Are you in the b2b otherwise known as the business-to-business industry? Selling to a business rather than a consumer presents its own struggles. Your audience is different, their needs vary, and it’s typically on a larger scale than b2c sales, making it an entirely different ballgame. If you’re new to this type of sales or even if you’ve been in the industry for awhile and just need some fresh ideas, check out a guide from sales pro, Ryan Roche, where he gives you 4 great basic tips.

What is b2b sales?

B2b or “business-to-business” sales is the action of one business entity or salesperson selling their product or service directly to another business. In this process rather than individual customers, entire businesses are the target market typically resulting in larger deals.

What is the difference between b2b and b2c sales?

B2b or “business-to-business” sales as we established above is when businesses sell their products or services to other businesses. Well b2c sales is “business to consumer” sales so rather than selling to businesses, Netflix or Nike are prime examples of this—it’s a lower level sale, smaller amount of product and price.

In B2B sales there is a longer sales cycle that requires talking to multiple people at a company and discussing a higher price point than traditional residential sales. Even if you sell B2C or D2D right now, you can still learn about the growth and opportunities of B2B sales to help refresh your sales game. 

Use these 4 tips from expert Ryan Roche to get you started:

If you’ve ever felt defeated in the door-to-door industry because of constant rejection, that can actually be a blessing in disguise. Expert sales trainer, Ryan Roche, explains that if you find success easily and often in sales, it’ll teach you to do the bare minimum. On the other hand, if you struggle occasionally (or even a lot) with landing sales, the rejection will teach you to break down your sales process and figure out what you’re missing. Although it may not seem like it, struggling is a gift—it’ll teach you the most about the weaknesses in your approach and how to win in this industry.

The key to fixing constant rejection is a structured and consistent door approach. Roche has personal experience being rejected because of a poor approach. He struggled with having a clear and consistent pitch, so if you are too there’s no shame in it. These 5 steps can be applied to your entire sales pitch; anything you’re struggling with will be improved with this method.

The 5 Steps:

1. Write it out word for word
2. Review it
3. Read it
4. Memorize it
5. Master it

Here’s Ryan’s method for mastering the pitch:

#1 Write it out word for word

Include everything you would say to a potential customer. The more detail, the better. Even if you think you have the Mona Lisa of door approaches, there will be multiple ways to improve it. Writing out a pitch from start to finish is going to give you the start you need to build a stronger structure going forward. 

#2 Review it

Read your script to a sales expert or leader that you trust. While they give you feedback on your pitch, be willing to make adjustments. When you talk with experts, you will see the many ways you can modify your approach to make it better.

#3 Read it

Don’t just wing it. For the vast majority of salespeople, winging it doesn’t work. Winging it consistently introduces new variables into the conversation that make your approach too different. When your pitch changes from door to door, you aren’t able to pinpoint the problems in it because you can’t remember everything that you’ve been saying. To fix this, put your script at the front of your clipboard or iPad and every time you pitch, actually read the script to the customer. Now every time you deliver your pitch it’s consistent and makes perfect sense.

#4 Memorize it

Every time you have a free moment, have your script in front of you. Read it out loud, to someone, or anything that’ll help you memorize it. You need your conversation to be muscle memory so that every time you deliver the pitch it’s identical. As you improve it, memorize the improvements. When you deliver your structured pitch every time, your results will be consistently positive. 

#5 Master it

Bring in tone and body language that is also perfect, consistent, and practiced. You should also practice questions. For example ask, “Are you the homeowner?” in several different ways to find the right pitch and tone that will guide the answers and tone you receive from your customers. 

Steps 1-4 focus on verbal communication and the last step, mastery, is where more emotion is added to your already structured door approach. Verbal isn’t the only form of communication, but by mastering the words, everything else is unlocked. Roche’s goal is to have each rep prepared with a mastered door approach that can withstand the emotions of any customer and remain automatic and consistent. 

Start Now

These 5 steps can be applied to every single conversation that you have with a potential customer. Taking this much attention to detail will allow you to achieve results that no one else is achieving on your team or in your industry. So take it, apply it, and enjoy the results. Schedule a demo with us today so we can guide you through more sales tips and tricks to continue your success this year.

We can help your sales process and so can some of our favorite apps. These aren’t the only apps we integrate with or recommend, but these are some of the best apps to use when organizing you and your sales team from electronic forms, to scheduling, and lead management.

How do apps help your sales process?

According to Zendesk, “Sales apps allow reps to save time, simplify daily workflow, and access up-to-date data no matter where they are or what device they’re using. With more time available to focus on sales, agents can actually, you know, sell.”

Use these 10 apps:

1. Calendly
2. Zapier
3. Google Tasks
4. TopBuilder
5. RepCard
6. JobNimbus
7. HubSpot
8. Salesforce
9. SOLO
10. SalesRabbit

#1 Calendly

Quickly and easily create and update events on a shared calendar with Calendly. This is a good alternative to Google Calendar if you don’t use the Google suite. Plus you can use their software with ours if you set up our integration with Calendly now.

#2 Zapier

Everyone has heard of Zapier (if you haven’t you must be living under a rock). It’s a great tool to build your own simple integrations and cut out the middleman of your sales process. Thankfully, Zapier lets you create ‘zaps,’ which are actions that happen automatically in one app when they are triggered by another app. For example, if you create a lead in SalesRabbit, a zap will automatically log that lead in a Google Sheet or create a lead object in Salesforce. The best part? You don’t have to worry about doing any coding.

#3 Google Tasks

Keeping track of all your important tasks in Google Tasks is especially helpful when you’re already a gmail user. Available to anyone with a Google gmail account and can be downloaded for free in the app store and share it via email, text, etc.

#4 TopBuilder

TopBuilder is a useful sales and marketing software for contractors everywhere. Their software covers speciality contractors to home and general contractors all alike.

#5 RepCard

We integrate with RepCard to help automate text campaigns, develop a recruitment process, and automate tedious sales tasks. This will save you a lot of time and effort on tasks that take you away from selling.

#6 JobNimbus

JobNimbus is a CRM and Project Management software all wrapped into one. It is the easiest way to manage projects, contacts, and tasks. With detailed reporting and employee management tools, JobNimbus really brings a new level of simplicity to your work.

#7 HubSpot

HubSpot offers a full stack of software for marketing, sales, and customer service, with a completely free CRM at its core. It’s hard to say ‘no’ to free, especially when the product is this good. Hubspot has become a strong force in the marketing and sales world, so it’s definitely worth it to at least investigate their free product and see if it lives up to its strong reputation.

#8 Salesforce

Salesforce is the world’s top Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform. Their cloud-based applications for sales, service, marketing, and more don’t require IT experts to set up or manage — simply log in and start connecting to customers in a whole new way.

#9 SOLO

If you struggle with quickly generating proposals and agreements with your customers, you need SOLO. They are leading the industry in electronic agreements, payments, and proposals.

#10 SalesRabbit

We can’t make a list this great without including our own app. If you’re in any outside sales industry, we have tools and features to make your sales process easier, more intelligent, and extremely efficient. But we’re not ashamed to put ourselves on the list because we know what outside sales is like. Most of us here cut our teeth knocking doors or traveling to meet with clients, and we’ve been growing with the industry and culture. We know what the big problem areas are and we know how to navigate them. That’s why we’ve built the product we have. If you’re not sure about using SalesRabbit, try out our app for free at any time.

What apps do you use?

If you don’t think any of these apps fit your needs, check out our other integrations or our integration marketplace to find the best solution for your business. There are plenty of solutions out there for your company, all you have to do is know what you need and chat with us, we can help guide your sales process.

Door-to-door sales is a demanding profession, but it’s also extremely rewarding when done well. A lot of sales and canvassing mastery comes from practice and experience, but these 10 tips will give you a strong foundation.

1. Always be learning about sales
2.  Maintain your confidence
3. Become a trusted advisor
4. Stay organized
5. Build strong habits
6. Embrace the discomfort of sales
7. Establish (and constantly improve) a sales process
8. Don’t be scared to ditch the script
9. Remember: honesty is the best policy
10. Evolve with the times

1. Always be learning about sales

It doesn’t matter if you’re a canvassing rookie, a vet, a manager, or a CEO—there’s always something to improve on, and door-to-door sales is one of the industries that MOST rewards you for mastering your craft. If you make it a habit to regularly spend time learning from sales masters and teachers, you’ll dominate the porches and grow as a rep and as a leader.

Quality resources are cheaper and more accessible than ever. Sign up on free apps like Google Play and Apple Podcasts and listen to The Top 5 Podcasts in 2020 to help with your industry knowledge. If you’re looking for book recommendations, check out our list of the Top 8 Books for Door-to-Door Sales.

2. Maintain your confidence

If you’re dealing with self doubt, you’re going to project that doubt to the people you speak with. Your prospect interprets that as doubt in the product and company.

That’s why you need to have enough confidence to let every prospect interact with the most optimistic version of you. It can be hard to give the hundredth door the same level of optimism as the first door, so here are some tricks to keep a level-headed, positive attitude: 

• Stay grateful. If you’re in a rut, take a few minutes and take your mind off your problems and focus on being grateful for what you have. Write out a short list. Take a moment and meditate on it. Then get back to work with a sense of peace and a positive presence.
• Set long term goals to overcome temporary setbacks. You’re going to have rough doors, rough days, and maybe a rough week or two. But don’t cash out. Instead, set a long term goal and stay persistent. 
• Bring a reminder of something positive. Once you’ve set your goal, make sure that you always keep an external reminder. When you’re having a difficult time, it can be hard to create positivity in yourself out of nothing. But if you keep an external reminder of your goal, it can transport you to a more optimistic state of mind.

3. Become a Trusted Advisor

People actually like to find trusted advisors in life. Interviews of Warren Buffett garner millions of views on YouTube, because people trust his financial advice. Some will pay thousands to attend a Tony Robbins seminar because they hope he’ll help them improve their lives.

As long as people trust that someone cares about their well-being, they’ll be open to their advice. Become an advisor by: knowing the product, actively listening, challenging preconceptions, and building relationships. 

4. Stay Organized

When it comes to door-to-door sales, there are a lot of negative consequences for not getting organized. So you need to get organized. We’ve built our app around this mindset, and you’ll find that we make your team much more organized and efficient. But no matter where you’re at, you can find ways to be smarter with your time.

• Reduce travel time: Every smartphone has mapping capabilities, so take advantage of them. We’ve recently built a route planner directly into our app so you can travel quickly between appointments and leads.
• Schedule wisely: Be sure to plan around your appointments. If you know you have to be in a certain area at some point during the day, plan around that area. You don’t want to commit tons of time to an appointment that cancels and not have a game plan.
• Canvass intelligently: A lot of opportunities are lost when canvassers don’t track their progress through their area or use that data strategically. Here are a few different approaches that work:
  • Label every house you knock on in the morning and then revisit that same area at a later evening and knock every house that didn’t answer. So every house is knocked at different times of day, increasing the chance of a conversation.
  • Start working around current customers and move outward. Ask them for referrals and use their names in conversation with their neighbors.
  • Use DataGrid AI to identify ideal customers by income, credit score, renting/buying, time in house, and more. Prioritize areas that are most likely to buy.

5. Build strong habits

Everyone has big dreams, but they think they have to do huge things to accomplish those dreams. They get so overwhelmed by their own aspirations that they get analysis paralysis. They forget that everything great is accomplished through consistent daily effort. In other words, greatness is a habit.

Every habit is centered around 3 things: a cue, a routine, and a reward.

Maybe you’d like to create a better morning routine. A lot of people wake up, hit snooze a few times, pick up their phones and then get ready for work. The reward is more sleep, a lazy and comfortable morning. But a comfortable morning is not a productive morning. So, if you can recognize the cue, you can alter the behavior, and change the reward. Lazy mornings usually happen because people keep their phone next to their bed and use it as their alarm. When you wake up, your phone is already in your hand. But if you change the cue by putting your phone across the room, you have to get up to turn off the alarm.

With the cue changed, it’s easier to change the routine of making you get out of bed faster. As a result you’ll be rewarded with a more productive morning. These rewards will cement the new behavior and over time these habits will make you stronger, wealthier, and wiser.

6. Embrace the discomfort of sales

Door-to-door sales, by its nature, pulls you out of your comfort zone—so you might not think that this applies to you. But there are a lot of ways that you can crawl back into that comfort zone, no matter your experience or success in the industry.

Here’s an anti-comfort battle plan:

• Identify comfortable areas of your life and set goals to make them uncomfortable. Make them small goals at first, so that you build momentum and confidence moving forward.
• Control your inner voice. Your brain might not want to welcome more discomfort into your life. The difference between a catastrophe and a catalyst is attitude. Learn to silence the voice that says “I’m not strong enough” and replace it with the one that says “This will make me stronger.”
• Seek balance. We’re not saying that you need to ruthlessly eliminate all forms of comfort in your life. Give everything you have to your work, but don’t hesitate to set aside to relax, meditate, and prepare to come back stronger.

7. Establish (and constantly improve) a Sales Process

No matter your industry, every company has a process that prospects go through in order to become a customer. But if you’re not thinking strategically about that process, you might be selling inefficiently.

Here’s a few quick steps for building a sales process:

• Outline the different steps of your sales process. What process does your prospect usually go through to become a customer? It could be as simple as: contact, qualification, presentation, close, onboarding. 
• Track information about your performance on each step. This will give you actionable info about your sales teams and their performance. How many of your contacts are qualified? How many of your presentations turn into closes?
• Look for opportunities to improve each step. Once you’re tracking numbers, you can find weak spots based on your data. Then, you can start repairing them. Get better at canvassing in your target market. Making specific improvements is much more effective than making general, blind improvements.

8. Don’t be scared to ditch the script

Just because you have a sales process doesn’t mean that you can let yourself become a slave to it. Don’t get us wrong—it’s really important for a sales rep, especially a beginner, to find a groove and get confident with a structured pitch. But eventually, just like every professional, you’ve got to figure out your own stride.

A great way to start doing this is by riffing off your script. When you go to different houses, treat them like different houses. None of your conversations should be identical. Obviously your conversations are going to be similar, but if you treat every person the same, there won’t be much sincerity, and the prospect will be turned off by your approach.

There’s a few ways you can break this habit:

1. Investigate the house as you approach. (Of course, don’t be creepy about it.) Just be observant. What’s in the yard? What kind of vehicle do they have? Any flags? Incorporate what you observe into the conversation. For example, you could say “I love the Warriors bumper sticker. Are you optimistic about next season?”
2. We already mentioned this, but don’t be scared to listen to prospects and then change your approach based on what you’re hearing. Don’t give them a crappy solution to their problem just because it fits within your script. 
3. Do your research. Talk to the reps who are outperforming you. What do they do differently? What are they saying that you aren’t? Read books by the top salespeople and ask yourself the same questions. Then adapt based on what you learn.

9. Remember: honesty is the best policy

• Don’t over promise: If your company can’t do something, saying that it will is only going to guarantee a bad experience down the line. It might be tempting to just say whatever you need to in order to get a demo or close a deal, but don’t. That’s never going to result in a good customer experience.
• Don’t cut corners: It’s also tempting to leave a few problems unsolved and figure that the technician or customer service will handle it. This is a mistake. Chances are your techs or customer service reps won’t handle the problem any better than you. Plus, you don’t want the problem to fester over time. Resolve everything you can as soon as possible.
• Don’t force it: You’re going to interact with people who simply aren’t a good fit for your product. You may think you’re an awesome salesperson for closing these kinds of deals, but you’re doing more harm than good. These deals almost always churn down the line, costing you time and resources.

10. Evolve with the times

You wouldn’t believe what is becoming possible in this industry. In a tech-driven world, door-to-door sales feels old school. And that’s why we love it. We’re going to get out of the office, put down the phone, and talk to people, face-to-face. We built SalesRabbit around the idea that canvassing reinforced by tech would be a much more effective approach to sales. 

Here’s a glimpse into what we’re building to drive door-to-door into the future:

• Boost: Before Boost, door-to-door companies didn’t have a cost-effective marketing strategy that matched the way they sell. Boost lets you select that area and blast your ads to all the phones, TVs, and computers in the area. This will generate awareness for your brand and make people much more open to your canvassing.
• Zapier: We use Zapier to connect SalesRabbit to a lot of the services you already use, like G-Mail, Calendars, SalesForce, Google Sheets, Slack, and thousands more. Zapier makes it easy to connect all your apps and build workflows that automate everything. 
• Digital Contracts: Paper is a pain to have to carry around with you. We’ve built digital contracts that you can populate with whatever information you need and that the customer can sign on the porch. We’ve also got built in credit checks and title checks, so you can qualify your prospects before moving on to the contract stage.

What tips do you have?

At SalesRabbit we give you all the tools and tips like these to improve your ability to sell. If you start incorporating any of these 10 tips for door to door sales, we guarantee that you’ll see improvements in yourself and your closing stats.

Without proper resources, a sales team may struggle to close deals that may otherwise be an easy win. But by implementing sales enablement, your entire team will have all the resources they need to close more deals faster. Check out exactly what sales enablement is and how to create this strategy to boost your team’s success.

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is the process of providing your business’s sales team with the resources they need to close more deals. These resources may include content, tools, software, knowledge, and information to effectively sell your product or service to customers. Typically hired as a full-time role, the Sales Enablement Manager is the bridge between Marketing and Sales efforts that is essential for success.

According to our VP of sales, Sean Huckstep,

”Sales enablement gives sales reps the ability, the content, and insight to successfully and repeatedly move people through the sales process.”

Why should you care about Sales Enablement?

For Nissar Ahamed, founder of CareerMetis.com, sales enablement is a crucial part of a company’s success, not just a sales team. Any brand that wants to compete in today’s marketplace must understand the importance of aligning marketing with sales. He says, “If any marketing team is disconnected with sales, there’s an easy recipe for disaster or failure.” 

“It’s not a best practice—it is a must-have.”

–Nissar Ahamed

But having a sales enablement process not only assists your sales team, it aligns the company. Ahamed says, “Marketing needs to support sales, not just through CRM and lead flow, but [also] making sure they have the right message to align with the buyers’ journey.”  Without an alliance between your marketing and sales team, you’ll face insurmountable company-level issues. Sales enablement is an investment your company should be making as soon as possible.

3 Steps to create a Sales Enablement process

A sales enablement strategy is the approach your business takes to provide sales with the resources they need to effectively sell. This strategy is tailored to your specific sales team’s needs so they can target your audience and close more deals. Here’s 3 things your sales enablement strategy should include:

1. Standard Reporting & Analysis
2. Sales Content 
3. Task Automation
4. Hiring a full-time employee to manage the process

#1 Use reporting and analysis

Every professional team should have a way to report their personal performance stats. Doing this will provide solid numbers for your team’s performance and what reps are good or bad at.

Some of these standard reports should include:

• Activities logged by salespeople
• Number of product demos performed
• Deals won and lost
• Leads generated / worked
• Status of leads
• Stats from conversation intelligence tools like Gong.io.

These are some basic reporting stats every sales team should already be doing. If these seems overwhelming, our leaderboards feature is a great way to track all of these stats with a convenient ranking of your top performing to underperforming rep.

#2 Make great sales content

You probably already have plenty of sales content if you’re an established company. If you don’t, here is a list of content you should have readily available for your team:

• Email templates
• Case studies
• Presentation decks
• Product demo decks
• Pricing information

Some of the content needs for your team may vary but this is a good list of content to get you started. If you already have some of these resources, consider revising them if you haven’t done so recently.

#3 Automate your tasks

Nobody likes busy work. If this is especially true for you and your team, automating mindless tasks is the quickest way to success. Using tools like live chat bots to help capture leads on your website, CRM integrations, Linkedin automation to scrape search results and email sequences will severely cut down the time it takes you to warm up a lead giving you time to prospect more.

Start using sales enablement now

Hopefully you’re beginning to see the importance of sales enablement. If you and your team haven’t started 3 of the elements of a sales enablement process and feel a bit overwhelmed, feel free to reach out to us and we can show you where to get started! We offer lots of team management tools, integrations, and sales deck software to ensure your team has all the tools they need to close more deals. 

Are you familiar with what b2b sales is? If not (or even if you are), we want to give you a complete guide to the b2b sales process including its definition, examples, and common strategies to succeed. Keep reading to learn more!

What is b2b sales?

B2b or “business-to-business” sales is the action of one business entity or salesperson selling their product or service directly to another business. In this process rather than individual customers, entire businesses are the target market typically resulting in larger deals.

Familiar examples of b2b sales

There are a lot of common examples of b2b sales everywhere. Here are just a few we see every day:

1. Companies that sell management software (recruiting, HR, etc.) to other companies
2. Specific products or services only available to enterprise companies rather than individual consumers
3. Bulk products or services that are not sustainable for individual consumers
4. Companies that produce/distribute raw materials to manufacturing companies

What is the difference between b2b and b2c sales?

B2b or “business-to-business” sales as we established above is when businesses sell their products or services to other businesses. Well b2c sales is “business to consumer” sales so rather than selling to businesses, Netflix or Nike are prime examples of this—it’s a lower level sale, smaller amount of product and price.

Essential b2b sales roles

Patrick Dang, a business development specialist, lays out the framework for common b2b sales roles and what the team does on a lead generation, closing, and renewal level. Here is a quick breakdown so you can better understand what roles are essential for the b2b sales process:

• Sales Development Representatives
• Account Executives
• Account Managers

6 Ways to develop an effective b2b sales strategy

There are a lot of different variables in a sales strategy depending on the company, product/service, or goals. Here is a basic framework of 6 things you need no matter your industry, company or product:

1. Know your target audience and develop a plan to reach them
2. Hire b2b sales roles (like the ones listed above)
3. Get the necessary software or tools (sales apps like SalesRabbit, recruitment softwares, etc.)
4. Determine OKRs otherwise known as Objective Key Results that will measure what success means to you
5. Make and keep consistent brand messaging across all platforms
6. Continually gather and analyze data from your company and competitors to find room for improvement

More sales knowledge

If you liked getting a guide on b2b sales, we have more sales knowledge for you and any member of your team to make sure you’re always in-the-loop and getting the best possible tips and tricks of the trade. 

If you know that your sales process could use some work or you just want to enhance what you’re already doing, schedule a demo with us now so we can walk you through the best ways to close more deals.

Did you know?

“From 2021 to February 2022 alone more than 12 million homes sold, and of those houses 31% of are first time homebuyers.”

We all know the housing market has been crazy the past few years, there’s no secret there. But with the rise in homes being sold and slight downturn in ones being purchased, there is still a specific group of leads that sales teams, like you, should be targeting. Keep reading to get more info about this lead type and how our customers use it.

via GIPHY

Are you currently targeting new movers?

We’ve made it even easier for sales teams in any industry to find and sell to new homeowners. With SalesRabbit’s new mover leads, you’re given moving leads, updated within minutes, on anytime a house is listed, removed, pending, or sold in any given U.S. zip code. With this feature you avoid all the manual data entry that comes from using Zillow or other real estate tools. 

We promise this isn’t another add for this feature—we actually believe in its capabilities. We believe in these leads so much that we’re actually going to share an experience that an actual SalesRabbit customer had when they were unhappy with this product until they found this awesome trick. 

How to leverage new mover leads data:

An actual SalesRabbit user in the Telecommunications industry was struggling to find the best way to use their new mover data, they almost canceled the service until they found a “hack” to hit two leads at once using the same data they were already getting. 

Here’s how they did it:

When a house was listed as “under contract” or “closed” this company would send a rep to the home right away while the sellers were still living there, to deliver a modified pitch that went something like this: “Hey! I noticed that your house has been listed as [such], I was wondering if you already bought a new home and if it’s in a nearby neighborhood? We would love to get you set up at your new house so you don’t have any service interruptions. What do you think?”

That is typically how a new mover lead can be leveraged but the change they made that closed twice as many deals for them was returning to the same house after the new homeowners had moved in and sell that deal with a pitch like: “Hi there! Welcome to the area, we wanted to stop by because we’ve already had everything we need installed in this home from the previous owner and wanted to see if you’d like to continue the service.”

via GIPHY

Start selling to homeowners the right way

This approach gives you two opportunities out of the same new mover lead. Who doesn’t love a 2 for 1 deal? If you aren’t using new mover leads or you already have this data but don’t feel like it’s doing that much for you, schedule a quick call with us so we can make sure you’re doing all you can to secure those deals before your competitors.