B2B Sales

After decades of hunch-based, adrenaline-fueled cold calling and Hail-Mary revenue generation, we’ve recently entered an entirely new era. An era steered by intelligent, laser-targeted prospecting and marketing, tuned by personalization and driven by data.

Thanks to new technological innovations, a relatively old business selling model has become more common lately: the account-based sales model. With the use of sales intelligence, companies can now more efficiently than ever before discover the most viable accounts based on a wide range of criteria and create a tailored sales and marketing strategy for them.

Entering a new, unknown market is like being the new kid at a new school. The possibilities are endless when it comes to making new friends, or in the business world - finding new customers. Still, getting that first great connection can be more challenging than expected.

Most of us use the industry data field in our CRM and marketing automation. It’s an important piece of information. We often create segments and lists by using that industry information as one of our search and B2B segmentation criteria. But how often you end up with endless target lists that include companies that have nothing in common?

This post will cover how to use custom industry categories to create hyper targeted B2B segments. In other words, you’ll learn how to sell more by selling to fewer.

Let’s get to it.

Expanding your B2B business to a new country can be daunting. Obviously, you need a solid market entry strategy, but also you need to develop a deep understanding of how B2B sales are done in market you're eyeing. 

Vainu expanded to new markets a few years ago, so we thought we'd like to share our story and how we did by answering these ten common questions about expanding a B2B business to the Nordics. 

What a year! We can all agree 2020 wasn't exactly what we expected. However, looking ahead with renewed optimism, we're continuing tradition and predicting the most important sales trends in 2021.

Things have changed, but sales activity hasn't stopped. The pandemic forced many companies to rethink their strategies, and we saw remote sales become common almost overnight. Going forward, sales and marketing teams will be more creative and resourceful, building on the lessons learned in the last few months. As a result, companies will refine their strategies with a focus on a new digital customer journey with multiple touch points and channels across various channels.

A renewed focus on the digital journey that puts the customer at the center. That's the premise in which we're predicting next year's sales trends—and here they are:

What do top salespeople want? Besides success and eternal glory, that’s it. Salespeople want to know who they should be selling to, what they should be talking about, and what’s the right time to do so. Simple, isn’t it?

To answer those questions, we regularly create different types of content that explain how to become relevant through the use of real-time company information when prospecting, calling, and meeting. For beginners and experts.

In this article, we’ve compiled our most popular resources. Our greatest hits if you will. Download these resources to have a complete toolkit to master real-time sales.

(Oh, and subscribe to our newsletter to stay on top of things to come.)

Behind every successful motion picture, there’s an entire team of people, responsible for different tasks, working towards the joint goal of co-creating the next blockbuster movie. The director is the creative genius with the vision, who works closely with the actors to coach and guide them in that direction. On her side, there's the producer. A film producer is running more operational tasks such as the hiring of crew and cast, scheduling, and sourcing of material.

Why are we talking about movies, you might ask? Well, because in high-growth sales organizations it’s not uncommon that the VP Sales becomes a sales liability. Sales coaching, forecasting, evaluating sales tools... are just a few of the things we usually see sales leadership spend their time on. With too many things on their plate, a VP Sales will either be letting important processes and decisions slip through the cracks, or spend way too much time looking at the numbers while not spending enough time on their people.

Having a sales operations role is a smart solution for a growing sales organizations, similar to the what a movie director seeks in their producer. By leaving more responsibility on the sales operations manager (producer), the VP Sales (director) can spend more time on leading the team towards success.

In sales, being lucky is in your hands. Your expertise, your networks, and your contacts will boost your luck-o-meter, but when the stars are not aligned—and usually they aren't, tapping into modern technologies and data will undoubtedly increase your chances of closing a deal.

A recently published HubSpot Sales Enablement 2021 Report presents a few not so flattering figures related to sales reps, e.g., 50% of prospects think salespeople are pushy, and only 3% of buyers trust sales reps. Acknowledging this, it comes as no surprise, that only 22% of salespeople are very effective at personalizing content for every buyer interaction according to Forrester. What makes this equation even more problematic is that modern buyers expect an even more relevant, personalized approach than they did a few years ago. Buyers are more knowledgeable when they have their first interaction with you, and they expect you to meet them where they are in the buying journey.

To learn how not to fall into these statistics and find new sales opportunities, continue reading further about the what, why and how of tracking and acting upon triggers in outbound sales.

Real-time sales is not just about speed. It’s about real conversations, too. We’re often asked, what do you mean when you talk about real-time sales? In this blog, we describe our methodology for selling, a strategy based on changing data that’s as fresh as possible.

How do you continue selling in the current situation? Will companies invest or scale back their sales activities? What effect do all-remote sales teams have on productivity?