How to create a B2B sales strategy in the cannabis industry and measure your success

Every business-to-business (B2B) company needs a sales strategy that sets out both goals and the outreach tactics that the sales team will use to connect with prospects and convert them into customers. A B2B sales strategy for a company in the cannabis industry is no different.

With this in mind, it can be difficult to create a B2B sales strategy, develop a plan to execute the strategy, and measure success. The factors and tips discussed in this article will help you create a strategy that works for your business.

Why you need a B2B sales strategy

Data proves why every B2B company, including yours, needs a sales strategy. First, there is a disconnect between what customers want and what sellers are doing. Research shows that 80% of prospects prefer to communicate with sales reps via email, but 41% of sales reps believe the most effective selling tool they have is their phone.

Second, sellers give up too soon. Research shows that 80% of sales require five follow-up calls after the first call, but 44% of salespeople give up after just one follow-up call.

Third, sellers don’t communicate with prospects at the right time. Research from Hubspot shows that 19% of prospects want to communicate with a sales rep during the early awareness stages of the buyer journey when they are conducting their initial research and learning about specific products to solve a problem or address a need they have identified cover .

On the other hand, 60% of prospects want to communicate with a seller when they’re in the later stages of the buyer’s journey—when they’ve narrowed their choices down to two or three options. The remaining 20% ​​of prospects want a seller to contact them when they’re in the final stages of the buyer’s journey — after they’ve decided on the product or service they want to buy.

The data is clear. Salespeople need to engage with consumers in the right way, at the right time, and with the right messages.

How to create your B2B sales strategy

You need a sales strategy to keep your sales pipeline active and growing. Your sales strategy and the plan to execute that strategy will help your entire sales team be more productive and successful because they have a roadmap to follow. Below are the key steps you should take to create your B2B sales strategy.

Set your sales goals

The first step in developing your strategy is to define your sales goals. There are many different types of sales goals you can set for your business, such as:

• Number of closed deals
• final installment
• Number of new leads
• Number of Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
• Number of cold calls (or email, social media or other sales contacts to new leads)
• Number of follow-ups
• Number of social media connections with prospects
• number of sessions
• Number of demos provided, free trials, etc.

The key is making sure you set goals that you can actually measure and making sure they are all time bound and realistically achievable. There’s nothing wrong with setting ambitious goals, but when the goals you set are completely unrealistic, you’re putting everyone – and your company – on failure.

Coordinate with the marketing team

If your business has a marketing team, they can help you with a variety of strategies and tasks related to your sales goals to ensure you get the best results. That’s why it’s so important to integrate sales and marketing teams.

Buyer Personalities

The sales team and marketing team can work together to create B2B buyer personas, allowing the sales team to prioritize leads and focus primarily on the company’s ideal customers – those who are most likely to buy from the company and are most satisfied with the company’s products or Services.

For example, a company that sells products to cannabis business license holders might have an ideal customer profile based on the prospect’s license type, headcount, location, and more. If the ideal customer is a large corporation with a cultivation license in a state that allows commercial outdoor cannabis cultivation, the sales team should prioritize leads that match that ideal customer profile.

That doesn’t mean that companies that don’t exactly fit the ideal customer profile are all unprofitable. Many of them are likely valid leads, but the sales team needs to prioritize all available leads to meet their goals.

personalization

Today, personalization is crucial for a successful sales approach. Gone are the days of reading generic cold calling scripts or sending generic email messages to bulk lists or potential leads. Today, B2B and B2C customers are not willing to waste their time searching through general news and communications to find something that suits their wants and needs.

To do this, your sales communications must be tailored to the companies and contacts you reach. Use the information in your buyer personas and interaction behaviors related to email marketing campaigns prospects have received, their social media activity, etc. to make all your communications as personalized and relevant as possible.

You can create templates for different types of sales communications. Just make sure you edit the content of these templates to speak as directly as possible to prospects you communicate with. For example, you can create an outreach email template for each of your ideal customers and modify it to include the prospect’s name, company name, and other personalized information that shows them the message is meant specifically for them is – not a general message sent to a list of people.

If your company has a marketing team, they can help you create personalized scripts and messages for each of your buyer personas. If you don’t have a marketing team, it’s definitely worth outsourcing script and news writing to an experienced B2B writer.

Lead Qualification

Together with the marketing team, the sales team must agree on how to qualify leads. What makes an unqualified lead versus a viable lead, a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL), or a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)? The marketing team’s efforts should help identify leads at each stage of the buyer journey so sellers can focus their time on leads they can best convert into customers.

You can use lead scoring to qualify leads in your email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) tool. For example, every time someone opens an email marketing message from your company, they should receive a certain number of points. If they click a link in an email marketing message, they should get more points. If they request a free download like an e-book or checklist, they should get points. If they request a demo or a free trial, they should get a lot more points.

The rating system depends on the types of actions and engagements you want to track. A positive interaction with your brand should score potential customers. You can set thresholds to identify viable, MQL, and SQL leads based on the number of points prospects earn within specified time periods (points older than three or six months may be stale). Once a prospect has earned enough points to be considered sales qualified, it’s time for the sales team to start reaching out directly!

Develop a strategy for tracking and analyzing results against goals

Your sales strategy should also include information on how to track and analyze results so you can see what’s working and what needs to change. You can also use this data to determine whether or not you are meeting your sales goals.

The key to easy and accurate tracking and analysis is using a CRM tool. The Cannabiz Media License Database is the best B2B CRM tool for the cannabis industry. Not only does it allow you to set up offers, notifications, tasks, and alerts, but it also includes an email marketing tool. The license database comes pre-loaded with tens of thousands of leads from cannabis and hemp license holders in the US, Canada and international territories, including license type, location, license status, contacts, company, employees, social media profiles, roles, tiers and more.

You can use the Cannabiz media license database for all your sales work and email marketing, and you can score leads and track all the data to ensure you meet each of your sales goals.

Key insights for creating a B2B sales strategy and measuring your success

Once you have developed your B2B sales strategy, you can create a plan to execute your strategy using the many communication channels available to you. However, if you don’t have a strategy to work from, you don’t know if your sales team is focusing on the right prospects or delivering the right messages to those prospects. Follow the tips above to create a working B2B sales strategy for the cannabis industry.

Ready to learn more about how a Cannabiz Media License Database subscription can help you achieve your sales goals? Schedule a demo to see it in action.