The reasons why you sell and close deals in B2B

Ever wondered why B2B salespeople win sales?
According to a survey from CSO Insights salespeople define as their reasons for closing sales in software sales:

Marketing messaging is no help
Marketing messaging, account coverage and product availability are scoring the lowest.
That’s bad news for marketing.
The brand equity is important and that can relate to marketing efforts, but it can also be the brand name that has been build up since many years because of the long market presence.
Contrary what everybody would expect: even pricing is not that important.

Market leaders: easy closing sales
Closing a deal comes down to:
- Product superiority
- Existing relationships
- References
Thus if you are working for a company with the best products, that have acquired good references and you are since quite a while in the same business, then you will outsell the competition.
These 3 have nothing to do with the actual selling or selling skills of the salesman.

Challengers: the sales process – not the pricing
In case you are working for a challenger in the market you might have a superior product, but you will miss on relationships, references and brand equity.
Thus according to the survey you will need to win by providing the best sales process, ROI (Return On Investment) and service/support.
However, as your company is lesser well-known in the market, service and support still needs to be proven.
The good news is that you don’t have to sell on pricing. Thus you are standing a fair chance with fair prices, not undercutting the market leaders.

Market laggards: the sales process and get references
What if you are working for a market laggard with less great products than the challengers, then don’t lower your pricing, but focus on the sales process, provide for ROI calculation example and get some good references.

Conclusion
If you want to win deals in B2B, don’t hope on marketing messages but provide the best sales process and do present a ROI calculation in order to help the decision makers. In many cases they don’t have a clue where to start to make a ROI calculation.

More information about the survey and chart on CSO Insights.

Do you have any other reasons why you closed deals in B2B?

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