In the realm of B2B sales, observing buyers’ behaviors and being aware of the current trends are the key talents to grow the business. As we are at the beginning of the year, we need to be aware of the B2B sales trends in 2023 to see the successful year ahead.
Here we have covered a few B2B sales trends in 2023.
Multi-channel Strategy
Days are gone when people think only one channel is enough to reach your audience. But now the scenario has been changed. According to Oberlo, 3.5 billion social media users are there in the world. Out of which, 90.4% of Millennials, 77.5% of Generation X, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers are active social media users. On average, users spend 3 hours per day on social media.
Social media includes Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc. In 2023, targeting your audience through different social media and other video channels like YouTube will be trending as more than 75% of the population are present in all the above-mentioned channels.
Therefore, prepare your strategy and segment your audience based on the region and engage them through different channels.
Marketing and Sales Team Merger
Since the decades, it is understood that the marketing and sales team always play the blame-shifting game when it comes to leads and conversions. 80% of leads generated by the marketing team don’t reach the sales team. The reason for this gap is a lack of coordination between two teams.
Most of the B2B organizations noticed that the gap between the sales and marketing team is impacting heavily on conversion and revenue generation. Their one of the strategies is to align the sales and marketing team and it will be sales trending in 2023 to generate more revenue.
Understanding your Customers
Even though you are in the B2B world and your client is a company, still there is a person (maybe he is a decision-maker or a person that represents your client) who has the expectation of talking to you in person or through phone at the beginning of the conversation.
Sales are not only about selling the product or service but building a good relationship for further prospecting. It is very important to understand your customers closely and their needs.
For example, you are talking to your client for the first time and it is time to pitch your product. Instead of a recorded demo of your product, if you give real-time demo physically or virtually, your client will have an opportunity to ask his/her doubt. Also, you can understand your client closely. In this process, the rapport will be built stronger. In 2023, building relationships is more B2B sales trending than selling products instantly.
Personalization
72% of B2B buyers expect personalization even though it is a business-related conversation. Personalization will be sales trending in 2023 as it is more or less connected to emotions. As mentioned above, building relationships has become more important than selling products. Building rapport commences from personalization.
These days, a recipient prefers to open an email or a message, if that addresses his/her name. Instead of bulk emails or messages, personalized emails have a good response rate.
AI and Automation
Artificial Intelligence and automation are overpowering every manual process. We have discussed personalization in the above point. If you have thousands of clients and it is really hard to personalize every email or message. In this case, AI-enabled automation tools will help you to personalize the message or emails.
Also, the predictive analysis provides the pipeline by monitoring the prospect’s behavior. Most of the B2B companies start upgrading their tools with automation to increase the conversion.
Artificial Intelligence and predictive analysis help B2B sales by:
- Generating New Leads
- Personalizing the messages
- Guiding the sales reps (with the process) during calls
- Building accurate pipelines
AI and predictive analysis have been B2B sales trending from 2020 and in 2023 it is going to be revolutionary.
Creative Outreach
Individual outreach has been trending in the realm of sales in 2023. When it comes to B2B sales, you have the convenience of reaching out to the decision-makers or the representatives personally. We are no more following the traditional way of reaching the prospect like cold emails, cold calls, etc.
In 2023, the millennials prefer to outreach through multi-channel according to the prospects’ convenience. Though it is LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or any networking events, the millennials don’t miss any opportunity to catch hold of the prospects. Creative outreach has also been B2B sales trending in 2023.
Digital Revolution
Though we are living in digital world from the past few years, 2023 will have a digital revolution not only at the individual level but also at the corporate level. Corporates are using the digital platform starting from marketing to sales. When it comes to B2B sales, it is helpful in many ways.
- CRM Software:
CRM software will be a leading solution for B2B sales. It helps to organize the lead data and calculating the sales cycle. Likewise, there are a plethora of CRM tools that integrate most of the other tools in one place to make the process easy. The requirements of the sales organizations are increasing day by day and modern CRM Software is accommodating their requirements. There are many more to go in 2023.
- Cloud-based Platform:
The cloud-based platform will be revolutionary in 2023 as it is essential to manage and organize the work on a daily basis. These days, most of the Millenials don’t prefer to work in a specific cubicle with a fixed network. In that case, the cloud-based platform is useful to works from anywhere at any time.
- Mobile:
As per Cisco’s research, 60% of smartphone users can’t imagine going anywhere without their cell phones. There is a huge probability to get leads due to the usage of mobile phones. It has been trending from the past few years but in 2023 it will affect the business, especially, B2B and B2C sales organization.
People prefer to do multitasking these days. While being out of office, they check all official activities and stay connected with the team members. This can be facilitated by smartphones. The use of mobile will affect massively in 2023.
Social Selling
Social selling is another emerging platform that allows you to create brand awareness by sharing blogs and other formats of the contents. These days the traditional way of marketing your content such as sharing the content in social media platforms has been faded away.
Creating valuable content and sharing it through social selling platforms like Reddit, product hunt, medium, zest, Quora, etc. have been current trends. As there are efficient groups in these channels and they allow only valid and valuable content, the effectiveness of creating brand awareness in these channels has become stronger in 2023.
Shifting Focus from Solution Selling to Insight Selling
Most of the B2B entrepreneurs not only focus on solution selling but also started improving the internal team. If your internal (sales) team is strong and well trained, there is less probability of failing against conversion. In 2023, focusing on the internal team and its development has become trends as it is the beginning process of seeding.
- Offer innovative sales training:
It is time to approach a customer in a different way. Train your team often with different ideas about how to handle the challenging questions of customers, how to move to the next customer after rejections, how to create urgency, etc.. Conduct a workshop where you can train them (though they are already trained) to handle all the above mentioned challenging situations. Train them to monitor the leads if they are in frequent contact with your customer service department and identify their pain points and requirements.
- Invest in training for new hires:
These days we will find more interns than trainees. That means the freshers don’t prefer classroom training, they prefer to experience and learn through different experiments. Though it will not be fruitful initially, in the long term it will provide a good result. Hence, adopting the new approach of training, providing them leverage and investing in the ideas they have provided have become B2B sales trends in 2023.
- Educate your sales team on content marketing:
Since content marketing is heading the growth of the business, educate your sales team about distributing relevant content during the consultation. It will help you to create awareness compared to manual content distribution. Most of the Millenials involving their sales team into content marketing skilfully.
Wrapping Up
Ultramodern technology, creativity in marketing and sales, new approach of selling products or services, creating employee-friendly environment are the current B2B sales trends. Young entrepreneurs believe that taking care of employees is equal to taking care of business. Providing convenience to the sales team by upgrading the tools to lessen their manual work, availing leverage for them, adopting their creativity have become sales trends in 2023 as those are proven productive strategies.
