Top 5 Things to Kickstart your 2024 B2B Sales Strategy
We are well into 2024 now. How are your B2B sales plans going?
I thought it would help reduce some of your stress if I gave you a simple checklist of things to ensure you include in your B2B sales plan, to keep you on track ane ensure you have a great 2024.
1. Know your Target Customer
This is something that is easy to forget. We get excited about wanted to talk to lots of people about what we do. But as we all know, having a target to aim for can make all the difference in our effectiveness.
Take an hour to sit down and think about what businesses you would like to have as customers. We are not talking customer avatars here – we are talkinga about business names.
If you have some existing customers, that is a good place to start thing about what their characteristics are, and what other businesses might be similar. This would include:
· What industry are they in?
· How big are they?
· How many employees do they have?
Once you have a simple idea of the type of businesses you would like to have as customers – write a list. Write down a list of 10 to 20 businesses as your target list.
2. Be Clear on your B2B Sales Process
In the words of James Clear from Atomic Habits:
“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits
Having a clear sales process will reduce your stress by helping you do know exactly where you are up to and what to do next.
It also enables you to manage and close large complex sales.
You can feel confident and professional in your interactions with others
A big part of having a process is also enabling you to manage your pipeline to hit your targets and confidently forecast more accurately. This becomes really important as you grow and may need to report to others, like investors.
You can use your process and knowledge to manage salespeople’s activity and confidently grow your business in a professional and authentic way.
3. Review your Pipeline & Forecast
Having a list of what opportunities you are working on and where you are up to with each of them is crucial to a healthy sales engine.
Once we have that, we want to ensure that we know what a healthy pipeline looks like. This includes thinking about things like:
· What percentage coverage do I have of my target?
· Do I have a good mix of deals, some larger, some smaller?
You also want to be able to look at your overall forecast. I recommend sitting and reviewing your pipeline and forecast at least once a fortnight, and asking yourself:
· What is going on with each deal?
· Do I have a realistic picture of where I am up to with each opp?
· What is the next step for each one?
· What can I do to get forward movement?
Remember to stay action focused, and to use this time to help you be clear on the next steps. Don’t get stuck in review and analysis.
4. Networking: Top of Funnel
When we get busy working on existing opportunities, as I’m sure we now all are, it is easy to forget to allocate time to filling the top of the sales funnel.
Make sure that you always have some time to attend networking events, and reach out to new people. This keeps your pipeline healthy and ensures your sales numbers don’t fall off a cliff when you close your existing opportunities.
5. Activity Leads to Sales
When in doubt – do more calls and meetings. As a sales manager, if a salesperson is not doing well, one of the first things we always look at is – how many meetings are they doing?
Activity always leads to more activity.
On a certain level, there is an element of sales that is a numbers game. Remember the 3 to 1 rule – of every 3 qualified opportunities you work, you want to close at least one sale.
A good way to think of it is that every call and every meeting is traning. After every meeting, I like to think about what went well and what I could have done better.
And remember: You miss 100% of the shots you never take.
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