3 Common “Pain Points” That Drive B2B Sales

Many small business owners in the B2B sales space are constantly trying to sell their product or service based on the idea of what makes their solution better than the competition. While it’s good to know your solution’s unique value proposition and be up to speed on your product’s features and benefits, the truth is, many B2B sales are driven not by “positive” features of your solution, but by certain “negative” aspects of your competitor’s solution. Many B2B buyers are motivated primarily not by optimism, but by pain.

What do I mean by “pain?” Think about the last time your organization made a new purchase. Was it because you read about some exciting new product to make your life better, or was it because you had a more mundane problem that your existing system or solution was not adequately solving? Many B2B buyers get motivated to buy from you because they’re not happy — they’re in pain in some way — because their existing setup is not working for them.

By understanding these common “pain points,” you can better understand your buyers and make bigger sales.

Big Pain Points of B2B Sales

1. The Buyer’s Current Vendor has Bad Service

Many B2B buyers are already doing business with an incumbent vendor. That means in order to get new business, you need to displace a competitor that already has that client’s account. One of the common causes of an incumbent vendor losing a client is when the vendor’s service is inadequate. Maybe the vendor isn’t paying enough attention to the client. Maybe they failed to solve a problem. One of the most important questions to ask when talking to a prospective client is, “How are things going with your current vendor?” Sometimes you can uncover some problems and pain points that can give your company a chance to move in and win that account.

2. The Buyer’s Current System is Patched Together

Other B2B buyers — especially if you sell IT systems or software — might be receptive to hearing from you if you can deliver a solution that is more comprehensive and elegant than what they might already have. A surprisingly large percentage of businesses are still using manual methods like spreadsheets to keep track of key business data. If you can show them why your solution, software or system is a better way to do business, you can win their attention and earn their trust.

3. The Buyer is Managing Too Many Different Vendors or Solutions

Sometimes B2B buyers get overwhelmed by having a piecemeal process of working with too many vendors or solutions at one time, each of which is responsible for supporting a small part of their overall operations or business processes. They might need to work with one vendor that can deliver everything that they need, or that can help them simplify their jumble of existing products and services. If your company can serve as a helpful consultant to show the buyer how to simplify their processes and create clarity, you will help them overcome this common pain point.

B2B sales is not just about price or data, it’s about human emotions. People buy B2B solutions because they have a problem that needs to be solved, they have an ongoing business situation that is causing them pain and distress, and they want someone to help relieve their stress. Pay attention to the mindset of your prospect — not just the positive aspects of your solution, but also the negative circumstances that motivate your prospect to consider buying from you in the first place.

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4 Ways Going Digital Will Improve Your Business

Almost every business conceivable has a digital presence today, from the cheap noodle shop next door to the massive upscale supermarket an hour’s drive away. But simply having a website isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Companies today increasingly use information technology to improve their productivity in a number of key sectors. Consider going digital in the following areas to improve your business’s overall efficiency and boost your bottom line.

Make Human Relations Great Again

Ah, the HR department. From sifting through piles of resumes to reminding employees about casual Fridays, HR has never been particularly glamorous — but that doesn’t mean it isn’t critical. After all, obtaining and retaining the best people is probably the most important thing a business can do to ensure its long-term viability. And fortunately, big data is coming to the rescue.

There’s an increasing number of cloud-based software services, such as Talentsoft, that provide easy solutions for businesses to find and interview the best candidates for a position. These services crunch vast amounts of data that would take ages for humans to complete. That’s much easier than letting resumes pile up and hoping for the best.

There’s also a host of performance appraisal software available that can help employees provide constructive feedback, which means less time and money spent on HR and better suited candidates for a position.

Make Sales Simple

Sales is an excellent place to start implementing digital solutions to improve productivity. If you’re not conducting at least part of your sales online at this point, you need to reconsider.

Tweak your business’s website, so customers can obtain exclusive deals by signing up for newsletters and the like. You can also add a custom ordering section, so your clients can order products without visiting the store only to discover what they want just went out of stock.

A price estimator on your websites can save your employees time and effort, and you can adjust your website to offer more customised products as well. Such services are simple additions that could provide significant benefits.

Harness Social Media in Your Marketing Efforts

Everyone’s talking about social media, and there’s a reason for that: Social media is an easy and almost completely cost-free way to boost productivity. If your business can creatively engage customers online, you will experience raised product awareness, which can mean more sales.

How does social media make your business more productive? It’s free, but it’s also efficient as a way to reach existing and potential clients. If you own a small business, you can manage your own social media relatively easily.

If you’re a medium-sized business, consider hiring a “growth hacker” to create authentic engagement that will translate into added visibility and sales. Hiring a growth hacker usually comes with a onetime fee, and it can be a good solution if you don’t want to spend too much effort trying to build an audience on social media — a process that can be hit or miss.

Revolutionise Your Internal Communications

Remember your employee’s face at the latest meeting when it was clear she hadn’t read the company-wide memo? Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen again. Research shows that poor internal communication in a business leads to obvious losses of productivity. When your employees aren’t up to date, or managers are not giving clear orders or opportunities for feedback, your business will suffer.

Fortunately, easy digital solutions can improve the productivity of your workers through better communications. User-friendly services, such as Slack, make sure employees can quickly and efficiently communicate with each other or within different groups. Slack makes it easy to form teams that communicate directly with each other, making it efficient to share files and search archives — a much less painful task than trawling through your email to find an old PowerPoint presentation.

Going Digital Makes Sense for Everyone

It doesn’t matter if your business is large or small. Digitising basic processes by going paperless makes financial sense. For small businesses in particular, the rewards can be even greater. Employees often waste time looking for documents — some firms waste as much as 6 hours per employee per week. It’s no secret that going paperless helps the environment and saves supply costs. Besides making your employees more productive, digitisation will make your business more efficient and help your bottom line.
The Time Is Now

Running a tight ship in our current “knowledge economy” means going digital. Beneficial digital solutions are currently in vogue for a good reason: They cut costs and allow you to focus on your core business, which, as any good boss knows, consists largely of keeping your employees and clients happy. Once you accomplish that, the rest will come easily.

Everyone Wants to Go To Heaven

There is a country song with these lyrics, “Everyone wants to go to Heaven, no one wants to die.”

We want things, but we don’t do what is necessary to have those things. This truth is easier to recognise in others than ourselves. If you have clients, you know they want better results without having to change.

Goals and Outcomes

Your dream client explains to you that they need a new outcome. What they’re doing isn’t working. Not being able to achieve this new or better outcome is starting to have serious consequences to their results, and they’re certain that things will only get worse in the future.

Your prospect has a problem worth solving. This is how new opportunities are created, and it is also how you remove your competitor and displace them. If only it were this easy.

Constraints, Real and Imagined

The reason your dream client isn’t getting the results they need now is because they have constraints that they have been unwilling to address. You have likely experienced this with a prospective client who sees the value in what you sell and believes that you are the right person to help their company improve their results. You have their full support. Until you discuss the investment necessary to produce the results they need.

Lack of money is a constraint. The lack of time and resources is a constraint. An unwillingness to allow leadership and other stakeholders who would be required to agree to any change into the conversation is a constraint.

Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. We want better results, but we don’t want to do what is necessary to produce those results. This isn’t only true for your clients; it is equally true for you. If you think about something that you want for yourself but haven’t achieved, it’s certain that you know what you would need to do to have it and that you have some constraint, real or imagined, that prevents you from getting what you want.

But this isn’t where this problem ends. The biggest challenge we have in business is helping people change. That is a psychology problem.

The presenting problem, the constraints or behaviors that prevent someone from getting what they want, is not the root cause of why those constraints or behaviors persist.

Behind the Constraint

Constraints are not permanent. Most people don’t lack resources; they lack resourcefulness. If you are going to help someone breakthrough and transform their results, you have to get to the real constraint, which is always fear.

Why doesn’t your dream client have the money they need to make the investment necessary for the results they need? Here are some ideas:

Maybe your contact has asked for money in the past and failed, and he is afraid of failing again and risking his position in the company. Maybe your dream client’s company is spending for money in another area and won’t be able to free up the budget for 6 months. Maybe your contact has a rocky relationship with her leader and doesn’t believe she can pull off a request for a budget increase. Or maybe, the real fear is the fear of failure, and it has nothing to do with money.

Until you help your client deal with what’s really behind the constraint, they are not going to get the results they need, even though you could easily produce them. What is behind the constraint is almost always some deep human need.

What does this mean we need to do as change agents?

• First, we have to be willing and able to help the people we serve to identify their constraint. This is usually easy because your contacts are more committed to their constraints than they are to their desired outcome, or goals. If it were otherwise, they’d be producing the results already.
• Second, we have to be willing to help identify the fear behind the constraint.This is what consultative salespeople do. They “go there.” If your client had to deal with this constraint, what would have to happen, and what is preventing that from happening?
• Finally, we have to generate options that allow us to address the fear (which, by the way, is very real) and deal with the constraint. We have to help our prospects fear the right danger and deal with their assumptions that no action can be taken that doesn’t hurt them. Most often, they get hurt when they don’t make the changes they need to make.