Patrik Rolén
- Jun 9, 2021
- 7 min read

How to build & maintain relationships online in B2B sales

Due to the volume of desired purchases, the uniquely complex requirements of prospective clients, and several other contractual details, the lifecycle of a B2B sale can be both lengthy and tricky. Furthermore, establishing trust is crucial when trying to win over prospects and boost B2B sales.

For more than a year we have been asked to run our business 100% online which for many has worked surprisingly well when working with existing clients. We are now moving toward brighter times, but a lot of companies have become accustomed to restricting travel. My bet is that this will continue, and we will have less F2F interactions with our new prospects. So, what happens with new relationships when you cannot/or should not meet a potential client face-to-face anymore? How do we communicate with them in a manner that puts them at ease, making them feel like you are a reliable party?

Today there are several digital tools you can use such as zoom, google hangouts and teams, but none comes as close to the real thing. However, it is not as simple as getting on a video call and doing the exact same thing you would do in a face-to-face meeting. All things from transmission quality, body language and facial expression matter when building trust in a virtually in B2B sales. I have broken down a few things that I think are essential for any B2B sales professional to consider;

Videostream Quality

Pick a professional setting with minimal background noise to avoid distractions. This can be an office or conference room, and even an organized study room can do if you’re working from home. Where possible, have some company branded materials in the shot. In some cases, you can have a sample product present if you feel that certain details about it are integral to making the sale.

You can also do a brief trip around the office and give the prospect a behind-the-scenes view of important value-addition processes like branded packaging, or others that can help you impress them or earn their trust.

Ensure that your room is well-lit. You can opt for a lean 3-light setup with a key, fill, and backlight to eliminate shadows, uneven lighting, and achieve top-notch quality.
Have the camera pointed towards your face and speak while looking directly into the camera. Notice at how many people are looking down at their camera when using a laptop.
Do a test run before the call to ensure that your voice is clear and every part of you that you want to be visible is in the shot.
Consider using an external microphone as clear sound is important when doing your pitch.
Make sure you have a stable internet connection with ample bandwidth. If you are using your Wifi that is often a problem to disturbances in your connection, consider using a network cable connection instead.
If you have the option to choose your conference service, consider using zoom or google hangout as both of them offer 720p instead of 480p resolution.

What to ask

Due to the Covid- 19 crisis people are spending a large portion of their working day in video calls. Because of this we tend to skip the social discussion and jump right into the matter at hand. It is advisable to wait with the thought-intensive questions until you have had a proper greeting. As always in sales relations are built by interaction and asking questions. Therefor the needs analyses should always be the largest portion of any video call for a sales rep.

Exchange greetings, then lead with a light question about them such as “How’s work over there?” or “How are you guys doing working from home?” The goal is to get the prospect to say something about themselves or their business before you get it out of them directly. This could be a tiny detail about a new expansion, a desired change of supplier or addition of a new supplier to the fold. Such brief openers give you new insights and help you create trust in the prospects mind. Keep these pleasantries as short as possible and move on to the main questions.

To hold effective B2B sales meetings, the questions should be grouped into two kinds; those that help you know if you can help the prospect (selfless), and the ones that help you find out whether they can help you (selfish).

For a better chance at creating a bond, start with the selfless questions so that you don’t make them feel like you’re trying to quickly cross them off a list and move on.

Find out their needs

Ask about the main challenges faced them or their company. Always remember that you’re dealing with an individual so try to zero in on that person’s challenges or what the company challenges mean for that person. This can help you figure out how to make their work easier, which may then make them choose you.

Inquire about their target results and get a quantifiable answer where possible. This can be a timeline for increasing the number of customers or boosting the number of purchases per customer. In the case of more particular goals like brand exposure, find out how they want to go about getting to this goal?
Knowing things like whether a business wants more sales out of their ads, or whether they want to switch to higher-spending customers can help you refine your pitch.
Find out the necessary functions/features and also the extra attributes they would like in a product/service. To be able to win them over, you need to know their must-have qualities.
This will also save you the time that would be spent pursuing a prospect simply because you have some features in your product, they like but fail to close the deal due to an inability to deliver on the compulsory ones.
There may be cases where the prospect is still much further from the sale than you think. Find out whether they are in the market for a solution or are just looking around in case they need one later. In any case standing out by being interested and keen to help will keep you top mind when the buying need might arise.

If they aren’t looking for one, ask them why (whether it’s a budget issue, already having a solution from a competitor or if it’s a lower priority at the time). You can then use that information to educate them a little more on why your solution could be different and beneficial.

Learn about the competition

To better ascertain whether you can be of help and how you can do it, you need to find out more about your competition from the customer’s perspective. Ask questions along the following lines:

Any current contract with another company, how soon it expires, and the extra fees involved such as with cancellation.
What they would like in a new contract with another company based on what’s working and what’s lacking in their current one.
Any plans to take a more in-house approach/create the solution themselves.

After this stage, you can then move on to the more “selfish” questions regarding how the prospect can be of help to you. These tend to be more along the lines of decision-making and the budget.

Decision-making

Find out the role of the person you are talking to in their company’s decision-making process. Get them to tell you about any other people above them, all the way to the person with the final say.
Ask them about what those people usually require before they make such decisions.
Learn more about the departments involved in making such deals, the relevant liaisons after the deal has been made, and the time it typically takes their company to make such decisions.
It is also important to know the metrics they’ll be paying attention to when rating the quality of your product/service.

Budgeting

Ask about how much their company usually spends on the kinds of products and services you offer, and who usually supervises the deployment of those funds.

Make sure you ascertain how much money they have set aside for the solution required. You can also try to find out if they’ve ever been in a situation where they had to pay more, and how open they are to adjusting their budget.

At this point, you should have established an intersection between what they want and what you can offer. You must also have a fair sense of how much they are willing to compromise in certain areas. This is what will guide your pitch and make it more resonant to the prospect. When you step into to the pitching phase. I usually recommend scheduling a new meeting for your pitch if it’s a big product or you are planning to present an offer. Either way make sure the emphasis on the meeting is asking questions and building trust with the prospect.

Email Marketing

Make sure you collect all details of you prospect. Create adjustments or totally new categories using the automation features within your CRM tools. The goal is to make sure that when prospects who have already been engaged revisit your website, the data they generate can be used to send them emails or attaching them to click your posts on LinkedIn.

The post or e-mails could also be alterations to your offers that make them more enticing for the prospect. This system should also take note of any other pages they visit and elements they click on.
The trick to winning them over might be fronting a different offer they stumbled upon recently but hadn’t paid attention to in the beginning. Use catchy subject lines that remind the prospect that you’ve engaged them before.
Ensure that there’s a new piece of helpful information and a clear call-to-action on every e-mail or post. The call-to-action may be something like a request to call your business’ sales representative and lock in an order attached to the updated offer before it expires.