How to Increase B2B Sales 150% During a Slow Q4

It’s Q4, and the pressure is on.

You have three months left to hit your sales targets and end the year on a high note.

The only problem?

Your sales pipeline is dry. No one is signing up for your offers, and your forecast looks bleak.

Luckily, not all hope is lost.

I’ve compiled some of my top strategies which will help you increase B2B sales and smash your Q4 targets. Not only have these tips helped grow my agency, but these are tried-and-true methods we use for our clients as well.

Let’s dive in and open the B2B sales flood gates.

10 Ways to Increase B2B Sales

Whether you’re an SME or a massive conglomerate, you can use these strategies to increase your sales and give your Q4 pipeline a kick in the direction.

1. Leverage Social Selling

Still not sold on the buying power of social media? You’re leaving money on the table.

• Fifty-four percent of social media users research products on different platforms.
• Seventy-one percent of users will make a purchase based on social media referrals.
• Seventy-seven percent will choose a brand over a competitor after a positive social media experience.

What is social selling? It’s the process of finding and engaging with your potential customers online. 

Every time you log into Instagram and reply to a DM or share an article on LinkedIn, you’re providing value and social selling. It’s a much softer approach than cold emailing and focuses more on building long-term, authentic relationships than traditional sales techniques.

How can you leverage social selling?

• Position your brand as the go-to industry expert: Use content marketing to answer your prospect’s most pressing questions and lead them down your marketing funnel.
• Share case studies and testimonials: Social proof is a driving factor for online purchases. Use your results to prove you’re the best and develop a deeper know, like, and trust factor with your audience.
• Focus on engagement: Instead of spending all your time creating content, focus on building relationships. Reply to all your DMs, jump into conversations in LinkedIn groups, follow your ideal customers, and engage with their content.
• Talk about your transformation: Businesses and people buy transformations, not features. When talking about your product or service online, focus on the result someone gets from working with you.

2. Support Your Sales Team

If there is one thing that can ruin a potential sale, it’s bad sales rep interactions.

Whether it’s someone dropping the ball and ignoring an email for weeks, or a dumpster fire cold email, it can quickly tank your brand’s rep and Q4 income goals.

How do you prevent a sales mishap?

By training your team.

People buy from people they know, like, and trust. Your sales reps need the tools to figure out how to develop a rapport and close the sale.

For a successful Q4, make sure your sales training includes:

• Scripts for people to fall back on and avoid awkward silences or sounding unsure.
• How to overcome common objections and communicate your brand’s results.
• Strategies for finding leads and moving each one along the buyer’s journey.

Remember, the better trained your sales team, the quicker you’ll get to your 150% Q4 sales target.

3. Cash in on the Holidays

The holidays are a gold mine for increasing your B2B sales. With the right strategy in place, you can scoop up some of the disposable income people have during these months.

Here are some ideas to get the ball rolling:

• Use expiring bonuses: This works well for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Each day, remove one bonus to create a sense of urgency and FOMO (fear of missing out).
• Increase the price: Start with your lowest price for an offer, and slowly increase it each day.
• Create an exclusive offer: Put together a new product, service, or package for the holiday season. You can add a sense of urgency by telling your audience it’s only available for the holidays.
• Offer free shipping or a discount: Cash in on the psychology of free stuff to lure in more sales. Getting something for nothing is a powerful emotional trigger known as the “zero price effect” and it’s extremely hard to resist.

4. Ask Existing Clients for Referrals

Referrals are the backbone of any business.

Why?

It’s the easiest sale you can get.

Unlike a cold pitch where you have to establish trust before someone gives you a yes, referrals are warm leads. The person already trusts your brand and is ready to give you their money because the personal recommendation came from a friend, family member, or colleague.

It’s one of the reasons why influencer marketing is dominating the online space. Brands are paying for the endorsement and trust the content creator has with their audience, which has more sway than a random ad in the newspaper.

How do you get more referrals? Create a referral program.

You reward your biggest fans for doing the hard work for you: finding quality niche-specific leads that usually lead to sales.

5. Don’t Neglect Cold Calling or Emailing

Cold calling (or emailing) is not dead.

It’s very much alive and kicking and one of the best ways to increase B2B sales for Q4.

However, there is a catch.

Cold outreach is only effective if done correctly.

If you’re mass spamming everyone and anyone with no real strategy, you’re not going to see any results.

Why?

No one likes to waft through irrelevant pitches. You’ll earn brownie points by taking the time to identify a problem you can solve and presenting a solution in a format that feels tailored, not mass-produced.

6. Use Paid Ads to Increase Leads

Not using paid ads yet?

With more people online than ever before and 80.76 percent of the global population owning a smartphone, it’s time to dip your feet into this gold mine.

By honing in on the keywords your audience uses to find solutions to the problem you solve, you can increase B2B sales while you sleep.

If that’s not enough to get you opening up a Google AdWords account, this will:

• PPC ads yield 50 percent more conversions than organic advertising.
• Google ads can increase brand awareness by 80 percent.
• Paid ads have a 200 percent ROI rate.

The results are equally impressive on social media. The Content Marketing Institute found B2B paid advertising increased to 83 percent, with LinkedIn ads dominating the pack.

Of all paid distribution channels, paid social media ranked second in producing results, with SEM taking first place.

7. Create a List of Potential Clients

The best strategy for increasing B2B sales? Knowing exactly who you want to target.

Before diving into any of the other tips in this post, get clear on who you want to convert into paying customers.

It’s the foundation of your game plan. Without it, you’re only wishing for a result instead of making it happen.

How do you make a list of potential clients? Answer these questions:

1. How many employees does your dream client have?
2. How much does the business make in annual revenue?
3. What is the niche problem you solve?

The more specific you get here, the better chance you’ll increase your B2B sales during a slow Q4. 

Once you have those answers, you can use tools like LinkedIn or Angelist to find companies that match your dream client description.

8. Develop a Strong Email Marketing Strategy

Almost every couple of years, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter goes down, and influencers, business owners, and users start spiraling. 

It’s a harsh reminder that any of the apps you’ve spent hours on growing a community can vanish with a click of a button.

That’s why it’s crucial you get your followers onto a platform you can control, like email marketing. Not only will you always have access to your list (unless someone unsubscribes), but it’s profitable.

According to OptinMonster, email marketing generates $44 for every $1 spent. That’s a mindblowing 4400 percent ROI, making it one of the best ways to increase B2B sales.

Start your Q4 off strong and warm up your list with a strong email marketing strategy. 

Don’t have a list? Use the next three months to grow one with email opt-ins like:

• e-books
• cheatsheets
• checklists
• industry reports

9. Prioritize Video Content

Video marketing is here, and it’s disrupting the industry, but what makes it so successful?

After all, isn’t it faster to scan a few lines of a blog post (like you’re doing right now) than sit through an entire 10-minute video?

While videos do require a bigger time commitment, customers still prefer it to text, and it has a plethora of business benefits.

• Viewers retain 95 percent of a video message.
• Seventy-eight percent of marketers say video content increases sales.
• YouTube is the #1 platform that affects consumer behavior.
• Video increases site traffic and dwell time on pages.
• Online shoppers are 1.8x more likely to convert after watching a demo video.

With Instagram trying to compete with TikTok, the platform is working hard to gain market share.

The result? Instagram Reels has high engagement, and the algorithm prioritizes it above photo posts. In fact, Instagram came out and said it’s a video-sharing platform, not a photo-sharing app.

The takeaway: There’s no better time to add videos to your content marketing mix and use it to increase your B2B sales. Start a YouTube channel, develop a Reels strategy, or embed videos on your website.

10. Use Case Studies to Increase B2B Sales

Selling to B2B is a little different from B2C.

For one, there’s usually more than one person involved in the decision process. If you want a resounding yes from everyone involved, you need to show how your product or service delivers value.

One of the most powerful marketing tools you can use to illustrate this is case studies. This piece of content is typically used near the end of the consideration and early decision stage of the buyer’s journey. It can help sway business your way when a prospect is deciding between two possible solutions.

With 81 percent of people trusting friends or family over a business, a case study helps you leverage an outsider’s perspective in your favor. 

Even though you’re creating the content, it’s about how one of your customers achieved a specific result and what someone can expect from working with you.

It’s that all-important social proof we spoke about earlier, and it can go a long way in driving more B2B sales in Q4.

Frequently Asked Questions About Increasing B2B Sales

What is a B2B strategy?

A B2B strategy is a marketing strategy employed by a company that sells products or services to other businesses instead of individuals.

What are the four types of B2B marketing?

There are four types of B2B marketing: producers, resellers, governments, and institutions.

What is the B2B selling process?

The B2B selling process is a business’s steps to market and sell its services or products to another business.

What does B2B mean in sales?

B2B stands for business-to-business. It happens when a business transaction takes place between two companies. For example, one company will buy raw materials from another to make their final product.

Increase B2B Sales Conclusion

While the world of B2B sales has changed a lot over the last 10 years, you have a whole host of new tools at your disposal. Instead of resisting social selling or the rise of video content, embrace it, and use it to increase your B2B sales for Q4.

Remember, the more proactive you are with your strategies, the bigger your competitive edge. Keep experimenting with your sales strategies and stick with the ones which give you the results you want.

Which of these strategies are you going to use to increase B2B sales in Q4?

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