You decide to go downtown to buy storage containers to help you organize your home. As you walk down the street, the department stores’ loudspeakers blare desperately: “Bedding 50% off, today only!”, “Spring-Summer Collection, pieces starting at R$19.90!”, “Phone cases in every size for R$20.00!”. After walking a long way amid shrill noise without finding what you need, you get home and decide to check prices at online stores. You visit a kitchen accessories store, and a discount pop-up immediately appears on the screen. Next to it, a push notification invites you to subscribe to the newsletter. You look at a few products, even put a set in your shopping cart, but decide not to buy any of them. The next day, when you open your social media, every page shows the site you visited in sidebar ads. In your inbox, two messages from the store are already staring at you, urging you to complete the purchase left in your cart and offering special payment terms. The messages boil down to numbers, urgency, promotion. They are intrusive, abundant, uninteresting. Does it work? I’d say yes, but does it work in the long run? Who benefits from cutting margins to the bone?
Sound familiar? Pushing your product on customers is not the same as selling. Using discounts, promotions, and easier purchase terms can even be beneficial at certain times, but where are the real reasons for the customer to want your product? Just because a ship is 60% off doesn’t mean everyone will instantly want to buy it. Who are the people who need a ship?
Where are they? What do they need it for? What situations create that need? Price is only the final trigger. Does your product or service solve the customer’s problem? Have you focused only on making the sale, or first tried to understand your audience and offer clear, satisfying solutions? When it comes to B2B sales, I understand that some actions can only be seen in the long term, but there are always ways to start helping and show results, from the micro to the macro. Some of the actions you can take even before the contract is signed are: understanding the client’s buying process, finding the ideal audience profiles, showing your solutions instead of just talking about them, finding who has influence and decision-making power within the company, and paying attention to service, packaging, and delivery quality. All of this needs to be part of your sales process.
Fully mapping everything that has been done and is being done at the client company is only the first of your obligations. From there, you will already be able to spot countless micro actions to start showing how your company can solve real problems quickly. Running simulation exercises is a great path once the first pain points have been identified. Helping your clients, even if there is no business relationship between you yet, will only show how reliable and committed your company is. What resources, updates, references, advice, or other valuable guidance could you share with them to be remembered? You can even teach your audience to fish, but always making it clear that only you have the reel, the line, and the right bait to catch the best fish. This is about knowing how to sell with purpose, creating undeniable proposals.
Prefer the whole book?