Standard 7-Step B2B Sales Process for Every Business

The sales process is an extremely important stage for every business, especially for B2B companies. Building effective sales steps will boost a company’s sales revenue quickly and easily. So, how do you build a comprehensive and professional sales process for a B2B business? The content below will share a standard, easy-to-apply 7-step B2B sales process for all businesses.

1. What is a B2B sales process?

B2B sales is an abbreviation for the term Business To Business. It is used to describe the form of trade, business, and direct transactions between businesses. Through this, companies will work and cooperate with each other to bring about many benefits as well as the most optimal efficiency.

Thus, a B2B sales process is understood as a series of steps arranged into a repetitive cycle to streamline and standardize sales activities in a specific format. The number and exact names of the stages in your process will depend on your industry, company, and sales organization; typically, a sales cycle will have from 5 to 8 stages…

2. The effective 7-step B2B sales process for businesses

Currently, there is no single standard B2B sales process for businesses; depending on the industry and field, each company will have a different process. However, the approach to B2B customers will be built based on the 7-step sales B2B process below.

Step 1: Prospecting and qualifying leads

First, you need to understand customer buying behavior and classify your potential customer base. In this step, the sales staff will perform key tasks such as:

• Searching for potential customers
• Classifying customers based on their needs
• Researching the customer’s budget for using the product/service
• Identifying sources for finding potential customers, such as: Facebook, marketing, relationships of managers or sales staff, cold-calling, etc.

Classifying potential customer sources helps staff identify which customers have a real need and the ability to pay for the company’s products/services in order to prioritize their approach.

Read now: How to build a methodical and professional sales process diagram in 2022

Step 2: Preparing to approach the customer

Once potential customers have been successfully found and classified, the sales staff needs to prepare to approach them.

In the second step of the 7-step sales B2B process, the sales staff needs to prepare the following:

• The first conversation with the potential customer
• Researching the market and the customer’s needs
• Creating a customer profile, especially of the decision-maker and those who influence the decision
• The difficulties the customer is facing
• Compiling useful information related to your product or service.

Step 3: Approaching the customer

After successfully finding and classifying customers, in this step, the Telesales staff will connect with potential customers by contacting the phone number they provided during registration.

If the potential customer does not respond the first time, you can send them another (automated) email after a few days to follow up. From there, the Telesales staff will assess whether the customer is a good fit for the company’s product and forward them accordingly.

Step 4: Presenting the product

This is an extremely important step in the 7-step sales B2B process that helps you score points directly with the customer. Depending on the product or service, this stage will occur at different times. The product presentation can take the form of a face-to-face meeting or a video call to exchange information with the customer. 

In this step, the salesperson needs to advertise and present in detail the product, service, and benefits the customer will receive to stimulate their purchasing desire.

Step 5: Negotiating and handling objections

Any product or service will inevitably have flaws or receive negative feedback. Therefore, listen carefully to the concerns of potential customers and address those issues immediately. Offer promotions and the most reasonable prices for each product to make it easy for customers to choose and agree to use your products and services.

Note: When negotiating, ensure both parties clearly understand the terms of the contract. The best approach for B2B customers is to ensure that both the business and the customer can reach a mutually beneficial agreement.

Step 6: Closing the contract and handover

Closing the contract is the most crucial stage in business and determines the success of a salesperson. Once both parties have made a final decision, the salesperson will proceed to close the order, finalize the contract with the customer, collect payment, and hand over the product and invoice.

However, at this stage, salespeople often make some of the following mistakes:

• Not having a clear understanding of inventory levels, leading to providing incorrect information to customers and damaging credibility.
• Salespeople failing to track delivery progress and customer debts, resulting in delayed customer service, overlapping tasks, and a waste of time and resources.

Step 7: Post-sales customer care

Providing customer care before, during, and after they use the service will make customers more satisfied and build trust in the company’s quality and services. This will encourage repeat purchases and lead to referrals for your business.

3. How to build a professional B2B sales process?

The sales process is a key factor that determines a business’s sales effectiveness. Therefore, organizations must constantly improve and optimize their sales process. To build an effective sales process, organizations can follow these 6 steps:

Define the customer’s buying process

The first step to building a professional sales process is to research the customer’s buying process. An effective sales process is one that aligns with the buying process of each target audience group.

Establish sales stages

After defining the buying process for each target group, the organization needs to establish corresponding sales stages, such as: Approaching customers, answering questions, proposing solutions, presenting products, signing contracts, etc.

Define sales objectives

In each sales stage, employees need to define the objectives and the results that must be achieved.

Choose actions

The sales stage is a system of organized actions designed to lead to the customer’s purchase. Therefore, in the preceding stages, employees must know how to choose the right actions to quickly move to the next stage.

Identify sales tools

Depending on the situation, employees will identify the tools needed to carry out sales tasks. Currently, customer relationship management software is a key tool that helps organizations effectively care for customers before, during, and after the purchase.

Improve the process

A sales process that is continuously built and optimized will increase efficiency and meet customer requirements.

4. Solution for optimizing sales process efficiency with CRM software

To fully meet the needs of building, maintaining, and optimizing sales efficiency, CRM software is being increasingly applied across many fields.

1Office CRM software helps organizations standardize their professional sales process, allowing them to track the conversion from lead to customer. The system provides specialized solutions to help businesses optimize sales performance, increase opportunities, and boost conversion rates.

Thus, the article above has introduced users to an effective and professional 7-step B2B sales process for all businesses. A standard B2B sales process will help businesses minimize costs, save time, increase conversion rates, and achieve breakthrough sales revenue quickly and easily. If your business wants to optimize its sales process, you can learn more about the 1Office CRM customer relationship management software to optimize effective customer care and management.

To register for a trial of the CRM software that helps manage information, data, and automatically store customer information, please leave your phone number. The 1Office team of experts will contact you for a consultation today.   

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