5 Reasons Your B2B Sales Strategy Isn’t Working

No matter how good your B2B sales strategy has been historically, or how carefully you outlined the strategy in the first place, there’s usually a point at which your company hits a plateau. You’ll find a limit to your sales, or you’ll start to lose momentum that you gained. Either way, you won’t be getting as many sales as you wanted—maybe not even as many as you need—and you’ll be hard-pressed to start looking for alternative strategies and approaches to achieve the goals you’ve set for your organization. 

The process starts with identifying what’s currently wrong with your approach.

The Unique Challenges of B2B

B2B sales is arguably more challenging than B2C sales—it has a handful of unique obstacles that you’ll have to address in your strategy and analysis:

A longer sales cycle. It usually takes a longer time for B2B clients to close a deal. The impulse-driven sense of urgency that many B2C companies rely on can’t be replicated here. Instead, prospective leads need to be initiated, nurtured, and followed up with on a regular basis before they can be gradually worked to a close.

More complicated relationships.

A consumer buying a product is a relatively straightforward decision—that consumer simply has to decide if it’s worth the amount of money that product is being sold for. In a business exchange, legal departments, bosses, superiors, and financial departments may all throw wrinkles into the sales process.

More unforeseeable variables.

There are a number of T’s to cross and I’s to dot in the B2B world. There’s much more on the line, and far more variables that can influence the close of a deal. Accordingly, it’s harder to predict what went wrong during the process—it’s harder to isolate those variables and account for them with some new change.

Inter-departmental woes.

Few B2B sales departments operate in a vacuum. Instead, they rely on other departments, especially marketing, to complement and enhance their efforts. For example, B2B marketing departments usually do the work of raising brand awareness and setting early expectations, passing over strong leads to the sales team for further exploration. If they miscommunicate, or send bad leads, the sales process can be disrupted before it even begins.

What Could Be Going Wrong

With those considerations in mind, these are the most common reasons why your B2B sales strategy could be failing entirely:

You aren’t offering the right product at the right price.

No matter how you try to dress up the rest of the sales process, this is the fundamental exchange that lies at the heart of any sales deal. You have to give your customers something they need or want at a price they evaluate to be equal to or less than the value of the offer. If you’re offering something that people just don’t want, or if you end up charging people more than they’re willing to pay, your sales team will be hard-pressed to close deals. The biggest problem here is that most people won’t give you direct feedback on how close you are to the mark.

You aren’t working with quality leads.

Because the B2B sales cycle is longer and more complicated, it doesn’t make sense for your sales team to handle leads that haven’t been pre-qualified in some way. The most common way to handle this is through a marketing funnel, which may pre-qualify leads who have converted online or met a certain threshold of interest. If this funnel is flawed—too wide or too narrow—your sales team won’t be able to work efficiently. Your sales team should be able to give you feedback here based on their experiences.

Your business agreements aren’t reasonable.

Occasionally, there are logistical hurdles that prevent business agencies from working with each other. For example, your contractual agreement may be too inflexible, or your terms of service may be too long. If you’re worried this might be the case, experiment with a new model of agreement and see if you end up closing more deals.

You haven’t built a replicable sales process.

This is a major kink in the system because it prevents you from being able to isolate and identify any potential variables that could be interfering with your ability to close. A consistent, repeatable sales process will make it easier for your sales team to write proposals, do so in the appropriate brand voice, offer things on (relatively) even footing with each other, and evaluate what went right or wrong in multiple independent scenarios.

You aren’t building or nurturing a lead pool.

Just because a lead didn’t close right away or didn’t convert right away doesn’t mean that lead is dead to you forever. You also don’t have to dispose of all the “soft leads” who aren’t ready to convert or aren’t as interested as your upper echelon of leads. You can pool them all together, market to them gradually, and start culling them based on interest in the future. Nurture your leads gradually through marketing and occasional touches, and eventually you can bring them to a close.

The Final Threshold of B2B Sales

The early stages of B2B sales are important, including identifying the right prospects, funneling leads to your sales team, and beginning the early conversations. But the final threshold for sales performance, the writing and delivery of a final proposal, is essential to closing the deal. You need to make sure your proposals are being written and presented consistently, with as much accuracy as possible, if you want your business to succeed in the long term.

If you need help to accomplish this, CPQ software is likely your best bet. At iQuoteXpress, our CPQ software gives your team all the tools and resources they need to get the job done efficiently and effectively. If you’re interested in seeing how our CPQ software can work for you, sign up for a free trial today!

6 Tools That You Need to Be a Good Salesman.

Closing sales means bringing in business and, hopefully, lasting customers. However, moving from initial contact to money in the bank isn’t nearly as easy as it looks. Aside from having the drive to close a deal, a good salesman must also have the right tools.

With so many tasks and responsibilities circling you from day to day, it’s easy to feel too overwhelmed to do a good job. To make your sales jobs more manageable, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sales tools at your disposal.

You’ll need tools that help you become more organized, stay on task, communicate better with clients, and leave work at work when you head home. If that sounds attractive to you, here are some essential sales tools that you should be using.

1. Personality Traits and Skills

First and foremost, being a good salesman goes beyond the technical. You must also have certain personality traits and skills to handle this difficult occupation. As you work to close quicker deals and to increase your success in this field, here are some personality traits on which to work.

Patience: Let customers make decisions at their own speed. Some sales will take longer than others.

Commitment: It may take 99 phone calls dropped or doors slammed in your face to get your first sale, but if you’re committed to the job, you’ll get it done.

Integrity: Shady sales people always have a more difficult time connecting with consumers and maintaining lasting customers than those who approach the process with honesty and transparency.

Flexibility: You have to be available for customers, even when it’s not convenient. You may also need to adjust your initial goals to work with difficult customers and extenuating circumstances.

Enthusiasm: The more excited and confident you are in a product, the more you’ll be able to convince consumers of its worth.

Motivation: Most of the time, you’ll set your own goals, hours, and quotas, so it’s essential to stay motivated if you want to achieve success.

2. Mobile Apps

It’s hard to be a good salesman today without a smartphone loaded with useful apps. Some apps will help you to communicate better with your customers, while others will improve lead storage. You likely already have a few apps in your mobile library, but here are a few that you can add.

CamCard: Save a sales lead instantly with this accurate note-taking and storage app.

Square: Retain the ability to accept payment at the door.

GoToMeeting: Tune-in to conferences with your sales team, even when you’re traveling.

Dragon: Take notes on your phone by using tech that translates voice into text.

SpotHero: Stop looking for affordable, nearby parking when you travel to meetings. This app instantly shows all of the parking places in the vicinity around your meeting.

Pocket: When you find a timely and educational article or video on the web, bookmark it for later.

3. Cloud Collaboration

Everything is moving to the cloud these days, and you should too. It’s the easiest and most efficient way to store your sales files accurately and securely. You no longer need worry about accidentally deleting files or losing everything when your desktop crashes. If it’s in the cloud, you can almost always retrieve it.

In addition, the cloud makes it easy to collaborate, both with team members and your clients. When using cloud-based productivity platforms and file sharing, you can communicate relevant information with anyone, no matter where you are. As a salesperson, you’re likely required to travel often, and tools like Google Drive, iQuoteXpress, and other productivity sales platforms will keep you constantly connected.

4. Email Tracking

Understanding the effectiveness of your emails will show you where to improve and which habits to continue. Features in a good email tracking software will include email templates, monitoring of outgoing emails for the entire team, integration with other software, the ability to see when messages are opened, consistent online support, email analytics, comprehensive email reports, and other key email marketing tools.

With the ability to track emails across your entire sales team constantly, communication becomes increasingly more attainable for both teams and clients. Your sales will improve, and your quotas will be easier to reach.

5. Quota Tracking

Every sales person has a quota they must reach on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis. The best sales people stick to their quotas religiously and hold themselves to a higher standard each time they achieve their goals.

Reaching these quotas is difficult, but it gets easier when you use software to improve the process. Cloud-based productivity software, for example, can help entire sales teams collaborate in order to work toward both individual and team goals. When team members see their own progress and the progress of others, it can motivate them to achieve even higher goals and to improve their sales in the process.

6. Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) Software

Many salespeople will tell you that managing proposals is one of the most difficult aspects of staying organized and productive as a salesman, particularly those with complex sales processes. Businesses with a variety of products and services to offer have a much more difficult time giving an accurate quote than small businesses, a process that can drag down the proposal process and reduce the professional quality.

When you have CPQ software, you’ll begin to change your tune. This tool allows you to manage proposal by proposal accurately and quickly, rather than getting caught up in mounds of files to approach.

Essentially, CPQ software is a tool that enables more efficient sales processes through increasing deal size, scalable accuracy, and cloud convenience. iQuoteXpress, for example, is a resource specifically designed for teams looking for more professional, accurate, and timely proposals. It can be customized to your unique objectives and offers a variety of features.

When you’re faced with complex sales quotes, this software can integrate your catalog to minimize and eliminate errors; deliver accurate quotes; and create striking, branded, and complete proposals.

Aside from that, once the proposal is created, you can track your leads, monitor and manage activities, and ultimately close more deals. This incredible sales tool seems too good to be true, but it’s not. In fact, you can contact iQuoteXpress now for more information. We’d be happy to hook you up with a free, no-obligation online demo of our CPQ software today! 

Email Etiquette and the Proposal Process

When it comes to building relationships with potential clients, the proposal writing process often comes on the back end of a long drawn out process. It’s only after developing relationships and staying in constant communication that many businesses will accept a proposal from a potential partner. With that being said, companies need to focus on how they build relationships in a business world that often values email over face-to-face communication.

The Trouble with Email

Email is fantastic. It’s quick, easy, and convenient. If you want to tell someone something without investing a lot of time, you simply email them and avoid getting stuck in long conversations. Email is also widespread – meaning everyone has an email address. However, for all of the benefits associated with email, there are also some major disadvantages.

“On e-mail, people aren’t quite themselves,” Will Schwalbe and David Shipley, authors of the book Send, wrote in 2008. “They are angrier, less sympathetic, less aware, more easily wounded, even more gossipy and duplicitous.”

When you’re face-to-face with someone, conversation doesn’t just involve dialogue. There are non-verbal cues, tone, inflection, and rhythm to the conversation. In email, all of this is lost. Humor is easily misinterpreted, anger is exacerbated, and sarcasm is perceived much differently.

As such, it’s imperative that you’re as clear as possible. Email is certainly valuable – nobody is arguing this – but you must know the rules if you want to avoid confusion, gaffes, and misinterpretation.

5 Email Etiquette Rules to Follow

When it comes to proposal writing – or the process leading up to proposal writing – there are certain etiquette rules you need to follow in order to enjoy optimal results.

Use a Clear Subject Line

The subject line of an email is the first thing the recipient will see. You have a duty to yourself and the recipient to make sure this subject line is clear and appropriate for the content of the email. After reading the subject line alone, they should have a pretty good guess as to what the email is about.

For example, let’s say you’re emailing a colleague to confirm that your meeting about a certain proposal is still on. A poorly crafted subject would read something like, “Meeting to Discuss Proposal.” In this case, the recipient doesn’t know if you’re emailing to cancel, confirm, or change the meeting. Sure, they’ll know when they open up the email, but you’re setting the wrong tone from the start. A much more appropriate subject line would be, “Confirming 1:30 Meeting to Discuss Proposal.”

Go Easy on the “Reply All”

The “reply all” feature has its value, but is widely considered an annoying feature. People often reply to everyone when it’s only necessary to reply to the original sender. Not only can this get you in trouble (if the information is only intended for the original sender), but it’s inadvertently disrespectful to the other recipients. Unless there’s a clear instruction to reply to everyone – or you can gather that it’s necessary based on the context – it’s typically best to limit your response to the sender.

Never Use a Pre-canned Template

When reaching out to someone for the first time – particularly when requesting the opportunity to send a proposal – avoid using canned templates. While it’s easy to use a framework and paste in names, titles, and a few additional words for context, you’ll see extremely low response rates.

Business professionals in positions of leadership receive dozens of requests per day. They can easily spot genuine emails from those that are pre-canned. Take the time to write a few sentences that apply directly to the recipient and the situation. This doesn’t guarantee a response, but it does show respect for the individual’s time. If nothing else, the email will actually get read (as opposed to immediately being designated to the trash folder).

Avoid Humor

Nobody wants to be viewed as cold and impersonal, but email is not the best place to let your humorous side show. Sure, there are times when humor is okay in email – such as when you’re emailing friends – but resist the urge to inject humor into business emails.

The trouble with humor is that it’s often mistranslated. If someone has never met you in person, it can be very easy for them to misconstrue what you meant. If you ever feel like you should include a “JK” or “just kidding” after something you write, go ahead and hold down the delete button. Only stick to the necessary information. Let your humor shine through in face-to-face meetings.

Always Proofread

When you have 10 or 15 emails to send out, it’s tempting to quickly whip one up, send it, and move on to the next one. Resist this temptation. You should always proofread prior to hitting the send button. Nothing is more unprofessional (especially in a proposal situation) than sending an email filled with errors.

A good way to ensure you proofread all of your emails is to require confirmation before sending. Configure your email inbox in a way that forces you to confirm that you really want to send an email before sending it. This extra step will remind you to go back and check for issues.

Use iQuoteXpress to Enhance Your Proposals

At iQuoteXpress, we believe our customers need and deserve access to proposal tools that enhance sales team productivity and streamline the quotation process. When this aspect of the proposal process is handled, it becomes exponentially easier to confidently take action and enjoy a healthy return on your investment.

If you’re interested in learning more about our proprietary quoting software, which automates up to 75 percent of proposals and generates accurate quotes, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. We would be happy to set you up with a free no-obligation online demo.

How to Respond Effectively to a Request for Proposal.

For some businesses or independent contractors, a request for a proposal (RFP) is what keeps them in business. It’s a promise of work if yours is accepted, but that’ll only happen if your response is high quality and timely. It must beat out your competitors if you want a chance to render your services, and that can be a challenge.

To improve your chances of having the RFP accepted, you’ll want to draft a timely response. There’s more of an advantage to a speedy response time with your RFP than many people realize. It’s like getting a 10-second head start in a race. It may not be much, but it could mean the difference between your proposal being accepted and it being thrown out. Having your proposal take the first place in the queue ensures that the requester will read yours with a fresh set of eyes without comparing its weaknesses to other proposals. It’s the advantage that you may need in order to be chosen.

Unfortunately, the average response time for a proposal leaves something to be desired. Though the average time differs for every project, it can take several days or even weeks to send a proposal following an RFP. Such a long wait time is not always the most favorable of options.

However, thanks to Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software and modern technology, those sending out for proposals are expecting a higher standard. They’re looking to reward those who use their resources to their fullest extent in order to bring about a speedy response time without sacrificing the quality of work. If you’re looking to get that head start on a high quality proposal, there are a few things that you should try.

Use CPQ Software

First and foremost, be sure that you’re using the right tools. CPQ software is the best way to define accurately the price of goods for the purposes of your proposal. It applies dynamic pricing schemes to regular templates in order to deliver a more accurate reading.

CPQ software can also reduce the time needed to define pricing for a specific proposal format. CPQ software, like that from iQuoteXpress, is designed to make complex analysis and variables look simple on the page. That way, it’ll not only be speedy to make, but it’ll also be simple to read, highlighting important factors like excellent products, service charges, and configuring compatibility.

Understand the Process from the Beginning

You can’t expect to begin the RFP process flying blindly and come out with a speedy, high quality proposal. You must know the ins and outs of creating a good document. This involves clearly laying out the needs and questions of the customer in a single document that’ll compete against a series of other documents.

As a part of this process, recognize the time constraints. You want to get the product out quickly in order to beat competitors, but some projects are much larger than others and have many more components. The larger the project, the more time that it’ll take. You can speed up the process with CPQ software, but be sure that you don’t sacrifice the quality by moving too fast.

Be Ready for Last Minute Requests

You might be staring down a tight deadline to finish your proposal and still be faced with last minute requests that you’ll need to fit into your proposal in order to meet the requester’s needs. The more complex the project is, the more difficult it is to pull such a document together.

It’s always a good idea to consider all of the variables before writing your proposal. That way, when a last minute request comes in, you’ll have plenty of material to work with before submitting the proposal. If you’re prepared, your proposal is guaranteed to come in faster and at a higher quality.

Plan Your Time

Time management is something that most people struggle with in business. It’s difficult to balance multiple projects and devote the necessary quality. However, if you want a quick proposal turnaround, good time management is essential.

Begin the project by setting a deadline for yourself. If you want a good head start over your competitors, it’s recommended that you set a deadline that’s significantly shorter than the one presented by the requester. Then, meet with your team to discuss some doable benchmarks in getting the proposal finished early. With this kind of strategy, you could cut the response time down from days to hours.

Use Templates

Though you want there to be an original quality about the proposals you write and present, there’s no shame in using templates as the backbone in order to expedite the process and make it easier on you. You’ll obviously change the content to match the needs of the presenter, but using a template as the outline is an excellent strategy.

If you’re handy with your preferred proposal development program, you might choose to make the proposals from scratch. If not, using a few versions of a proposal template is a good place to start. You can customize it to meet your needs and the needs of the client while saving yourself a lot of time and efforts.

Have a Signature Statement

You’ll want something that can stand out from your competitors and brand the proposal as distinctly you. In general, a signature statement can achieve this, and it can be prefabricated in order to save time. You can simply slap your signature statement into the introduction or conclusion, and it will be easy to pick your proposal out of the piles of others.

Get Accurate and Time-Saving CPQ Software with iQuoteXpress

At iQuoteXpress, we’re hoping to make your RFP response as quick and painless as possible. Our CPQ software accelerates the proposal writing process with high accuracy and quality. If you’re interested in a customized solution that can cut away hours of work, contact us today! 

What CPQ Will Look Like in the Future.

Configure Price Quote (CPQ) software is currently one of the most popular applications for producing accurate price quotes. It offers real-time data that can be used to improve the sales process as a whole. One thing that’s so great about this product is that it constantly evolves to match the needs of the current business world.

Because CPQ is constantly evolving, it becomes the responsibility of the business to project where they will be next and how this will affect the company. You should definitely evaluate what’s coming this year, in five years, and even in 20 years. It’s important to know what the future of CPQ software looks like, so here are a few predictions for you to consider.

Pervasion of the Cloud

At one point, those in the CPQ business believed that the market for this software would be equally divided between on-site and cloud-based use. However, it’s quickly shifting in the direction of the cloud. Though the shift is happening much sooner than most predicted, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since most software applications are turning toward the cloud for software integration.

“The cloud speeds up business processes,” says Paul Kriete of iQuoteXpress. “And the companies that are able to adjust more quickly to customer needs are usually the ones who will be leaders in their industry.” Blasser also points out how the business world is rapidly moving in the direction of the cloud. According to his research, 54 percent say they’re using the cloud because it increases business ability and scalability while 48 percent are doing so for financial purposes, both of which, apply in the situation of CPQ software.

The cloud sets itself apart as a more useful, convenient form of software management. For starters, accessibility greatly increases with cloud-based software. In addition, companies can automatically send updates through the cloud and keep software from becoming outdated. It’s also much more effective for data storage, since users would no longer need to store data on their computers.

The transition to cloud-based software has already begun. Companies are beginning to offer incentives to their existing on-premise customers to transition to the cloud-based software. They’ll offer discounts on the use of their cloud-based platform in order to get more people using it. Because of this method, it’s predicted that within a decade, all CPQ software will be entirely integrated into the cloud.

More Dynamic Selling

In sales, there’s one sales tactic that’s taking the world by force: dynamic selling. It involves the being interactive, involved, and flexible with sales in order to meet the needs of your sales environment - and it’s the style of selling that goes best with CPQ software in the future. Expert dynamic sales reps today are looking to use CPQ software to support their causes, which is setting the precedent for all those in the sales sector. Within the next decade, the use of CPQ software in the environment of sales is expected to be mainstream.

This all comes thanks to the release of more agile CPQ software that offers the same flexibility of dynamic sales. Sellers get the responses and data they’re looking for without compromising on productivity. It’s efficient, affordable, and totally effective.

The future is all about automated sales proposals and better deals. For those struggling to make it in the sales world, this is what they need to get their sales businesses off the ground running, and keep experienced sales representatives competitive.

Deeper Integration of Business Intelligence (BI) in Sales

Companies have been using Business Intelligence to better their business processes for centuries, but it has grown enormously since that time. Companies have moved away from collecting data through talking face-to-face and mail-in surveys and moved towards finding this information through internet applications like social media and app use. This business intelligence is now making a name for itself in sales, growing at an annual compounded rate of 8.7 percent through 2018, according to Gartner.

Companies are able to grow their intelligence and information gathered from existing customers and discover things the customers love, things they hate, problems that need to be solved, and more. Sales people can bring specific products and services to the attention of customers according to what they love, all thanks to CPQ software that can gather information and automate the processes of price configuration and more for consumer benefit.

Increased Investments

The proliferation of CPQ software is becoming more widespread than ever. It’s become a magnet of sorts for investors, attracting them to the software because of its unprecedented potential and many uses in the sales world. Investors are recognizing the benefits of such software that can cut through complex selling challenges and provide live streaming, making sales more visual and easy to comprehend.

Investors look for efficient investments that can bring in easy revenue. Through the improvements in configuration, pricing, guided selling, order management, price quoting, and other software capabilities, CPQ software has generated a sizeable interest from mergers acquisitions managers, and investors.

Use iQuoteXpress Software Today!

The future of CPQ software is rife with possibilities. Companies and individual sales reps alike are beginning to recognize the potential, and as a result, they’re seeking to make CPQ software an integral part of their business processes.

Those looking to stay ahead of the software curve and remain competitive should invest in CPQ software today. There are multiple, distinct software applications that can save you time and money through streamlining your efficiencies and increasing your revenue. We can be consistent with our detailed quotes and pricing product information, winning you more bids and putting your team at a higher-priority than others.

The best part is that if you’re interested in using our iQuoteXpress CPQ software, you can call today to learn more. Also, make sure to set up your free, no-obligation demo of our patented software. Don’t hesitate - contact us today!