6 Winning B2B Sales Strategies To Crush It In 2024

What do the most successful B2B sales teams all have in common?

If you were to put some of the world’s most successful B2B sales teams under a microscope, it’s probably a lot more than you think.

You’d find that a large portion of their success doesn’t actually revolve around sales, at all.

Instead, it revolves around how you (as the business owner) use marketing to put the right prospects on the tee — so your sales team can bring them into the fold.

And if you’re looking to crush it with your B2B sales strategies, you’re in the right place.

In this guide, we’re going to break down 6 of the strategies that the world’s most successful sales teams all have in common so you, as the business owner, can line them up with hot prospects.

This all starts with the first strategy and how you manage accounts in your market.

Account-Based Marketing (ABM)

If you’re not familiar with the term, Account-Based Marketing means you’re concentrating your efforts on specific target accounts within a market.

Instead of focusing on broad-reaching marketing campaigns that target large groups of potential customers, account-based marketing tailors your marketing message and sales efforts to individual accounts or groups of accounts.

When you take this approach, you’re able to personalize your marketing campaigns, giving you a significantly higher impact.

That means you’re more efficiently utilizing your marketing resources — while getting even better results from each of your campaigns.

To start using an account-based marketing approach, there are a few steps you’ll need to take.

First, you’re going to need to identify high-value accounts.

This can be done by looking at past data and your existing customers.

You can also figure out who these high-value accounts are through comprehensive market research.

The key is to understand who in your market would deliver the highest customer lifetime value (CLV).

Then, once you’ve identified them, you’ll need to start creating a list of stakeholders at those companies.

Identify who the decision makers are, their influencers, and anyone else who might play an active role in the buying process.

Take note of their specific roles, responsibilities, and the pain points that would have them moving closer to working with a company like yours.

Then, once you know who you need to be talking to, the next step is creating custom landing pages dedicated to them.

You can put together landing pages on your website that’s tailored to each specific target account.

These landing pages showcase how your product or service specifically solves the pain points that they’re feeling right now.

When you compare this approach to broad-targeted marketing, you can start to see why it’s as effective as it is.

Instead of hitting the broad market with a broad pain point, hoping that someone with that pain point will raise their hand, you’re getting a lot more targeted with your message.

That increased targeting lets you drive deeper into each of the pain points, getting incredibly specific, letting people know the message is specifically for them — and nobody else.

The next step would be actively reaching out to your target accounts through multiple channels.

Each of the decision-makers you identified in earlier steps can be contacted before they actually see your ads and come into your ecosystem.

You can reach out to them on major social media platforms, like LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter (X), or even Facebook, or through email to begin the conversation.

You can also put together highly targeted ads or direct mail marketing campaigns to reach out to them.

But getting in touch with them before they see your ads is a great way to begin indoctrinating them into how you can help solve their biggest pain points.

Then, when they start seeing your ads, they’ll be reminded again and again how you can help.

This type of account management is INSANELY effective when done the right way — and when done by the right types of businesses.

It may not necessarily work for all B2B businesses but there are some it’s incredibly effective for.

For businesses, where a single client deal represents significant revenue, using an account-based management approach, works really well.

The personalized approach can increase the likelihood of closing large deals.

For companies that operate in niche markets with a limited number of potential clients, account-based management allows for a deep focus on those few prospects, maximizing chances of success.

It also works amazingly well for B2B tech companies that often sell complex, high-value products or services with long sales cycles.

Think of companies that sell financial services, pharma, or manufacturing-related products.

For these longer sales cycles, account-based management can help shorten the sales cycle by personalizing the approach to each prospect.

When you take this approach, though, you’re able to use marketing to put highly targeted prospects into your sales team’s pipeline — dramatically increasing their close rate (and your revenue).

Educational Selling

Another sales approach you can have your team take is educational selling.

It’s an approach that focuses on providing valuable information, insights, and guidance to potential customers, helping them make informed decisions and solve their problems.

Some of the world’s largest companies take this approach — and it works incredibly well.

For instance, you’ve probably heard of Trello before.

One of the ways they’ve gained so much market share so quickly is through educational selling.

They know exactly who has a problem that Trello can solve and then market directly to them.

Once that prospect is in their ecosystem, they begin educating the prospect on why the problems exist, what solving the problem looks like (the end result), and how to use Trello to solve it right now.

Take a look at the screenshot below to see what it looks like in action:

By taking this approach, though, prospects don’t realize they’re actually being sold.

By the time they end up on a sales page or on a sales call, they’ve already made the decision that they want to solve the problems Trello identified — and that they want to use Trello to do it.

They don’t just use their blog and text-based guides to educate people, though.

Trello takes it one step further by hosting purely educational webinars, breaking down different features of the software, the problems each of those features solve, and who can benefit most from them.

Each of these pre-recorded webinars can be watched at any time, making it easy for people to get access to the information right away.

Take a look at the webinars they host:

So while the webinars are purely educational in nature, again, people don’t realize they’re actually making a buying decision.

Trello doesn’t have to “hard sell” them on using the software.

With an educational selling approach, they’re not actually selling.

Instead, the customer is buying.

In your own business, you can take this same approach to help people buy — so your sales teams don’t have to hardcore sell people on the offer.

It makes the entire sales process significantly smoother.

And it scales.

Since people want to feel in control of their decisions and confident in their ability to make the right choices, empowering prospects with knowledge and guidance leans into their psychological needs.

It helps them feel competent in their decision-making and autonomous in their choice to engage with a particular solution or vendor.

When you’re taking this approach, though, you want to focus more on the customer’s journey.

You need to understand your target audience’s unique needs, pain points, and decision-making process.

Map out their journey from awareness to consideration to decision and then create content that addresses their specific questions and concerns at each stage.

Then you can leverage multiple formats and channels, diversifying your education selling efforts by using different media, like blog posts, whitepapers, webinars, podcasts, and video tutorials.

For example, Wynter has so many different formats:

In the example above, they’re offering a full course, workbooks, and slides.

In the example below, they’re offering podcasts.

Then, in this example, they offer full community access to potential prospects.

Using an educational selling process can take cold, skeptical prospects and turn them into warm prospects on sales calls, asking the right questions, and making it easier for your team to close.

The key, though, is understanding the pain points your prospects are facing, the questions they’ll ask, the problems they want to solve, and how your specific offer solves those problems for them.

When you’ve mapped that out — and then begin creating content around it — you’ll make your sales team even more effective.

Referral Programs

A strategy that’s incredibly popular with eCommerce companies is a referral program.

It doesn’t just work for those companies, though.

B2B services and companies can also use referral programs to dramatically improve their revenue.

Even though it’s a B2B offer, they’re still humans and the same principles of social proof and trusting recommendations apply to them.

In a B2B setting, though, peer-to-peer conversations can be even more powerful.

When a business owner or executive recommends something to their colleagues or industry contacts, the sales cycle tends to be a lot shorter because the recommendation is personalized.

Think about someone in your close network sharing a post on LinkedIn.

In it, they talk about a problem they were having in their business — one that you’re having right now.

They also talked about stumbling onto a company that helped solve the problem, what it looked like working with them, and what the solution looks (and feels) like after the fact.

If you were facing that same problem, what do you think you would do?

Chances are, you’re going to reach out to them to find out more — or start digging in and searching for the company yourself.

But, by that point, you’re already 80% sold.

The only thing you need to learn, from there, is whether or not they can actually help you solve the problem and if your experience will be similar to the one you saw in the LinkedIn post.

(That’s where educational selling comes in and does the heavy lifting!)

Getting started generating referrals doesn’t have to be rocket science.

You can send an email out to your existing clients right now, asking if they may know anyone who would want an experience similar to theirs.

Here’s a quick template you can use:

Hi [Customer Name],

As one of our most valued customers, your satisfaction is our top priority. We’re thrilled that you’ve had a positive experience with our [product/service] and have seen [specific benefit or metric] as a result.

We would greatly appreciate it if you could refer any colleagues or business contacts who might also benefit from our [product/service]. As a token of our appreciation, we’re offering [incentive] for every successful referral.

If you know someone who could benefit from our [product/service], simply reply to this email with their contact information, and we’ll take care of the rest.

Thank you for your continued support and trust in [Your Company].

Best regards,

[Your Name]

[Your Company]

And that’s it.

But if you want to take this strategy one step further, you’ll also want to build a landing page that makes it even easier to refer people to you.

You can use a tool like ClickFunnels 2.0 to build your landing pages, making it easy to create links that your customers can share — and a page where future customers can get all of the information they’re going to need in order to decide whether or not they want to work with you.

Click here to start your free 14-day ClickFunnels 2.0 trial if you’re not already using it!

Once you create the page, you can even incentivize people to give you referrals.

Here’s how we do it at ClickFunnels:

Once you have that in place, you can also do personalized outreach to begin speaking with referrals.

You want to make sure you understand what the prospect is looking to do, whether or not you can help them, and leverage the relationship that you have with the person who referred them.

Here’s a template you can use to start that conversation:

Subject: [Referring Customer] recommended we connect

Hi [Referred Business Contact],

[Referring Customer] mentioned that you might be interested in learning more about our [product/service], which has helped them achieve [specific benefit or metric].

I’d love to schedule a brief call to discuss how we might be able to help [Referred Business] see similar results.

Are you available for a 20-minute introductory call next week?

Best regards,

[Your Name]

[Your Company]

To see what that looks like in motion, check out this example from Deel:

Super simple, but incredibly effective.

Partnership And Collaboration

Establishing strategic partnerships with other businesses and collaborating with key partners can be another great way to grow your B2B sales revenue.

It gives you a relatively smooth way to expand your market, whether that’s regionally or through a specific customer segment.

It also gives you increased credibility by pairing with someone who is already trusted.

Not to mention you can pool together your resources so 1 + 1 actually equals 3.

And when it comes to these partnerships, there are 3 different types you can explore.

1) Reseller Partnerships: One company will sell another company’s products or services to its own customer base, expanding the real sales potential for both parties.

Here’s an example from HubSpot and Sprocket Digital:

In this example, Sprocket Digital is a digital marketing agency that resells HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and service software to its clients.

They help them implement and optimize their use of the HubSpot platform.

2) Integration Partnerships: Companies collaborate to integrate their products or services, creating a more seamless and valuable experience for their shared customers.

For instance, Xero (an accounting company) partners with Gusto (a payroll company) to benefit both of their audiences.

Xero offers accounting services while Gusto handles payroll.

Integrating together makes Xero’s life easier while generating even more customers for Gusto.

3) Co-Marketing Partnerships: Collaborating on joint venture marketing activities, such as webinars, content creation, or events, can help you reach a wider audience and generate more leads.

For this type of partnership, you can use a tool like ClickFunnels 2.0 to make life easier.

For instance, with ClickFunnels, you can set up the specific funnel you want to JV on and have it up and running in as little as an hour:

With a webinar collaboration, the funnel is already built, ready for to you plug your assets in:

Then, you can announce it to your audiences and start getting people registered:

Once they’re registered, they’ll be notified with the details on how to join the webinar while it’s live:

As the webinar goes live, you can educate your audience on the problems you solve:

And this all happens inside of ClickFunnels without needing to hire a developer.

If you aren’t already using ClickFunnels 2.0, click here to start your free 14-day trial now.

To get started with these partnerships, look for companies that offer products or services that aren’t your direct competition.

These partners should target a similar customer base but not cannibalize your own offers.

A great example would be a catering company partnering with an event rental service.

Or a marketing agency partnering with a web development firm.

But these partnerships can help you experience explosive growth because, remember, 1+1 normally equals 2 until you partner and collaborate with complementary companies.

Then 1+1 = 3.

Create An Email Sales Sequence

When you have new leads coming into your ecosystem — before they get to a sales call — you want to make sure you’re taking time to warm them up.

One of the best ways to do this is with an email sequence.

It’s a series of emails that will be sent to new leads and helps educate and indoctrinate them into your specific process.

To give you an example, take a look at this sequence from Ship30for30:

These emails don’t have to be super complicated, either.

If you understand your customer’s journey, the pain points they want to solve, the problems they’re experiencing that cause those pain points, and what they believe the solution should look like, you have everything you need to build a high-converting sequence.

When you’ve mapped this out, you can build the sequence inside ClickFunnels 2.0:

Each of the emails inside your workflow will be fully automated based on the rules you set.

Then you can use the built-in drag-and-drop editor to fully customize each of the emails you send.

Live Or Recorded Demos

Now, to really seal the deal with your sales team, using live or recorded demos is one of the best ways you can convert a potentially skeptical prospect into a new customer.

Since, a lot of times, people haven’t moved forward because they’re simply unsure of what the process of working together actually looks like.

You can offer live demos where your sales team offers what you do and answers questions.

Or you can use a pre-recorded demo that covers the most commonly answered questions & objections.

Here’s an example of a pre-recorded demo:

Pre-recorded demos work great for driving pre-qualified leads that are ready to buy onto your sales team’s calendars.

However, if they require a bit more personalized approach, using a blend of both pre-recorded and live can be a great way to get deals done.

The blended approach is how WhatsApp closes deals:

They offer a pre-recorded demo and then give people an option to speak to someone on a call in case they have other questions that the demo didn’t cover.

However, if you’re early on in your business development and can’t answer all of your prospect’s questions or handle their objections with a recorded demo, you can offer a live demo.

Chargebee relies on live demos to help grow their sales:

And now that you’ve seen these strategies, it’s time to start looking around you.

Think about the world’s biggest (and most successful) sales teams and look into the strategies they’re using.

Chances are, you’re going to see each of the strategies on this list.

This means you’ll want to start actually implementing each of the strategies we’ve just given you.

Start by focusing on account-based marketing and customizing your approach to the market.

Then begin mapping your customer’s journey so you can implement educational selling and automated email sequences that take cold, skeptical leads and convert them into warm prospects on sales calls.

Establish strategic partnerships with the right companies so you can start pooling resources and sharing your audiences.

Then, use ClickFunnels to manage your email marketing and referral program so you’re driving more warm leads into your sales ecosystem with less effort (and less money).

When you do this, your B2B sales strategies will go from struggling to crushing and your sales team will love you for having their calendars packed with customers that are ready to buy right now.