Just because you’re a small business (which, according to some definitions, means anywhere from 5 to 500 employees) doesn’t mean you have to be limited to “small” technology and tactics for driving revenue.
There are tools and techniques that work across all businesses, regardless of size. Yes, sometimes price/licensing is an issue—e.g., if you have three employees, chances are good you don’t need a $30k CRM platform.
But whether you’re a one-man shop or a Fortune 100, a business selling to other businesses starts with leads and ends with signed quotes. In-between there are software solutions, selling strategies, prospects, proposals, platforms--endless possibilities.
In this post, we’ll strip down B2B selling for SMB to the bare minimum: where your leads come from—or should be coming from—and how to close more of them in less time.
SMB leads: getting the prospect to come to you
Not all leads are “the Glengarry leads.” Some leads are plain old garbage. Regardless, the best leads are never given you wrapped in a bow; the best leads are in-bound.
In-bound marketing drives more success for SMBs than any other lead source. In fact, according to a recent poll, more than 60% of an SMB’s most qualified leads come from in-bound marketing efforts, and, in these efforts, content marketing is king.
Blog posts, advertorial, podcasts, webinars, whitepapers, and other content that establish your business as a thought leader may not drive 1,000 leads overnight, but they will drive more qualified leads over the lifetime of your business.
SMB closing: tracking quotes from start to finish
We’re skipping the part of the business you should already know (rather, we’re saving it for later)—the selling. If you own an SMB, you probably know a thing or two about talking to a prospect and moving them from Attention to Interest to Decision to Action. The action is to sign the quote you send them, which is where automating your process with quote software can make a world of difference.
The best part is that the same quote software systems and tools used by the biggest companies are readily available to the smallest, too. And while some of these systems may require enterprise-level software, some quote software systems are standalone and ready to use right out of the box.
The benefit of quote systems for SMBs and Fortune 100s is exactly the same: salespeople do their job—the parts between a lead coming in and a quote going out—and the system does the rest. It creates the quote; it sends the quote; it tracks the quote; it pings the prospect; it pings the salesperson; it stores the quote.
With the right sales automation software handling quotes, a business is free to focus on activities that drive more leads and create more revenue, leaving the time-consuming quote delivery and tracking process to the software.
