Nowadays sales processes are collecting instruments and tactics that were traditionally used by journalists and media-managers. It means that b2b sales representatives are moving from just good communicators to a digital trusted advisors. In this article you will find more about sales tools at the intersection of b2b business development and traditional media.

Pandemic 2020 has showed that customer communications in b2b could not be so classical anymore. Face-to-face meeting, huge conferences, long business trips and all other physical events are considered to be insufficient for closing new deals.

Some businesses could say that landing pages, online-webinars and other marketing tools have substituted the lack of physical communication, but this is a marketing job. How sales person can process the demand in remote circumstances? What are the ways of being recognisable among competitors if you even don’t see your customer?

In such an instance, sales are required to absorb mass media practices that could be easily repeated in content creating. Being a part of the digital selling team in IT-industry and having a journalistic experience I used to test the most common media tools for sales, so here are the ones I find essential to work with.

Media storytelling

In the newspapers or on TV-reports you would notice the similar structure of the story. It includes a bright headline, a subhead (detailed description of a headline), a body text and a conclusion (summary of the story). Some elements of this structure had migrated to social media posts.

Firstly, look at the posts that become popular among the subscribers in the following link. Most of them have a catchy headline, that hooks your attention.

What are the good forms of headlines that sales people may use in their social selling posts?

1. Questions (E.g. How business has changed the mind-set about human resources due to COVID-19?)
2. Round number (E.g. 40% employees will never gone back to offline offices after pandemia)
3. Exclusive insights (E.g. The most common business launches in 2020)

Secondly, social media posts usually have the same structures as journalistic materials. These are the most common body text examples I have met in selling posts:

▫️ cause and effect

▫️ classification

▫️ compare and contrast

▫️ list

▫️ question and answer

Third common part between social selling post and media materials is a catchy conclusion. Journalists usually end their texts by short summary of all above-mentioned facts or do an announce of up-going event of the story.

Sales people mostly use a call-to-action phrase such as ‘ask for detailed materials’ or ‘watch the video below’. I believe that both of summary types might be in social selling posts: journalistic style is more appropriated for personal stories about the business, selling style is good for invitations and lead generation campaigns.

However, these media storytelling approach fits not only social media texts, but also video selling scripts.

Video selling

For a long time video production has been included a lot of special media stuff, professional equipment and TV studios. Nowadays, we could do it with less of preparations and expenditures. Moreover, video has become the most popular form of communication for last 2–3 years. Last studies of non-text communications show that video is also going to wide-spread format in customer interaction.

59% of senior executives prefer lighthearted work-related videos

So, when might video be used by sales in b2b?

• Personal solution overview
• Invitations to webinars
• Announce of solutions
• Interview with the customers
• Follow-up
• Broadcasts

Tools for video selling

Concerning the instruments I like the ones that are simple and quick to use. It is super important factors, as b2b sales people usually have a lack of time and a lot of customers to work with. That’s are the video tools I find the most appropriate for sales.

BigVu is an app that helps you to record the video from teleprompter. You also could include texts, music and the company on the recorded shoot. The app has a trial mode.

Quik is GoPro editing tool, that let you combine photos, video shoots and do a dynamic content from standard templates. You may use it even without GoPro camera, work with shortages on your smartphone. Quik also has a free version.

Imovie is the most simple video editing app that I’ve ever known. You could cut, speed up and down your videos, do some texts and put a music background. It is free for all Apple devices.

Zoom has become super popular among people around the world in 2020 due to perfect quality and free 40-minutes mode. However, the is one option that is not well-known among the app’s users. It is a sharing option of Power Point presentation as a virtual background. So, your customer could see all you movements, gestures and the content on the backside.

So, I believe that pandemic 2020 has to become a strong trigger for digital transformation in b2b sales, that will make media approaches and sales execution to be more closer. Tech-savvy mindset and content creativity are going to be more appreciable among decision makers. I do consider that these qualities make sales to be more personalized and targeted for their customers.