Sales person is a real problem solver!

 

 (Credit - https://www.freepik.com/)

Hello, my dear reader. Welcome to the new blog of Harshada’s sales learnings.

Let me ask you a few questions at the beginning of this blog.

·        Do you want to start your Business?

·        Are you wondering to implement B2B business techniques?

·        Have you heard about the D2C business in Shark Tank season 1?

Let me help you understand what exactly these terms mean B2B, B2C, and D2C.

Before moving ahead if you have missed one of my most-read blogs about Starbucks you can check it out here - https://harshadasaleslearning.blogspot.com/2022/10/how-did-starbucks-become-famous-brand.html

Okay, let’s come back to the point.

We will start with full form of these terms.

B2B - Business to Business

B2C - Business to Consumer

D2C - Direct to Consumer

I am planning to write one dedicated article explaining what these 3 things mean this blog is just for B2B.

Take the example of one company. Any company in this world is surviving on selling. Without selling a product or service actual revenue generation will not happen. In the end, profit is the main aim of business.

When it comes to B2B (Business to Business) companies prefer to sell their products to another business. B2B is quite different than other sales processes out there. To name a few differences

·        In B2B price of the product is high.

·        In B2B most of the time the decision maker is not a single person but it’s a team.

·        In B2B purchasing time is long.

·        In B2B actively building a relationship with the prospect is necessary.

·        In B2B there is no one such sales pitch for all the customers. Their sales pitch change as per the need of the customer.

       As B2B sales cycles take multiple months, sometimes even years and that’s the reason I am referring to a salesperson as a problem solver. When it comes to B2B, the salesman is considered as good as Superman or Spider-Man. Because he is the one who goes on the ground and talks to customers, find out their need, and does it for consistent months and years he generates sales for a company.

 If you want to understand B2B sales then you must understand these 4 steps.

• Suspect
• Lead 
• Prospect
• Customer

Let me explain these 4 stages one by one.

Who are the suspects?

               Suspects are those people who are the probable buyers of that category. For example, if a company is launching a cloud-based software it will take a lot of marketing efforts to know every single company that needs this cloud-based software. Everyone who gets to know about a new product or service is a suspect.

 Now, what is meant by Lead?

               Why do we call them leads? Everyone who gets to know about the new product and service. Many people drop inquiries through various platforms like the company’s personal website, exhibition, Google Ads, or other websites like social media platforms. Many of them will take slightly more interest than suspects known as leads. The salesperson is the person who converts these leads into a prospect. How? Read on things are getting interesting now.

 Now let’s understand what is the prospect?

               A salesperson or a sales representative of the company, gathers all the information collected and presents a product, does pricing negotiation, and finally closes the deal. This is the prospecting stage after that one business will finally become a customer of another business by purchasing their product or service.

               Prospecting a whole different stage of business. During the phase of prospecting sales person actually identifies whether our products and services can cater to a company’s business needs or not. The prospecting phase includes the discovery and presentation stage. If you are wondering how exactly they do it? You can read my blog written on this topic only. One of the strategies they use is SPIN selling techniques. 

You can read that blog here - https://harshadasaleslearning.blogspot.com/2023/02/spin-makes-you-win.html

               Salespeople exactly know how to highlight the solution to the pain areas of their prospect. After multiple meetings, the actual relationship-building happens. And finally, finally, finally let me repeat it finally that prospect becomes a customer. In some cases a lifetime customer.

               But do you know one interesting thing I have learned in this journey of sales is, making that prospect a customer is not the end of the business? Actually, the journey starts from that point. Keeping relationships for repetitive orders, and providing good customer support are a few things you have to keep on doing. We will discuss this in some other blog.

               I feel you are now waiting badly to read about B2C and D2C. Those articles will be here soon. Stay tuned to my LinkedIn profile - https://www.linkedin.com/in/harshadapawar1307/

You will be updated as soon as my new blog will be out.

Thank you for reading.