7 Tools to Help Maximize B2B Sales

by Jessica Radburn, Guest Contributor

Getting into the business-to-business (B2B) game brings about a whole new set of challenges and problems. The mode of acquiring leads up to ultimately locking a sale is a more complicated process compared to the usual business-to-consumer process. With that, you also need significant changes and adjustments in your approach and marketing strategy (especially if you’ve only worked in a business-to-consumer company so far).

Here's a list of tools to help with B2B sales!

​First, B2B products are not your regular consumer products - they are more specific, highly technical and are thus quite hard to sell. But even if the product can be easily promoted and sold, the decision-making process of businesses is a complicated one too. This is because many people and processes are involved in every step of the way, much like in a bureaucratic set-up and obviously, it is harder to convince one whole organization compared to just one person.

The process might be difficult, but technology is not short of ways to help B2B companies maximize sales potentials and closing deals. Below are just some of these tools (and are mostly paid services):

Hunter.io
To maximize sales, what you need first are quality leads and Hunter.io can help you with that. All you need to do is enter the domain name of a target company, and it will automatically list down all the people that are somehow connected to that company. The best part is, you don’t just get their names, email addresses and contact numbers, but you also get to take a peek at their social media profiles. The information you get from this tool can help you strategize the most efficient way to contact and pitch your product or service to them.

Leadfeeder
Similar to Hunter.io, Leadfeeder is also a tool that helps you generate leads, but it works differently. Its focus is more on your web page (inbound leads) - it monitors who has visited your website even if they did not fill-up any kind of form or registration box.

Leadfeeder does not just stop at that, it also identifies a webpage visitor's IP address to determine what company they are currently connected with. Through this, you will be able to identify which type of professionals and companies are attracted to your products and services - then you can make your move.

Attach.io
Assuming you have traced every potential lead you can find and sent them your pitch - how will you know if they actually took the time to read it? Attach.io can help you with that. This tool knows how to monitor and track whatever documents and pitches you sent out to a lead, and will even report who opened it, what pages did they read, and which part of the document was crucial in closing a deal. This can help you understand how your customer ticks - which part did they find engaging, and which part was a deal-breaker.

Growbots
Let’s go back with lead-generating tools, but we’re taking it up a notch with a tool that relies on Artificial Intelligence. Like Hunter.io, Growbots is an outbound lead-generating tool. It explores databases for customer information and capture leads. It also learns (or more likely understands) how leads and customers respond and engage with your company along the way. It can help you create customer profiles then automate strategic email marketing campaigns to them.

Dux Soup
If you want to maximize your professional connections via LinkedIn, Dux Soup is a great tool you can use. It can let a LinkedIn user know that you are constantly checking on their profile - and you can automate it to not just one user, but to entire LinkedIn groups as well. This could work if you are looking for people who might be working for companies that fit your market profile.  

Proposify
Creating proposals is a time-consuming thing, and Proposify is created exactly to address that inconvenience. It does not just help you create the main proposal, but also every counter-proposal you need to be sent out until finally locking a deal.

Proposify also has features that are similar to Attach.io, in a sense that it is also capable of knowing how your clients interacted with your document (like which parts did they find interesting). It also makes the process faster and more convenient, because your proposals are hosted through the cloud and potential clients can open them from anywhere - and even sign it electronically right there and then.

JustCall.io
Speaking of the cloud, JustCall.io is another cloud-based tool but from the name itself, it pertains to phones and calling up potential customers. Basically, it can help you put all your contacts in one place (the cloud storage), and you or any of your trusted partners can contact a potential lead from any place and from any device.

To fully maximize B2B sales, you need more than just one of the tools listed above. Of course, you need a lead-generation tool to scrape all the possible people and companies that match your target market profile, another tool to expedite pitching or the proposal and feedback process, and another tool to ensure customer engagement.

At the end of the day however, all these are just tools to help you speed up transactions and the selling process. You still need to work on your business internally to make sure that whatever promise you are pitching to the clients are actually delivered when they decide to take the bait. This is because no matter how advanced your tools are, it cannot do much if your company is plagued with poor delivery, performance issues and an overall bad reputation.

Bottom line, you need to have a polished and efficient product/service to be really on top of your game. Remember that you are catering to business organizations, and any glitch on your part can be a significant loss to them in terms of potential leads, sales and even in customer service. The responsibility is great, and all your hard work towards closing those deals might just be compromised if there is a lack of testing and innovation from your part.

Author Bio:

Jessica Radburn is a seasoned writer who enjoys creating helpful articles and interesting stories. She has worked with several clients across different industries such as advertising, online marketing, technology, healthcare, family matters, and more. She is also an aspiring entrepreneur who is engaged in assisting other aspiring entrepreneurs in finding the best office space for their business.
Check out her company here: http://www.phonetipsandtricks.com/