The crucial step to close more B2B sales.

Hi, Indie Hackers!

What happens when a customer signs up for your product or service? A lot of people think that that moment—the signup trial/demo request—is when they’ve “won” the customer. But is far from reality.

At some point, you probably subscribed to something and quit after the free trial.

Even for service companies, someone calling to inquire about some budgets or show some interest in your company doesn’t mean it will end up being a long-term customer.

Actually, having them for as long as possible is a long process and you will need a whole customer success plan in place, so the first thing first moving them in your pipeline from prospect to customer.

So what is that crucial step that you need to put into practice in order to close more deals? The main step to get a client is the discovery call or discovery session before the demo. And most companies do this wrong because they forget the most important thing "the before"

The before.

In the past, I have been creating many demand generation and growth strategies for early-stage startups and I saw a pattern in why they fall at converting.

Most founders are not salespeople or they have never been involved with sales or negotiation which translates into not having a strategy in place.

If you are this type of founder or you want to improve your overall- sales skills the first thing you need to know is you need to do your homework.

You need to do research before you (or any of your SDRs) jump in the call. This step is a must. Most companies try to book as many meetings as possible, and they close only 25% of them (and that’s a good scenario).

This low conversion might be because of a bad product (which is not usually the case), a not trained sales rep (definitely more common), not having a strategy in place (most of the time), or because of the lack of interest from the company.

In an over-saturated market, the experience means everything, and if the only thing that you do before jumping in that call is using the same questions for everyone and doing a CSI interrogatory, you’re pushing your client away.

Therefore, let them book 15-20 minutes but schedule 30min in your (or your sales rep) calendar.

You can also let 1 or 2 hours of their morning (before starting the calls) gather information about the prospects. Or maybe you can have someone who can gather this information for you.

Information to gather:

Company:

o Number of employees
o Industry
o Location
o Name of the company (you don’t know how many sales reps forget this)
o Service or product: Quick overview (Payroll/HR tool)

Person:

o Name of the person: Joe Doe
o Role: Marketing Director
o Check LinkedIn if possible

“AHA sparks”

o Google the name of the company on Google news (or similar) to see if is any relevant information. Maybe a company just raised funds and that’s why they need new tools…
o Competitors: Now their competitors… Maybe they are even your clients.
o What’s going on in their business/industry? Is the industry growing, do they have many competitors, do you see any change in their industry something negative or positive that can affect them? Any of these questions could be a good way to start.

Client hypothesis:

o What would engage them during the presentation?
o What benefits do they seek in your product?
o Why they might not buy from you?
o Who else takes part in the decision-making process?

By having this information in a place you can leverage your position in the conversation position your company as an expert and also detail-oriented.

Example between a Data SaaS sales rep and a marketing director.

Most companies just rely on embedding questions with no connection like:

Sales Rep: What are your objectives for this quarter?
Prospect: Well, I can’t share much of our numbers but we look for +70% of growth.
Sales Rep: Nice, How do you manage your data at the moment?

Now let’s see how the conversation will look with the information and the Aha Sparks.

Sales Rep: “Recently, I read that you raised funds, I want to congratulate you on that. I suppose that the company is looking now for fast growth. Can you tell me more about your growth objectives?”
Client: Yes! Thanks. Well, right now we are looking to acquire Acme which is a small company that will help us improve our product and expand to new markets. We were looking to achieve 74% of growth in the next quarter, and start A/B testing the product in new markets, by the end of the month to gather insights.
Sales Rep: Well, those sound like great plans, and as a marketing director you must rely a lot on data and frameworks. Can you tell me how are you looking to manage all that new data?
…

Can you see the difference? In the second example, you're building trust and positioning yourself. In the first, you are just dropping questions with no correlation.