“Focus on how your company can solve their problem.”

• Online Presence. Anyone thinking of selling to business needs to have a persuasive and professional website. The fragmented nature of the small and medium sized business market means that, in many cases, you won’t approach them about a sale – they will come to you, via your website. The web helps create something of a level playing field for businesses with relatively small marketing budgets. Your web presence must present a compelling argument to a potential customer. To take full advantage of your website, it must present a very strong value proposition to visitors, and it must do so on the front page – the further visitors have to go, the more you will lose. Search engine optimization and marketing are also important tools in ensuring those “pre-qualified” customers who are searching for a product like yours come to your website first.
• Cold Calls and Emails – But Be Prepared. Although contriversial, cold calling is a very popular form of b2b telemarketing. As the world and your competitors are focused on inbound marketing, you’ll be one of the few doing outbound calls. The first person who builds a relationship with a business has a much higher chance of winning the deal. Combine this with a consultative sales approach, and you’ll be ahead of the curve. But, be sure to do research first. Understand the customer’s problem, how they currently solve it, how your platform will help them reach their goals, and how they’ll implement your solution. For example, before you cold call or email someone, understand how they currently do what they do. If you would like more information on how this system works, you could always enquire with a cold calling service who could offer help and advice on how your company could begin using this method. Therefore, when you craft my pitch, you focus on how your company can solve their problem and what it’ll take to implement your solution within their infrastructure.
• Information-based Marketing. There is an awful lot of fatigue in corporate land in terms of being sold to. They’ve seen the sell a thousand times before, but if you can send information to a decision maker that is relevant, informative and helps them carry out their work better, they’ll accept it. Information based marketing – that shows your experience, expertise or unique perspective – is cheap and effective. This can take the form of white-papers, benchmark surveys or informational webinars. By providing information that potential clients may find independently interesting, they hope to bring them within the orbit of their brand. When doing so, limit your mention of your product or service. This sounds counterintuitive – after all you are looking to sell your wares. But the ability to garner attention comes from your distribution of independent and useful information to your buyer – not your detailing of your product. A website chock full of interesting information will also be more of a magnet for customers, both because of the content itself and the search engine optimization boost it brings. For others, the key use of research and reports is to be able to put something other than marketing guff in front of the skeptical eyes of direct marketing recipients.

Customers don’t want to be sold to – they want someone that is thinking about solving their problems. Keep this in mind as you use these B2B marketing techniques.