If you want your company to grow, having a strategic way of winning over new customers is essential. How you can achieve this and what you should pay attention to when acquiring new customers can be found in these 8 tips.
8 tips for winning B2B customers
1. Take more time for winning over new customers
Strategic customer acquisition should be a standard part of the work that is performed in your company. It’s important to plan enough staff availability for this task, as in the B2B segment the preparation of sales talks alone takes up a lot of time – just as much as the follow-up or potential post-negotiations. Remember: even the best existing customers can turn their back on you within just a short time if there is suddenly no budget anymore for your product or service.
2. Create personas
A persona is a description of a tangible desired customer. It is generated from an anonymous target group. The creation of such personas makes it easier in marketing to understand the needs, desires and emotions of the potential customer – and to also bring new business customers on board. That’s because personas help you find topics to interest your target group in the long term. This lets you create an initial connection between the interested person and your offer.
3. Define your USP
Why should a customer switch to you? The added value of your offer, compared to the competition, is something you should define for yourself first – then, this USP can be clearly communicated to your potential customers. In any given case, this could be lower prices. Particularly in the B2B segment, customers will switch to you because you are better than the competition in the areas that matter most to them. You offer, for instance, a more effective solution to a problem or have proven to be faster, more reliable or simply more professional during collaborations.
4. Use digital platforms for winning new business customers
An own website nowadays is not enough. Focus on search engine optimisation (SEO) to ensure potential new customers can find you on the Internet more easily. List your company with wlw, EUROPAGES, Google My Business and other business listings. And publish ads in social networks such as Facebook, XING or LinkedIn, or place Google Ads. Banner advertising can also make customers aware of your offer.
„Strategic customer acquisition should be a standard part .“
5. Acquire new customers through personal contact
To win over new business customers, they also need to be amazed by your products or services. Normally, this is more effective in a personal talk than through ads or email marketing. In situations where this is not possible, such as due to the Covid-19 restrictions, you should leverage the opportunities provided by conference tools or video calls. Ideally, you or a decision-maker in your company will take charge of customer communication during the acquisition process. Should this task fall within the responsibility of sales staff, train them systematically – not only in terms of their specialist knowledge, but also in emotional customer communication.
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6. Use CRM software
CRM software (customer relationship management software) helps you to collect all the details about existing customers and potential new customers, and to easily manage this information. This simplifies customer acquisition enormously, especially as the process of winning over new customers is often lengthy in B2B. Thanks to the CRM system, you have access at all time to the current status of negotiations. What’s more, the data sets of your customers can be used to precisely define your target groups and to position advertising on the Internet in a way that ensures low scatter loss.
7. Reward new customer acquisition
Pay ALL your employees an attractive bonus whenever they gain a connection who is then later converted to a paying new customer. Not only to the sales staff and the vendors. For the latter, however, you should integrate new customer acquisition in the objective agreements too.
8. Don’t forget your existing customers!
Particularly in the B2B segment can a single customer be a huge contributor to the overall sales of your company. Which is why you should always take care to extend contracts and leverage opportunities for upselling. Remain in contact regularly, ask how your customer is doing and share the latest product highlights or new services with your existing customers. The increase of the budget is nearly always easier to push in this way than the time-consuming acquisition of entirely new customers.
Conclusion: work before play
The acquisition of customers in the B2B segment has always been a major challenge. Because many potential customers already have suppliers for the products and services they need, established sellers first have to be ousted. Due to the corona pandemic restrictions, resulting in the halt of all in-person events and personal acquisition opportunities, as well as due to the difficult economic situation, this challenge will become even more complex. Good thing there are suitable digital alternatives in the B2B segment which allow you to generate new contacts and leads. With a good offer, comprehensive preparation and the right software, you have already done your work – and then play follows with direct communication with the potential customer. Those who know how to convince on both a specialist and an emotional level will be able to stay ahead of the competition.
