Tag: B2B Sales Tips

Sales Strategies for Non-Sales Founders

A simple way for ‘non sales’ founders to think and do sales. The success rate of selling to an existing customer is 60-70% versus 5-20% for new customers. 

Segment your past 24 months (to factor in 12 mths+ of Covid) customers based on a very simple model… 

1. Save all your customer contacts centrally and in the ‘cloud’ (Your email contacts are a good starting point if you don’t have a CRM system yet).

2. List the top 10 customers from the past period with their amounts (You’ll be surprised by ‘small’ consistent customers vs inconsistent ‘big’ spending customers).

3. Assess the buying patterns of the top customers (frequency, types of products, ave amounts)

4. ‘ Label’ 4 tiers of customers:

I.e. ‘Entry Level Eddy’: Buys once, a low priced product or only 1 product.

Repeat Purchase Rita’: Buys frequently, average priced products, average of 2 products.

‘VIP Velani’: Your biggest contributing customer segment; average 3 products. According to Signore Pareto 80% of your revenue will come from 20% customers. 

‘VVIP Piet’: Ensure that you don’t have customers in this segment, however ask yourself “What do I need to offer or do to increase my VIP customers to this level?”

5. Design activities to grow and maintain these customers.

6. Pricing. Only have 3 price points (humans are bad at making decisions over 3 choices). 

Have an entry level price (probably your current price point), offer a larger product/service offering as your desired price point for the majority of your customers and finally have your VVIP price that is 3-4x this price. 

What this does is provide a pricing ‘anchor’ so customers will take up your middle product offering. This will increase your average revenue per customer.

How B2B Tech Founders Can Secure Corporate Partnerships

Any corporate buyers want to add to this for the benefit of B2B tech founders? 

1. Mandate & Sponsor: Your corporate contact has the mandate within the organisation to engage with you (An internal sponsor/reference/referral is key).

2. Business Case: An approved business case to commercially engage with a high confidence in the project delivery.

A no or very low risk of internal reputation and P&L damage to sponsors. 

3. Accessibility: Founders to be hands-on and to lead and drive the project forward. Don’t handover to a junior ‘implementation team’.

4. Legal: All legal & compliance approvals. 

5. Internal Stakeholders: All key stakeholders aligned, especially if you need to be integrated into the busy IT schedule. Send regular project communication and updates on project milestones successes.

6. Procurement: Being prepared beforehand for a parallel procurement and supplier application process. 

7. Brand & PR: Is the solution going to be ‘white-labelled’ with the corporate brand? Deliver ‘internal’ PR messaging that is aligned to corporate strategy and quarterly objectives.