, I’ll go over the 11 best B2B sales strategies that you can use to expand your sales pipeline and boost revenue. 

Whether you are a sales rep, a B2B business owner, or just starting in the field, these strategies will help you develop a solid foundation for your sales process and understand the psychology behind B2B selling. But before we dive into the strategies, let’s take a look at what is B2B sales.  

What is B2B sales?

Some of you might not know this but B2B stands for business-to-business, both the sale takes place between two companies or businesses instead of between a company and individual consumers. This type of sales often involves higher product volumes, longer sales cycles, and more complex decision-making processes. 

A perfect example of a B2B company is Caterpillar Inc., a global manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, engines, and turbines. Its products are used by other companies in the construction, agriculture, mining, and energy sectors. 

In B2B sales, your sales team engages with the reps of other companies to understand specific needs, provide information about your offerings, and negotiate terms and conditions. The offerings involved in B2B sales can vary widely and include anything from raw materials, components, software solutions, consulting, setting up ecommerce for manufacturing, and marketing services.

Best B2B sales strategies for better pipeline and more deals

B2B sales focus on meeting the unique demands of other businesses and fostering mutually beneficial relationships to drive growth and success for both parties. With that said, here are the best B2B sales strategies to find the right prospects and convert them into your clients.

Identify your target audience

One of the most important factors of B2B sales strategies is to identify your target audience. Finding out the correct audience for your offerings will allow you to better understand the needs of your prospects by asking the right sales qualifying question and tailoring your outreach most effectively.

Usually for B2B sales, your target audience will consist of businesses that can benefit from your products or solutions. For example, here are some common audiences for B2B sales:

• Companies operating in particular fields: This could include businesses in niche sectors, such as healthcare, IT, finance, manufacturing, or retail. 
• Decision-makers and influencers: In B2B sales, it is critical to find out the right decision-makers and influencers within your target organization. These individuals can include executives, managers, or department heads. 
• Small, medium, and large enterprises:  B2B sales can be tailored according to the size of your target company. Small businesses with limited resources have to be approached differently than the ones with high budgets and complex buying processes.
• Existing customers: You should also consider your current clients in your B2B sales strategies and look for opportunities for upselling. Establishing a strong relationship with existing clients can lead to repeat business and expansion of offerings offered to them. According to research, the probability of selling to current clients is 65% more than the new customers. 

So, to identify your target audience, you have to conduct research on your market segment and create ideal customer profiles (ICP.) These ICPs will serve as a representation of your ideal target market, allow you to learn more about it, and customize your proposals based on that.

Align sales and marketing teams

Having your sales and marketing departments on the same page is crucial for effective lead generation and closing those deals as well. But if your sales and marketing teams are disjointed and each is working to achieve their individual goals then the situation for you can be tough. 

As per a study by SupperOffice, if your marketing and sales divisions are not aligned with each other, then that can result in 60 to 70% of B2B content getting wasted and losing almost 75% of prospects. 

Having said that, to align sales with marketing, you can follow these steps:

Foster open communication

Encourage regular communication between sales and marketing teams, arrange meetings, and joint planning sessions to ensure smooth collaboration. Open communication helps both teams understand each other’s challenges, perspectives, and objectives.

Define shared goals

Set common goals that align marketing and sales efforts with your overall sales strategy. By having shared goals, both teams can work toward a common purpose and you can track their progress together.

Develop a service-level agreement

Creating a service level agreement (SLA) outlines the responsibilities and expectations of both sales and marketing divisions. This agreement allows you to establish a clear framework for collaboration, making sure that leads are effectively passed from marketing to sales.

Encourage feedback and continuous improvement

Develop a culture of feedback and collaboration where the members of sales and marketing teams can share their experiences and exchange knowledge for improvement. You should also constantly review and simplify your sales process based on the feedback you get from these customer-facing teams.

Leverage content marketing

“Sales is not about selling anymore, but about building trust and educating.” – Siva Devaki

When it comes to online selling, content is the king. And rightfully so. Content marketing is a current sales engagement trend that plays a crucial role in B2B sales from building trust and credibility to nurturing customer relationships. Recent B2B sales statistics indicate that 10% of quality content can drive half of customer engagement. It is the medium of communication between you and your clients, allowing you to describe your offerings, troubleshoot issues, and direct your prospects through the stages of the sales pipeline.

Content marketing involves various types of content that you can use to engage your audience at different touchpoints. Some of the most common are:

Blog posts

A well-written and informative blog post can establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry and lets you address your audience’s problems, provide educational content, and showcase your expertise. Blog posts also help you drive organic traffic to your website, leading to increased engagement and lead generation.

For instance, here is the blog page of Zixflow, where you can find guides, articles, and helpful resources for sales and marketing. These will help you boost your business growth with an optimized sales process and drive business growth and revenue.

Whitepapers and eBooks

These are long-form content pieces that offer comprehensive insights, research, and analysis on particular subjects. Whitepapers and eBooks are often gated behind a paywall or a lead capture form, letting you collect the content details for interested prospects. 

For instance, below is a white paper by Google that strives to encourage people into making use of AI by taking advantage of Google’s technology. The paper includes in-depth technological information for experts or more tech-savvy individuals as well.

Case studies

Case studies or success stories highlight real-life examples of how your product or service helped customers overcome particular challenges and hit their goals. They offer social proof, demonstrate the value of your offerings, and build credibility. B2B buyers often rely on case studies to evaluate potential solutions and make informed decisions

For example, Forge and Smith, a Vancouver-based web design and development agency, show off its work by adding case studies to its website so the visitors can see how it creates tailored websites for its clients.

Videos

Videos have become an increasingly popular medium of B2B sales engagement to deliver compelling content. Videos are more engaging than other forms of content and can be shared on your website, embedded into your blog post content, and posted on social media platforms.

For example, on the Zixflow’s YouTube channel, you can find videos introducing product features and how to use them. These videos allow your prospects to see your product in action or understand its features to make the most of it.

Have a solid sales enablement function 

Sales enablement is a strategic approach where you aim to give your sales team the right training, tools, and knowledge to engage with your prospects and close deals. 

It is particularly important in B2B sales where the sales pipeline is comparatively long and more complex than B2C (buyer-to-consumer) sales. It ensures that your sales team is prepared to handle the demands of B2B clients and pick the right sales engagement approach to meet them.

Sales enablement is a multifaceted process that includes providing content and collateral, sales training, sales process optimization, alignment between sales and marketing, and using appropriate tools. 

So if you want to know more about how to build a sales enablement model for your organization, then have a look at the sales enablement checklist and sales enablement strategies articles. They contain all the information about how to develop a sales enablement and implement a sales enablement program.

Utilize Account-based marketing

Have you wondered how great it would be if you can market your product or service to a company rather than just a few leads within them? Welcome account-based marketing, one of the top sales engagement trends right now.

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a methodology in B2B sales where you focus on targeting and engaging specific high-value accounts or businesses instead of broad, generic leads. Here, you try to fulfill the needs of an entire company (known as an account) or a department within a company, resulting in greater order volume and profits. 

PayScale, for example, is a salary and compensation solution that utilized ABM marketing tactics to boost its account visitors by 500%. It accompanied that by putting the sales and marketing teams on the same page. 

The sales staff supplied the information about the account, designation, and roles of the decision-makers and the marketing team created tailored initiatives to drive these individuals to its top-quality, bottom-funnel content. This resulted in deals getting closed 45% faster and the ROI increased by 6x. 

ABM includes personalized outreach to key decision-makers within target accounts, aiming to build stronger relationships and maximize the impact of marketing efforts. To utilize account-based marketing for B2B sales, you have to find target accounts, learn about their pain points, and develop a multi-channel engagement strategy until you finally convert them into a client. 

For engaging your targeted accounts on various channels, you can use sales engagement software like Zixflow which offers engagement functionality using emails, SMSs, and WhatsApp messages. You can use a combination of channels that matches the preference and behavior of your prospect.

Foster strong partnerships

Just because B2B is a competitive market doesn’t mean that you have to do everything alone. You can always partner with a suitable company and collaborate to achieve common goals and bring about mutual success for both parties. 

Partnerships in B2B sales are typically long-term engagements and require a proactive and strategic approach. You have to look for a business that is not your competitor but offers complementary products or services.  

For instance, suppose you are a software solutions company specializing in B2B cloud-based project management solutions and you partner with a consultation company that offers project management consulting services. 

With this partnership, you can create an integrated solution for project management for your clients by combining your software platform with the expertise of your partner’s project management consulting. 

Once you find the correct company to partner with, you can reach out to them and clearly state the benefits of a partnership. After that, you have to iron out the details of your partnership and draft a contract containing the terms and conditions of the partnership.

Maintain a social presence

Having a presence on social media platforms is important for B2B sales as it allows you to connect with your audience and build relationships focused on selling. In fact, 82% of potential customers think it is fine to get contacted through a social media platform.

Social media offers you the opportunity to increase your brand visibility and reach a wider audience. By sharing useful content and engaging regularly with your target market, you can boost brand awareness and establish yourself as a leader in the market. Additionally, consider leveraging modern networking tools like creating a digital business card and incorporate your social media channels to it, to further expand your reach and facilitate seamless connections with your audience.

LinkedIn is a renowned social media site built specifically for B2B professionals. You can actively post content on social media and respond to comments, questions, and share your expertise. For example, Zixflow’s LinkedIn page contains useful content related to sales and marketing that help us engage and interact with our audience.

Use sales automation tools like Zixflow

If you are running a business, you most likely have a sales process. So to optimize this sales process you will need sales automation tools, such as Zixflow which lets you automate sales workflows to streamline repetitive tasks and improve overall efficiency.

Zixflow is a salesOS that allows you to build sales cadences to automate your emails and follow-ups. This ensures smooth communication with prospects and consistent engagement while reducing manual work. 

Another aspect of your sales process that you can automate is lead generation using chatbots. Chatbots have become more powerful with the advancement in AI technology, letting you build targeted lead lists by adding them to your website. 

To create and embed a chatbot into your website, you can use Zixflow’s Leadbot builder. It is an easy-to-use platform that allows you to create a chatbot by filling in the relevant information in the fields and selecting color schemes for your chatbot.

You do not need any kind of coding knowledge whatsoever. Once you have filled in the details, the software will generate the code for the chatbot that you can simply copy and paste into your site’s source code. See the complete process in action in this video.

Personalize your messaging

Personalizing the messages you send to your prospects is very important. No one likes to read random messages about random products that they have nothing to do with. 

For this reason, you should personalize your outreach messages to demonstrate that you understand your prospects’ unique needs and goals. This way, you can tailor your message to a particular pain point, making your message more relevant and compelling. 

And Zixflow comes to the rescue once again. With its AI Wizard, you can generate personalized emails in seconds. 

You just have to enter some details like which type of email it is, who is the target audience, and what's the purpose of sending it. And the Wizard will create an email that you can copy or save as a template for later use.

Nurture prospects with drip campaigns

If you already didn't know, drip campaigns, or email nurture campaigns, are a set of automated, pre-scheduled emails sent to your prospects over a specified period. 

Drip campaigns allow you to nurture your leads in a timely manner without increasing the workload on your sales reps as the emails are sent automatically. 

The importance of drip campaigns can't be overlooked because B2B sales involve a complex buying process and you have to regularly engage with your leads to guide them across your b2b sales funnel. 

In fact, according to research, just 27% of prospects have a solid idea of what they are going to buy, still only 34% of businesses utilize a lead nurturing initiative. That is not all. As per another study, businesses that are good at nurturing their leads receive 50% more prospects at one-third cost.

So to run a lead nurturing campaign to increase your B2B sales, you have to use outbound sales software like Zixflow. Zixflow offers lead nurturing capabilities in the form of emails or SMS campaigns to keep your leads engaged.

Running an email campaign in Zixflow is pretty straightforward. You first have to fill in the mandatory footer details as it will be shown at the end of your emails. 

So if you're interested in seeing every step of the process, then check out the video below.

Monitor your efforts and adjust accordingly

Imagine this, you have implemented all of the above-mentioned B2B sales strategies but how can you identify whether they are working or not? 

That's why, you have to keep track of your B2B effects to see which ones are working and where you are headed in respect to your goals. 

For example, the analytics panel of Zixflow gives you a clear idea about your sales process and how well your initiatives are fairing. The data is depicted graphically, making it easy to comprehend.

On top of that, you can track your sales targets for your sales and marketing teams to gauge their efficiency and see if they are hitting their quotas consistently. 

This information will help you find out where you are lacking and what you're doing correctly. This way, you can adjust your overall B2B strategy by taking data-driven decisions based on numbers and not on gut feelings.

Take advantage of these B2B sales strategies and crush your goals

It is not easy to sell. And in the case of B2B sales, the process is much more challenging as companies don't want to spend unnecessarily. 

But by having a defined strategy and a clear game plan in mind, you can market your offerings as solutions to your prospects' problems rather than the expenses they can cut to save money.

And Zixflow is built to help you do exactly that. It comes packed with features that make your life easier and your sales grow. For example, it lets you create cadences with its sales cadence platform, engage your leads with personalized emails, and serve as the only platform you will need to manage your sales process.

Another great thing about Zixflow is that it lets you check out the platform using a 7-day free trial! It offers usage-specific pricing plans depending on whether you want to use it as an XCRM, marketing stack, or both. So what's the wait for? Take advantage of this free trial and sign up for the platform to find out how it can help you in getting more leads in your sales pipeline.