If you think that growing your B2B sales by 10 percent or 20 percent is a good stretch goal, how about this… Growing your B2B sales by 50 percent! It almost sounds too good to be true, but there are basic things you can be doing right now to grow your business by 50 percent — and not years from now, but in six months.
This is not rocket science. It just requires taking a closer look at the statistics available in the B2B sales and marketing field. From there, it’s possible to spot three quick ways to boost sales dramatically.
First of all, stop wasting your time on unproductive prospects. Your time is more valuable than that. By some estimates, 50 percent of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospects. That’s just throwing away half of your day on activities that aren’t going to lead to any revenue, ever.
One reason why there’s so much time wasted on unproductive prospects is because, according to MarketingSherpa, just 56 percent of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to sales. In other words, the sales team is getting a lot of quantity, but not a lot of quality. It doesn’t matter how wide your sales funnel is if the leads are low quality.
Second, get your sales and marketing teams in sync. The left hand has to know what the right hand is doing. Getting onboard with marketing could be a huge win for your B2B sales team. That’s because when sales and marketing teams are in sync, companies became 67 percent better at closing deals, according to Marketo. And closing more deals means growing your sales significantly! Companies with aligned sales and marketing teams generated 208 percent more revenue from marketing, according to MarketingProfs.
Third, find new ways to leverage your B2B content. Think of all the information that your company or organization generates about your products and services – the website copy, the brochure copy, the social media content. How much of that is actually used? You’d be surprised at the numbers. 60-70 percent of B2B content created is never used. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the most cited reason why is because the topic is irrelevant to the buyer audience.
That’s eye opening. How is it possible that a majority of all B2B content is basically worthless? So, take a closer look at your website and all other points of contact that your customer may have with you. Does it all make sense?
And, more importantly, does your B2B content really describe the problems your customers are facing? That’s the key to differentiating between “relevant” and “irrelevant” content – the focus should be on your customers and their needs, not on your company and its needs. That sounds obvious, but it’s surprising how many people get that wrong. In fact, as many as 7 out of every 10 organizations get it wrong!
Getting a 50 percent bump in your B2B sales sounds like an impossible goal. But when you realize how inefficient your sales funnel is right now, it seems reasonable. And, best of all, many of these changes can be enacted in 6 months or less!
Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.