Traditionally, B2B sales have long been viewed as a numbers game. If reps put in enough volume chasing down leads, cold-calling prospects, and sending out marketing emails, they will eventually hit their quotas and drive more revenue through the business. However, this model simply doesn’t work the same way it used to, especially as B2B buyers continue to demand more from the sales experience.
This is largely due to how rapidly things have improved in the B2C sector. In fact, 76% of buyers expect a more interactive and personalized buying journey that addresses their particular wants, needs, and pain points. However, a whopping 77% of B2B prospects revealed that their most recent purchase was either “difficult” or “very complex,” which does not bode well for companies unwilling to adapt to new sales methods.
With all of this in mind, Walnut, the market’s leading sales experience platform, has set out to tackle these problems head-on by championing the #WeAreProspects campaign, which aims to shine a light on the inadequate and undeniably poor experiences that prospects are faced with across B2B sectors.
The problem with B2B sales
First things first, B2B sales are renowned for being painfully slow. Compared to the B2C industry, where people can simply visit a website, click a few buttons, and have an item delivered to their house the next working day, B2B transactions are rather sluggish, to say the least.
To put this into perspective, Hubspot estimates that the average B2B sales cycle is 84 days, regardless of the annual contact revenue (ACV). Now, imagine you are a prospect in dire need of new software to help you attack a new market segment. Being made to wait almost three whole months will undoubtedly negatively impact your operations and may even lead you to seek alternative solutions.
In addition, many B2B organizations adopt a seller-centric strategy. This means that most of their sales cycle is centered around helping to facilitate the rep’s performance. Of course, this is in direct contrast to what buyers experience in the B2C market since the vast majority of organizations in that arena put the customer first and go to great lengths to understand their particular wants and needs.
With that said, one of the biggest sources of frustration for prospects is how difficult it is for them to be given the opportunity to actually take the product out for a test drive. Indeed, much of the sales cycle is productless, with prospects being told the various features, benefits, and value propositions rather than being shown. It goes without saying that this is far from optimal since all prospects want to do it to have a chance to experience the product, so they can see whether it is a fit for their company.
The #WeAreProspects campaign
Clearly, the B2B sales experience has some catching up to do if it wants to come anywhere close to matching what buyers encounter in the consumer market. Fortunately, Walnut’s new #WeAreProspects campaign looks primed to drive significant change in the B2B market by collaborating with several of the industry’s biggest names to help streamline the buying process and deliver more value to prospects earlier on in the sales cycle.
To support the movement, each company that has collaborated with Walnut’s campaign will have special offerings on their products, all of which are improving the B2B industry. On that note, here are some of the SaaS companies that have recently been onboarded:
- Dooly – A connected workspace that makes it easy for the revenue team to share information with the people and systems that need to access it. As the Dooly platform creates a seamless experience for sales teams, many of these benefits are passed on to prospects, helping to make their experience as smooth as possible.
- Postal – An intuitive and effective offline marketing engagement platform that acts as an all-in-one solution for go-to-market teams to scale, execute, and track their offline marketing strategy to grow their business.
- SimilarWeb- With Similarweb Sales Intelligence, you get full visibility into every part of your prospects’ digital strategy and performance, revealing your prospects’ pain points and opportunities so you can craft more effective pitches.
- Contractbook – A collaborative contract management platform that automates the sales cycle and syncs contract data across business systems, allowing both buyers and sellers to experience a seamless sales experience.
- Sales Assembly – Provides professional support and helps accelerate the growth of every single team, person, and individual within revenue departments through focused training and development. It is the first and only collaborative-based learning platform and community for fast-growing B2B technology companies.
- Cloudshare – Helps businesses save on time and costs by shortening sales cycles and closing more deals. Sales teams can generate customized, interactive demos in just a few clicks, allowing prospects to test drive the product early in the sales journey.
What is Walnut?
In addition to leading the #WeAreProspects campaign, Walnut is busy at work revolutionizing the sales experience industry with its innovative SaaS platform. The company gives B2B sellers all the tools and features they need to create better outcomes with prospects by developing high-quality product demos from the ground up. Since the platform is codeless, sales reps are able to take full control over demo creation, thus removing the reliance on back-end teams such as graphic design and IT.
As a result, Walnut fully empowers sellers to get the most out of each and every prospect engagement by giving them access to a product demo very early on in the sales cycle. Not only that, but teams have the chance to tailor each demo to each prospect’s unique wants and needs, thus vastly improving the prospect experience. To top it off, the platform provides powerful insights on engagement, allowing teams to uncover which demos perform best.
