Top 5 Mistakes Founders Make with B2B Sales
There are many traps that founders can fall into when starting out with B2B sales. The good news is - once you understand the basics, they are easy to avoid.
1. Thinking you need the ‘gift of the gab’
Sales isn’t a magic art. One of the biggest mistakes I see founders making, is thinking that sales is all about being a slick talker.
It’s also one of the things that leads people to think they are a good salesperson – when they may not be.
A good salesperson asks a lot of questions – they don’t talk at people. They listen to the answers and work on solving their customer’s challenges.
B2B sales can be learnt as a simple process. Matched with some simple skills – this is all you need to get started selling.
By understanding the basics of the process, then learning what to do at each step – it enables you to move a customer through the journey. Ideally you will build out a customised set of tools for each stage of the process.
Having a process enables you to manage and close large complex deals by breaking your activity down into manageable pieces.
2. Not keeping track
It’s easy to get busy with being busy.
Managing your pipeline and forecast, and reviewing them regularly, keeps you on track to know what needs to happen next for each deal. So why do we need to keep track of sales?
We need to know where we are up to in the sales cycle for each sale, so that we can keep moving things forward, and know quickly and easily the next step for each deal.
We want to be able to have an idea of when sales will close, so that we can forecast our income.
As we grow, we may have investors who will be asking us for sales forecasts.
As we grow, we may wish to hire staff to help with sales. We need to have system for having a clear view of their activity.
3. Hanging on to old stereotypes
A lot of people have negative ideas about what selling is, either consciously or subconsciously.
Selling isn’t about being pushy or sleazy. It’s not about trying to convince someone to do something they don’t or need to.
Sales is about helping others to find good solutions to their challenges.
4. Hiring the Sham Wow guy
If you’ve made mistakes 1 to 3, the next mistake founders make is they hire someone to do the selling for them, with no idea what that person should be doing, or how to manage them.
You don’t have to be an expert in sales to be successful – but you do need to know the basics. Learning the basics of how to sell to business is a core business skill.
5. Having a transactional approach
Selling to businesses, especially for larger dollar value or more complex products, takes time.
It is a series of one to one conversations – not a single transacation.
That is not to say that you can’t do a lot of your initial warming up and education through marketing – in fact that is a great way to do things. But you can’t rely on that with large sales – you need to connect with people one to one.
If you are too transactional in your approach, that is when things start to feel pressured and unnatural.
How to Avoid the Mistakes
The good news is – the basics of selling to businesses is easy to learn. Start by doing the following:
1. Get started learning the basic sales process, and what to do at each step.
2. Practice using questions, not statements
3. Start keeping track of your opportunities
4. Practice - take action.
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