These B2B Sales Tips come from my training with HubSpot. We became a HubSpot Partner Agency just over a year ago, but we didn’t expect the amount of marketing and sales training our growing team would get.The Hubspot juggernaut is a machine and the training is amazing (even for a guy with a fair bit of grey hair in his main).

I‘ve recently attended a weekly sales training bootcamp with about 15 Hubspot agencies partners across Australia. So, I thought I’d share a few takeaways with you that will really help business development managers, account managers and anyone else that’s involved in selling their company’s services.

Fun fact: this means every single person in your business!

The king of B2B sales tips: Know what you’re selling and why it benefits your prospect

Before you start selling anything, know your stuff. Knowing the ‘what and how’ of the stuff you sell is great, but knowing how it can benefit your client is critical.

Hubspot is a great platform for modern measurable marketing for b2b and b2c clients. But it’s only software. For your clients to get the maximum benefit from it you need to establish how you can help them achieve their goals. You first need to understand their business, what they do and how they do it, and to uncover how you can add value to their business. 

As an inbound agency we discover how we can add value, and Hubspot is our awesome enabler. How about you? Do you understand your client’s business and the value you can deliver?

Have a sales process

A B2B sales process most often refers to a repeatable set of steps your sales team takes with a prospect to move them from an early stage prospect to a closed customer. A good sales process helps your reps consistently close deals by giving them a framework to follow.

There are always three sales

B2B sales tips are nothing without understanding that within every sales process there are always three sales to satisfy your prospect.

  1. Sale 1: The ‘status quo’ sale – You’re competing with the prospect’s status quo . So, is what you’ve got going to take your prospect somewhere better than where they are now?  Focus on showing them how your product or service will make their situation better. If what you’ve got doesn’t put them in a better place you’ve lost before you’ve started.
  2. Sale 2: The ‘how’ sale – Once you’ve established the deficiency in their current situation and the fact they need to do something, your second sale is the ‘how’ sale. The how sale shows your client what they need to do and the actions they need to take to make their situation better.
  3. Sale 3: The ‘who’ sale – The who sale is the you sale. Why they should pick you over another agency, supplier or vendor. This is where you tell your story and position yourself favourably against your competitors.

Go for ‘level 3 questions’ to understand goals and aspirations

When exploring a prospect’s problems and assisting them to find an answer there are three levels of questions to uncover their goals and challenges. Your job, Super Mario Brothers style, is to get the level three.

Level 1:  Specifics – You need to get specific goals, targets, pains and challenges from your prospect if you’re going to tailor a solution for them. What is their target and what are their specific goals? What are the ramifications of not hitting their goals in dollar terms?

Level 2: Specifics + Time – Understanding your prospect’s time targets is critical. Knowing the time within which they want to hit their target gives you a framework to structure and cost your solution to help them get to where they need to be.

Level 3: Specific + Time + Emotional Reason – Everyone has goals but we all have secret reasons or untapped drivers that help us create deadlines for ourselves.

Maybe your prospect wants to sell their business by a certain time so that they can live with their kids in Canada. Maybe they’re about to turn 50 and want to hit their goal before they meet that milestone.  Or, maybe aspirations are governed by hitting a market by a certain time, or their lenders have put an ultimatum to your prospect.

Whatever it might be, getting to the emotional reason for the target gives you ultimate insight into not only how you are going to help you prospect meet their targets, but also the real reason why.

Find the gap

You need to work out if your prospect can reach her goals by doing what she’s doing now. Ask the question – if you did nothing would you be able to reach your targets and the goals you are setting yourself? This is one of the best b2b sales tips to help your prospect understand that the status quo is not an option.

Focus on your prospect’s stuff, not your stuff

A lot of salespeople focus on their own stuff, not the prospect’s stuff. The fact is inbound selling is all about finding out what the customer’s problem is and then tailoring a solution to their specific problem.

Focus on understanding the client’s problem and work with them to uncover the reasons (all of them) for the problem and the opportunity. Only then will you be able to help them develop a solution to their problem.

Sales technology helps sales teams

Finally, a list of b2b sales tips wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Sales Tech. If you or your sales team are not using sales tools and technology to help you sell, you’re behind the 8-ball and you’ll be at the mercy of your competitors.

As a Hubspot Agency we use Hubspot’s Free CRM and Hubspot Sales Professional to run an effective sales process and to ensure we’re on top of our game when it comes to follow-up and being responsive to our clients’ needs. There are other options out there too – check out Pipedrive and Insightly.