Complex sales with long transaction cycles in the consulting B2B segment require automation – it helps increase conversion rates and optimize resources. Unlike traditional CRMs, specialized CRM systems for B2B sales offer tools to effectively manage complex processes. In this article, let’s look at how to choose the right CRM platform for consulting B2B sales, and why standard CRMs aren’t always appropriate.
The specifics of consultative sales
Consulting sales differ from transactional sales in a number of key ways:
- Long transaction cycle: Selling complex technical products, such as cloud infrastructure or ERP systems, can take months to a year or more.
- High cost: The process involves different specialists on both sides, which increases the cost and resources involved.
- Expert Knowledge: The salesperson must demonstrate in-depth knowledge of the product and its application to the customer’s challenges in order to gain trust and gradually move the deal toward closing.
These factors require a comprehensive sales management tool that can support complex processes.
What do businesses expect from CRM?
B2B sales companies need specialized CRM solutions to achieve the following goals:
- Reduce the price of a sale: Streamline the process, increase conversions, and easily track all stages of the transaction with analytics.
- Integration with other systems: Full synergy with ERP and analytics systems to provide stakeholders with a full range of customer data.
- Flexible system customization: Prefer low-code platforms that allow for easy customization of CRM to meet a company’s unique needs.
Why look for a specialized solution
One-size-fits-all CRM platforms often fail to handle the unique requirements of B2B sales:
- Lack of the right tools: Salespeople can’t effectively apply their sales techniques.
- Lack of integration with marketing: Which leads to poorly performing advertising campaigns and low-quality leads.
- Difficulty of customization: Universal systems are difficult to adapt to specific needs.
- Lack of content management: Content development is haphazard and does not support marketing goals.
- Lack of task automation: Lack of task control leads to loss of customers early on.
A specialized B2B CRM helps minimize these problems and optimize business processes.
What processes does a B2B CRM platform automate?
A specialized CRM platform allows you to automate business-critical processes:
- Sales:
- Sales methods (e.g., SPIN, Solution Selling).
- Qualifying leads using methodologies such as MEDDIC.
- Management of the customer’s contact map.
- Analytics:
- Fast generation of reports and dashboards.
- Sales through partners:
- Manage affiliate funnels and programs.
- Register and support deals through partners.
- Marketing:
- Analyzing content and its impact on deals.
- Automating the transmission of feedback to adjust marketing strategies.
- Content creation and utilization:
- Automatic delivery of content to support managers.
- Analyze content effectiveness and collect feedback.
“Digitalization in all industries and businesses has the same goals: transparency, accounting, accumulation and analysis of data. And all of this is being done to enable informed management decisions supported by holistic, consistent, reality-relevant data.”
— shared Alexander Starodubtsev, SimpleOne product owner.
What to look for when choosing a B2B CRM?
When choosing a CRM platform, it is important to consider the following functionalities:
- Lead Qualification Tools: Support for approaches such as MEDDIC.
- Transaction Cycle Flexibility: Tools for creating a contact map and working with selection criteria.
- Marketing Integration: Synchronize data and automate the transfer of winning deals to marketing.
- Content Management: Automate content development with Kanban support.
- Marketing Campaign Management: Performance analytics and message chain management.
To CRM-platform successfully integrated into the business processes of the company, it is worth choosing low-code solutions – they allow you to flexibly customize the system without involving developers.
Summary
Choosing the right CRM-platform for consulting B2B sales requires careful analysis of the company’s needs and the capabilities of different systems. Specialized CRM-platforms, such as low-code solutions, not only have the necessary functionality, but are also quite flexible in customization – this allows you to manage complex processes and improve sales efficiency.
