A How To Guide on Closing B2B Sales
I've spent the past five years in small startups selling high ticket SaaS products B2B to SMB and enterprise companies (deal sizes ranging from $10-100k ARR). I thought I'd try my best to package up what I've learned and share it with you.
If you're interested in learning more about this topic, I encourage you to read SPIN Selling (Neil Rackham) and Gap Selling (Keenan). Many of the ideas in this article are inspired by these two books.
Planning out your closing process is an important step in order to close your first few clients, and to scale your business as your team continues to grow.
Most founders have a tendency to wing their sales meetings. The problem with this is that it's difficult to consistently have meaningful discussions when every conversation is different. Having a structure to follow is the key to making each meeting more predictable, impactful, and intriguing for your buyer.
The purpose of this article is to get you thinking about how each sales meeting should progress, allowing you to lead your prospect during the conversation.
Keep in mind that the B2B sales process should take around 2-4 weeks from the first conversation to closing the deal (6-12 weeks if selling into mid-market or enterprise level companies).
Step 1: Discovery
The most common mistake during the B2B sales process is pitching the solution before asking questions to gain a better understanding of the prospect. This is also known as "pitching prematurely," or as I like to call it, "pitching blind."
In order to capture your prospect's attention during the pitch or demo, you'll have to focus the conversation around solving your buyer's specific pain points. Taking the time to identify these problems ensures that you stay focused on what's relevant to your buyer when talking about your solution.
That is why it's important to spend the first conversation asking questions to understand your buyer's current situation. You'll find that prospects appreciate this approach; the more they feel understood, the more they'll open up to you and trust you later in the sales cycle.
If you bring up your product or service before understanding your prospect, you run the risk of talking about features and deliverables that your prospect doesn't care about, resulting in your prospect losing patience for what you have to say.
Success at every subsequent step of the sales process depends on focusing on what's relevant to your buyer. Therefore, the success of the sale hinges on getting the right information from your prospect during discovery.
Tips on running an effective discovery:
- Separate the discovery from the demo. Don't do both in one sitting.
- Script out your questions beforehand so that you go into each conversation prepared.
- Take your time and collect as much information as possible from your prospect. This process should take around 25-30 minutes.
- Avoid talking about your product or service during the discovery call. Keep the conversation focused on understanding your prospect's current state, their problems, and their desired outcomes.
- Don't accept surface level answers. Probe your prospect and dig deeper to get to the root of the answers they give you.
- A good rule of thumb is the 80/20 rule for discovery calls: 80% of the call should be spent listening, 20% should be spent commenting on their answers and asking questions.
- Keep quiet and let your prospect tell you exactly how to close them.
Step 2: Pitch/Demo
The demo should be scheduled for 2-7 days after the discovery call. This gives you time to prepare a personalized presentation.
The goal of the demo is to show how your solution can help your prospect overcome their unique problems and achieve their desired outcomes (identified during discovery).
Most B2B products and services are complex and have multiple different applications for buyers. This can lead to sellers rambling about features that their buyers don't care about during the pitch. Focus your presentation on how you can help your prospect overcome 1-3 problems and achieve 1-2 desired outcomes.
Always remember that prospects don't care about your product or service; they only care about their unique set of problems and how to overcome them. Keep the conversation focused only on what's relevant.
Practice makes perfect. The more times you run through your pitch, the more confident and authoritative you will sound.
Tips on running an effective demo:
- Demos should be scheduled for 60 minutes to make sure you have time to get through your pitch and answer any questions.
- Take 15-20 minutes to personalize each pitch before presenting to your prospect.
- Pause frequently and ask your prospect if they have any questions. This gives you the opportunity to identify and deal with objections proactively.
- Include a brief introduction of yourself, your background, and your company. This helps build familiarity with your buyer.
- Include 1-3 case studies. Talking through how you helped others overcome similar problems is a powerful persuasion tactic.
- When jumping into a demo of your platform, focus only on 2-3 key features that can help your prospect achieve their desired outcome. Don't bore them by going through all the different applications of your product or service; just focus on what's relevant. This is the difference between value selling and feature selling.
- Reserve pricing for the last possible slide so that you can demonstrate the value of what you have to offer first.
Step 3: Negotiation + Closing
This meeting usually takes place 2-3 days after the demo. Remember that the goal of each conversation when selling is to get to the next conversation.
Typically your prospect will need time to think about your offering, or there are other stakeholders that need to be convinced in order to seal the deal. Don't expect your prospect to commit immediately after the demo (although some will). The goal of the pitch is to set up another conversation where you touch base and help your buyer come to an informed decision.
This is usually when your buyer will bring up any objections or concerns that they have. Most likely you'll have to negotiate and make a few concessions to get your prospect over the finish line.
It's good practice to plan out concessions beforehand so that you're as prepared as possible, with answers you can pivot to. Being ready to offer a thirty day free trial, or developing a payment plan (splitting the upfront payment into smaller chunks), would be good examples of this.
Your prospect will either commit after this conversation or need even more time to think and discuss internally with the team. Always book another conversation if your buyer needs more time. You'll have a much better chance of handling objections over Zoom than over email, and it will give you more facetime to build a relationship.
Remember that the goal of every conversation when selling is to get to the next conversation. Keep booking meetings until you get a definitive answer from your prospect.
Conclusion
Hope this helps you understand how to structure your sales conversations. Feel free to message me if you have any questions!