There are no shortcuts to business-to-business sales.

IPhone5S a week on the market, sales easily broke through 9 million, and set a new record. As the sales director of a business-to-business product, I have only the envy. Business-to-business and Business-to-consumer products are significantly different on the sales side, and the sales experience of the business may not directly refer to the business-to-business domain. Here are my thoughts on the uniqueness of business-to-business sales.

1, the rational view of business-to-business sales of "bitter force"

Since I chose to do business-to-business, do not dream of their own and brain platinum, an ad hit down, one night across the red. The consumer is like a modern war, you do not need direct and consumer face-to-face contact, with missiles, shells, bullets away from a long shot, a large consumers fell. While Business-to-business is like an ancient war, you have to rush up one-on-one and hand-to-hand combat.

Although business-to-business is hard to do, there is no consumer products so easy short time, but there are two sides to everything, bitter force is not exactly a threshold? Because of the hardship, so we can hardly be copied by those giant companies, they will do the same hard, do not fear them. Business-to-business is a cold weapons battlefield, if the American soldiers in the hands of the submachine gun to the Broadsword Lance, then they have no many advantages to speak of.

No one is willing to do hard work, but hardship is not necessarily a good thing.

2, advertising as a brand investment, not promotional tools

Always have a kind friend to give me such advice: "You should use a word to explain what Ming Dao is." Yes, I definitely accept the proposal, but also please believe that if I do not understand this simple truth, the boss will not invite me to do sales marketing vice president. For business-to-business products, because it is too professional, sometimes it is really difficult to say the product clearly in a sentence. For example, VMware, it is to do the server's virtual machine software, I used a sentence finished, but you understand? Do you know what virtual machine software is?

Because of this, the advertising of business-to-business products becomes very difficult to do. The space of the advertisement is very limited, you want to make the product clear in the limited room, basically is an impossible task. Therefore, for business-to-business products, advertising may only play a role in the brand, through the production of fine advertising to enhance your brand value, but for direct sales transactions may not be very effective.

Is there no need for advertising? Not really. We should treat advertising as an investment in a brand asset, and perhaps its value will not appear immediately, but its subsequent effects will slowly release. We have a lot of customers in the first contact with the salesperson will take the initiative to see the Ming Road subway ads or in the "First financial weekly" ads, which to a large extent, reduce the customer's trust costs, indirectly improve our sales conversion rate.

3, no explosive growth, only viral growth

The so-called explosive growth, is in a very short period of time, product penetration rate increased rapidly. For example, "China's good voice" almost overnight fire, this is explosive growth.

Viral growth is based on a two or two-change four or four-to-eight fission-type reproduction, which may be slow at first, but will grow at a very rapid rate after a certain critical point. A typical example is Google's Gmail, which basically did not do any advertising, the beginning is in the Geek circle, giving a very mysterious and high-end feeling, registration also requires "invitation code." The scarcity of this closeness improves Gmail's sense of value, allowing users to take the initiative to pursue it.

For business-to-business products, it's hard for ordinary customers to understand what you're selling, and it's hard to say what you do, so the explosive growth of the soil doesn't exist. Business-to-business growth is often the result of a chain of viral transmission, a customer uses your product to feel good, then he will recommend to his good friend B also to use.

In the initial stage, "King" is unavoidable, because you do not have too high brand awareness, so you must start from the circle of their own contacts, with personal credit to the product endorsement. Acquaintances, is often the "seed" of the virus fission. For example, we Ming Road in the early promotion, many customers from the founder of Xianghui personal Friends, and later, these friends became the propagandist of Ming Road. Of course, the premise of King is that your product should be good enough, otherwise you put your personal credit into the. Look at a salesperson is not daring to King, in fact, can also look at the side of the product quality.

According to our statistics, the number of orders from the old visitors is indeed very large. Because of this, we have designed a similar "Ming Road Promotion Partnership program", "Ming Road Customer Introduction Award" such as sales tools to further stimulate the virus-like communication between customers.

4, large sales scale, from the large team size

As I said before, business-to-business sales are like an ancient war, and you have to fight one-on-one to kill your opponents. Even if a soldier can fight again, his physical fitness is limited, so to increase the number of enemies, the most direct and effective way is to increase the number of troops.

Alibaba business-to-business companies in the peak period has more than 5,000 sales, I know a Baidu provincial agent has more than 3,000 sales, China life in the country has more than 1 million of insurance agents. "In 90%, a company failed because it didn't have a big enough sales team to get enough revenue," Mark Banniff, the boss of Salesforce, a top American SaaS software company, wrote in his "cloud strategy". ”

So, don't think your company is too heavy, money to hire more salespeople, sales staff accounted for 25% to 50% are reasonable.

5, the official website is your first salesman

For the consumer product, the customer and its contact point may be the Store display window, may be the E-commerce site, may be the customer's friend, so the official site is not so important. For business-to-business products, customers have difficulty contacting products in their daily lives, so their first contact may be your official website.

No matter how important it is to emphasize the importance of the official website to the sales transformation. You have to provide the customer with everything they want-a detailed description of the product, a description of the product, how to buy it, pricing, FAQs and answers, media coverage, and so on. A good official website, you can reduce the strength of your sales consultants. If your market budget is limited, then prioritize it.

6. Conference marketing is a compulsory

For business-to-business products, because the advertising of such weapons of mass destruction does not have much effect on the direct transaction, and one-on-one customer visits and relatively inefficient, so between the two in the middle of the conference marketing is a can take into account the size and effect of the sales tool. In the actual operation of the process, we found that conference marketing not only to achieve "company-customer" communication between, but also can achieve "customer-customer" communication between, which for the formation of the user community is extremely important significance.

For example, we operate the "Ming Road Bar", we are always in the first link to participate in the meeting of the customer to introduce themselves, through such a small action, in fact, the customer from the simple "audience" into a "participant", in the follow-up of the interactive link among the I found that we will become very enthusiastic, In the free exchange of links, you will exchange business cards, mutual understanding. Moreover, some experienced old customers will take the initiative to introduce new customers to the product, teaching the use of skills, they are more than our own sales consultants to customers more convincing.

7, do not superstition in discount, enterprise customers only care about products

Under what circumstances will a price war work? When the product is homogeneous. The most intense price war, are those products of high standardization and a large number of competitors, such as book Retailing, 3C digital, car sales.

For business-to-business products, product differentiation is much greater than the homogeneity of products. In my browser favorites, a collection of 20 and Ming Road features a bit coincident with the product, but if you let me say that is completely homogeneous, I really can not find out.

Believe me, when the customer bargaining with you, it is only a negotiation strategy, customers will not really care about a little money (thousands of pieces of software for a business is really not what). What the customer really cares about is whether your software is really that handy. If the customer does not approve your product, he will not want it even if you give it to him for free.

We can set a competitive price, but we do not need to provide additional discounts on this basis, it is really not necessary.

8, loudly say "so-and-so also used"

What's the best reason to convince a client? is not your function has many cows, not your price has how cheap, also is not your service has much in place, but tells him: "So-and-so also uses." ”

This is very simple, if you want to introduce a team is very strong, then do you think that its players and coaches are very good persuasive, or that it has defeated countless strong teams, won numerous league titles more convincing?

Record is the best proof of strength. Every salesperson should recite the famous customers of their company and, if possible, be familiar with the details of their transaction process.

Public number xuwei0418