When Spotify wraps up your year with a personalized ‘Wrapped’ playlist just for you or even when Starbucks gives you your favorite coffee with your name handwritten on it, it makes you feel special, right?
These are the tiny personalization efforts that resonate with consumers, giving them a sense of belonging and exclusivity, making the brand stand out.
But what about the B2B space?
The B2B landscape, which is more formal and straight forward, seems to forget that it has the same target audience set who appreciate personalization in their consumer lives.
In B2B, the products and services that are working on the same solutions are becoming endless. With this as the case, B2B space now demands personalization to stand out from the crowd and have a competitive edge.
Where can B2B companies implement personalization?
Personalization is expected throughout the customer’s journey. From a cold call to onboarding, prospects and clients expect tailored experiences in all aspects.
But to reach onboarding, you’ll have to take the first step, and that would be your sales part. In this piece, let me take you through the nuances in personalization in sales.
A study by Salesforce found that 73% of consumers say that most sales interactions feel transactional. This makes them disengaged from the conversation, leading to them never considering your business.
What is personalization in sales?
Personalization in sales is when brands craft personalized experiences for individuals during the sales prospecting efforts.
Sales personalization helps you improve customer engagement and customer relationship. To personalize an experience, salespeople need to know the prospects well.
Personalize your sales process
You can personalize your sales efforts and yield significant results with just a few easy steps.
- Understand your audience: Your audience set will have all the hooks you need to know them well. Conduct thorough research into their pain points, interests, and demands to deliver a personalized experience that resonates with them on a deeper level.
- Personalize sales pitch: While tailoring a sales pitch, write a compelling narrative that directly addresses your prospects. Give your prospects views that align with their environment, making it easy for them to connect with your product or solution.
- Harness social media: The importance of social media and particularly LinkedIn for personalization can’t be emphasized enough. LinkedIn serves as a powerful tool that has information for sales reps to engage in a meaningful way.
- Customized business recommendations: To deliver a truly personalized experience for a prospect, offer personalized product recommendations that will influence them into considering your solution as the best fit for their requirements.
- Personalized follow-ups: As I mentioned earlier, personalization is one of the major customer expectations. Approaching a prospect without any personalization efforts can weaken your impact. Ensure that you have incorporated individual elements in your pitch to the prospect’s unique needs and preferences.
- Leverage AI: Use AI powered tools to help you create personalized sales pitches in less time. Deliver more engaging and personalized content that can boost conversion rates.
How to gain personalized data?
Sales reps can analyze the geographic, social media, behavioral and psychographic data to know their customer profiles better.
- Geographic Data
People easily connect with content from their own locations. This is a fundamental aspect of psychology.
Collecting their geographic data and preparing a pitch revolving around the competitors and businesses that are growing in their own geographic location can gain the interest of prospects.
To leverage geographic data, start by identifying the location of your prospects. Then research recent industry news and innovative developments in their area. Learn the advancements made by your competitors or companies that align with your business model. This gives you a strategic advantage in crafting your outreach.
- Social Media (LinkedIn):
When it comes to B2B sales, LinkedIn is a handy tool that can prepare you for any sales meeting. You can learn about a prospect through their LinkedIn profiles and recognize customer expectations. But LinkedIn can eat up time and resources while you research is also a concern.
To be more productive and not just learn but actually know a prospect, from their career path to their own personalities, Zintlr chrome extension for LinkedIn can help.
Zintlr chrome extension is an AI-powered tool that gives you the personality insights of your prospects through their LinkedIn profiles. You can view their personality traits, career path, likes and dislikes, preferences, and professional expectations. This will help you tailor a personalized sales pitch in accordance with their personality.
Sales reps can use Zintlr to craft sales personalization strategies that contribute towards customer retention and customer loyalty.
- Behavioral Data:
Studying the navigation path and web browsing behavior of individual customers reveals the personalized messages that have to be drafted in accordance with the user behavior.
Analyzing behavioral data can also help companies improve customer engagement and customer experiences. Sales managers can use it to enhance personalized websites for better user experience.
- Consumer Psychology:
Understanding consumer psychology will help you eliminate the areas with less customer engagement and emphasize your sales pitch and craft compelling sales and marketing content.
The online behavior of your prospects will lead you to the potential customer expectations that can be addressed during your sales process. Also, this will allow you to provide personalized customer experiences when you differentiate customer segments and study user engagement.
While personalization in marketing can improve the brand image, personalization in sales can bring trust. Customers want businesses to understand their individual requirements and expectations, while 66% feel they are often treated like numbers (Salesforce). Only personalization can make your approach not feel robotic.
Give your sales a human touch.