In the race to win over new customers, B2B companies have a new tool in their B2B sales toolkit, and it’s called P2P (peer-to-peer) selling. In many ways, the growing popularity of this B2B selling technique is a reflection of the broader ways that the internet has completely changed the B2B sales process.
Back in the day, the key to closing the deal was having a very effective B2B sales guy (or gal). But that all started to change with the internet and the growing relevance of social media. What social media did was elevate the importance of peer reviews and peer recommendations. What your peers say or do is now just as important, if not more important, than what the experts say.
And hence a new trend was born. P2P selling is really a mix of several different ideas and concepts, like advocacy-based sales and influencer marketing. But the core idea is the same: people are more likely to buy your products if they hear or see someone they trust, like a close friend or peer, recommend it. These peers are best able to outline the key features and benefits of a product.
One of the key underpinnings of P2P selling is, as you might have guessed, peer-based content. What this basically means is that slick marketing materials are on the way out. What’s on the way in is “authentic” content that’s been generated by your peers. With the proliferation of so many social media channels and platforms, it’s easier than ever before for peers to create this content. Tweets and status updates can be just as valuable as long, 2000-word blog posts.
The best peer-based content enables customers to tell their stories, explain their business outcomes, and showcase their overall customer experience. In short, they are “stories of happy customers.” But this goes well beyond just putting a few quotes from happy customers on your website and calling that your “testimonials” section.
You need to bring those testimonials to life, and one popular way to do that is via video. A brief video with a satisfied customer talking about his or her experience using a product – even if included as part of a broader marketing video – can be extraordinarily powerful. At the very least, including a photo next to a written testimonial can go a long way. So could a guest blog post from a satisfied customer.
Over time, it’s likely that the momentum around P2P selling is going to grow. That’s because the democratization of content on the internet and the sheer volume of data and information out there is enabling a whole new group of “self-service” customers who may not even need to engage one-on-one with a B2B salesperson. Everything can be handled online and automated.
Thus, P2P selling can be seen as a culmination of sorts for the peer influencer phenomenon. In short, these peer influencers can be so powerful that they not only impact what people buy, but also the very act of the purchase itself.
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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.