How to Reinvent Sales to Help Customers Buy

How to Reinvent Sales to Help Customers Buy

Have you ever been a buyer and felt like bashing your head into the keyboard just trying to make a purchase? This can be true for any industry (buying my first car felt like an introduction to torture), but it’s particularly common in B2B and especially SaaS brands.

The B2B buyer’s journey is naturally longer than most B2C journeys, but the reality is that marketing and sales funnels aren’t actually helping that— they’re making it worse.

No one wants to be sold over a long, complex funnel. They want to get the information they need to help them make a buying decision, and then they want to buy quickly.

So if you want to reinvent sales, it ultimately comes down to both sales and marketing “helping buyers buy” and in this post, we’ll show you exactly how to do that.

Why We Need to Reinvent Sales

Let’s talk about the SaaS sales process.

Right now, the following happens, typically in roughly this order:

  • Users discover your brand through any number of different methods
  • They research more about what you offer
  • They see a product page where they can see videos and images of your product’s interface, along with a list of features
  • They may or may not see pricing available; enterprise pricing almost always requires a custom quote
  • They can sign up for a limited free trial or a free demo
  • Even during the demo, the sales team typically tries to get through their entire pitch before offering a price; they may need to return after talking to the customer in another message with pricing options
  • They follow up, trying to “sell” by highlighting features and unique selling propositions, and requiring users to activate through a specific sales person for enterprise accounts
  • Then the user can purchase, potentially with some back and forth regarding email contracts; the onboarding process can be complicated

That’s a lot of steps.

And just as importantly… no one likes the feeling of being sold to. When I’m choosing software for my business, I want the information I need to make a sale. I don’t want some account executive who is clearly just trying to earn a commission to be trying to sell me hard on a lot of features I know I’ll never use.

By simplifying the buying process and focusing on helping buyers buy, we can reinvent the sales process for our customers and increase sales drastically along the way.

What It Means to “Help Buyers Buy”

The idea of helping buyers buy revolves entirely around the process of readily giving leads the information they need to make a buying choice upfront.

Your aligned marketing and sales teams can facilitate leads in their buying decisions instead of just shoving offers down their throats. You’re there to assist them by having relevant information quickly available earlier in the buying processes, and to listen to what they say they need to offer strong suggestions.

This doesn’t mean that you should never upsell or cross-sell, because you still should. Customers may not realize that you have other products, services, or features that could benefit them unless you mention it.

It also doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be offering custom quotes for enterprise clients, or having sales team members hard at work. Large accounts do benefit from an account executive or two who can make recommendations based on what the client needs and to put together custom package pricing.

It does mean, however, that you shouldn’t draw out the buyer’s process in some long attempt to over-qualify leads, sell clients things that they don’t actually need, or try to play your cards way too close to the chest.

What Does the Modern Buyer’s Journey Actually Look Like?

Think about the modern buyer’s journey. They hope to find most (if not all) of the information they need during the research process.

Most sizable businesses understand that if they need enterprise-level features they may need a custom quote, but they’re going to do a lot of research to narrow down their different choices before they get in touch with a sales representative in 90% of cases.

They’re going to look tools that can:

  • Fall within their budget
  • Scale overtime to match their intended or planned levels of growth
  • Offer the features that they need
  • Solve the pain points they have
  • Match the use cases for how they want to utilize the tool
  • Align with their implementation or rollout processes, or that have easy onboarding
  • Beat other tools that they’re considering in the same space.

Let’s look at an example.

When I choose invoicing software, it was a dealbreaker for me if the software didn’t also let me track expenses. Could I have theoretically gotten another tool for that? Sure, but it was a dealbreaker for me, especially since so many tools in the market offer that. I chose FreshBooks because it had every feature I needed.

alt_text

Another example: When considering a content organization management tool, individual freelancers and large brands are going to look at different features.

An individual user will care about security, easy organization, and clear labeling. They might be fine with Google Docs.

A larger brand will also care about those features, but they’ll need to know how access to third-party vendors works, organizing content across different platforms, how many users they can add to the plan, and how to collaborate within the tool. They’d want to look at options like Content Camel, which allows for all of the features they need.

alt_text

Ideally, you’ll have accounted for all of this with the buyer’s journey. And even better, you should have a list of content that sales actually needs that help overcome any objections and address their questions throughout the sales funnel.

How the Disconnect Between Marketing, Sales, and Product Prevents This

Both marketing and sales are evaluated based on the number of conversions they generate. Marketing may be focused on driving traffic and leads (though often not lead quality), while sales needs to close deals and land new clients.

Meanwhile, the product team is evaluated on feature activations, as opposed to helping people actually decide whether or not it’s a good fit.

The problem is that no team is being evaluated based on getting the right people the right information at the right time to help them buy. Everyone is trying to get as many people to take a desired action as possible, hammering potential users over the head without regard for what the user’s actual needs are.

A free sign-up or demo is not a conversion to a sale, and it shouldn’t really be counted as such. The demo may not convince the buyer to purchase. Small business owners may try free trials for multiple brands before making a selection.

So then you need to ask what the demo was missing that caused buyers to not think it was a great tool? And what if the problem was a poor-quality lead that just wasn’t a fit for your business?

Teamwork to help buyers buy is essential. Marketing and sales alignment is a crucial part of this, as is alignment with the product team, which is an important part of sales enablement.

How to Help Buyers Buy

If you want to see your sales skyrocket quickly (and you want to accelerate the buyer’s journey), let’s go over how to do that.

1. Choose the Right Marketing Tools

You absolutely need the right marketing and sales tools in place when you want to help buyers buy.

This includes:

  • A strong CRM that makes it easy to track all client interactions and details, including information about their business and their specific pain points or needs
  • Product analytics to help you assess how users are interacting with their free trial, and which features are being used
  • A content management system like Content Camel that will help you keep sales and marketing content aligned, readily-available, and easy-to-find

Sales enablement tools are important here, and make sure that your team has everything they need to facilitate high-quality leads and sales.

Determine Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) defines your highest-value audience segment. For SaaS businesses, your ICP may include business size, annual revenue, industry, or years in business.

Once you understand what your ICP is, it’s much easier to have content available on your website that will help buyers get the information they need quickly. If you understand their core pain points, you can create copy and messaging that appeals to those needs.

Not sure what your ICP is? Check out our free persona template to get started.

alt_text

You can use your ICP(s) to create a buyer’s checklist for each persona, which can be shared across marketing, product, and sales to get everyone on the same page.

Put It Into Practice

The last step is to put this new strategy into practice.

First, you need to make sure that core information that impacts a buyer’s decision is as readily available as possible, as early in the sales funnel as possible. This means:

  • Marketing should be focused on ICP pain points and prioritizing quality of leads
  • Your sales team should be trained to look for real buying cues and to listen to a customer’s needs; upselling and cross-selling is fine, but they need to focus on lead relevance and readiness and focus on offering suggestions instead of hammering all leads over the head with a sales pitch
  • Have resources on-hand at all points in time to provide leads with the information they need
  • Make onboarding easy and fast; customers shouldn’t be waiting for a week to get started when they’re ready to move

Final Thoughts

Once you know who your customers are and what they’re looking for in a product or solution, it gets much easier to help buyers buy. You can identify the checklist that buyers have when choosing a tool, and consider every single micro-decision they make during the purchasing process.

After you have this information, you can see what they’re finding out on your site, what they need to learn through free-trials or demos, and where else they’re looking for information.

Talk to your sales team, to customer support, and to existing customers themselves to learn more about what impacted their decision and what made them decide to purchase. You can also reach out to customers who don’t convert, sending them an anonymous survey to learn more about why they chose not to convert.

Ask:

  • Why they chose your tool
  • What made them select you over competitors, and which competitors they considered
  • How they use your tool
  • What pain points your tool resolves

And moving forward, remember to create content around all of these needs, including for content marketing, sales decks, demos, pitches, webinars, and anything else you can think of. Include the information in battlecards and personas, but extend the information to marketing and product teams, too.

Want to start creating stronger content that will help your sales team and marketing team convert more customers? Learn more about how Content Camel works here.