When we go to a farmer’s market, specialty grocery or even a big box grocery store on a Saturday, you could eat a meal made up of just samples.  When a company offers consumers a sample, they’re giving those customers a taste of what it’s like to use their product.  Often, we may not have known we needed the next pickled vegetable or a new sauce – the sample increases our awareness of a need and helps us know what we’re getting.  The sales process is expedited, and we walk out of the store with something that wasn’t on our grocery list.

So, what happens when you’re selling an enterprise level piece of equipment or an innovative solution to an expensive or risky problem?  How can we help people understand the magnitude of the problem we’re trying to solve and give them a taste of what it’s like using our solution?  Sometimes, investing in a B2B solution is so expensive, there’s no way we can offer a taste without losing money and customers don’t want to invest in an unknown solution.

Let’s start with the strategy and discuss the tactics that will help you execute.

Problem Awareness

When people don’t know they have a problem, it’s hard to sell them a solution.  Many B2B companies don’t perceive this as a problem – their engineers and salespeople see the problem clearly.  The challenge is that in a B2B purchase, several people may be involved in the process of buying something including users, managers, financial controllers, consultants, leaders, and owners.  Each of those people needs to understand the problem you solve and the implications of that problem for their business before they consider a solution.  The following tactics can point out a problem and demonstrate the impacts on business results:

• Videos highlighting the problem
• Case studies of a similar company’s situation before they started working with you
• A brochure with a simple mathematical equation explaining the costs of downtime, equipment repairs, etc.
• A calculator tool on your website where people can enter their own numbers and see what the problem costs them

Solution Focus

Again, every person involved in the buying decision will have a different need:

• Production needs to reduce rework
• Managers want to improve safety
• HR needs to deal with a tight labour market
• Finance looks for solutions that fit the current budget or save money in another way

Describing the benefits and outcomes of using your solution can be complex or simple so promoting them may take on many forms.  A rule of thumb is that more complex explanations require more words and more informative graphics while simple messages don’t require much for viewers to understand.  Here are some examples:

Explaining Complex Solutions

• Presentations at events
• Videos
• Case studies
• Sales calls
• Custom graphics
• Flow charts
• Research results
• Detailed engineering diagrams
• Podcast guest appearances
• Pitching articles to industry media

Communicating Simple Solutions

• Social posts highlighting key metrics (‘$1/day’, ‘Snap it on and go’, ‘3X better performance’)
• Simple graphs
• Short customer testimonials
• Trade show booths
• Demonstrations
• Infographics
• Ads
• Lead-generating social media posts and landing pages

You can’t give your product or service away to potential customers to get them interested in your solutions.  However, you can give them a taste of what it’s like to work with you.  Having lots of options available helps your sales team have the right tools when they need them.