B2B organizations only convert 47% of customers into a deal once they’ve reached the decision stage — less than your odds on a coin flip.
For all of the time, effort, and resources that are poured into closing an opportunity, that rate is deflating and can make a revenue team start to reconsider their entire strategy.
But, that low conversion rate also represents a huge opportunity. Increasing your company’s win rate by even a few percentage points could mean the difference between a disappointing year and a record-setting one.
Your organization can start bringing home more deals by employing more effective techniques and strategies.
Here are some ways to improve your odds.
Target the Right Buyers
Too many organizations rely on static and arbitrary target account lists to inform their revenue-driving activities. Just because a company has a certain level of revenue or number of employees doesn’t mean they want to buy now.
Increasing your win rate begins with targeting the right opportunities. First, you need to have a laser-focused ideal-customer profile (ICP). Uncovering which firmographics and demographics comprise your typical customers makes it much easier to target the right accounts and contacts.
Creating a strong ICP requires a deep understanding of your customer base and the history of your own business. Activities and patterns from past deals can tell you a lot about the accounts and people you should be targeting.
You can improve your account targeting by using technology to analyze your past deals to identify your most likely buyers, while also incorporating historical data about your typical deal cycles. This allows you to create a more accurate ICP based on big data from your own sales and marketing history.
Get Into Deals Faster
When you are the first vendor the buyer researches, or the first organization they reach out to for a demo, the likelihood of winning their business jumps considerably.
Being the first consideration into a deal means you can control the narrative, provide more information over a longer time period, and develop deeper relationships across the entire organization. But if you’re waiting for customers to come to you, you’ll miss out on an untold number of opportunities.
Finding deals as they are just getting off the ground requires uncovering the hidden signals your buyers are giving off. Because roughly 70% of the buyer’s journey happens online — and anonymously — it’s difficult to know when your target audience is actually ready to buy.
The signals your buyers are giving off include:
- Reading pages and content on your website
- Performing research about topics related to your products or services
- Checking out third-party review sites
- Searching topics related to your competitors
Capturing all of those signals gives you a great idea of whether a target account is in the market for your products. This is called an in-market ideal-customer profile (IICP). The IICP goes one step further than the traditional ICP because it helps your organization focus only on the accounts that fit in your target market and are in-market for a solution.
Uncover the Entire Buying Team
Modern buying teams have as many as 23 members. Uncovering who those individuals are — and their unique pain points — can greatly increase your chances of closing a deal.
Without understanding who the buying committee is for your deal, you run the risk of losing at the 11th hour because of an objection from a stakeholder you didn’t know about.
Individuals can remain hidden throughout the process either by choice (they don’t want to be involved, but want to keep updated) or by chance (your team never uncovers them in your numerous communications).
To gain a full picture of your buying committee, your organization can leverage a platform like 6sense that determines the most important personas for deals based on your historical data. And with these key buyer insights, you can implement a thorough process for acquiring and enriching contact data so your information about any target company is accurate and up to date.
A platform like 6sense can be configured to automatically and regularly pull in data about your target audiences, as seen in this video:
Having a clear picture of all buying team members makes it easier to understand how engaged each member is throughout the deal, craft specific campaigns for each stakeholder, and anticipate any last-minute objections that could occur.
Improve Your Engagements for a Winning Experience
Tailored engagements will go a long way in increasing your odds of winning a deal. Buyers prefer personalized experiences that speak directly to their needs — 80% of B2B buyers say they want a personalized journey.
Outreach to your buyers should be informed by the topics they care about, the specific offerings they’re interested in, and where they are in the buying journey.
To create engaging and effective campaigns:
- Utilize dynamic segments that update in real-time
- Distribute the content through the right channels effectively
- Personalize the messaging for each audience
An organization that delivers personalized and resonant content is much more likely to win a deal.
Conclusion
An average win rate of 47% for B2B organizations is startlingly low — top performers are able to average a win rate of 73%. By focusing on the right audience, at the right time, and with the right messaging, your business can beat that average regularly.
