Owning and operating a B2B business requires a different approach compared to B2C companies. The B2B landscape is vast and has its own set of rules, but it’s also profitable, as 35% of B2B organizations expect online sales to increase in the next year.
Growing your business and sales requires a lot of work, and very rarely can you succeed with just one growth strategy. Ideally, you should have a couple of simple business growth techniques which, when they come together, bring great results. And if you don’t know where to start, we have some ideas.
Focus on LTV and CAC
In both B2B and B2C organizations, the customer lifetime value (LTV) and customer acquisition cost (CAC) are very important metrics. They’re used to evaluate the success of your marketing and growth strategies and can show overall customer satisfaction.
If you’re not too familiar with these two metrics, we should cover the basics:
- Customer lifetime value. LTV is a metric that calculates the amount of revenue the average customer brings to your business while they have an account with you. Businesses strive to have a high CLV as 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers.
- Customer acquisition cost. CAC is a metric that determines how much money your company spends on average to acquire new customers. If the price starts to drop, it means your marketing and growth efforts are improving.
Both of these metrics are extremely important on their own, but it’s best to look at them combined because that is the only way you can fully understand your customers. If you focus on LTV and CAC at the same time, you can easily create a growth strategy that is focused solely on your customers.
But to do that, you need to gain a good understanding of B2B LTV CAC, learn how to calculate them, understand the relationships between the two, and then use all of that to your advantage.
Set your OKRs
You can’t grow without setting your goals. When you set these goals, you know exactly what you’re working for and the best methods you can use to achieve those goals. And while there are multiple goal-setting methods, OKR is among the best ones.
If you want to avoid common mistakes and follow the best practices on your way to success, OKRs will be perfect for you. OKR stands for “objectives and key results”, and it is a goal-setting method used in a collaborative setting to achieve challenging goals and have results to measure your efforts.
When you set OKRs, your entire team is aligned and everyone is working towards the same goal, going in the same direction. Everyone has a unified understanding of success and each team member knows the role they’re playing in the company’s growth.
The key results will be something you can constantly monitor that will help you see if you’re going in the right direction, motivating your team to keep moving forward.
And the best way you set your OKRs and measure them is to use the best OKR software. This tool comes with OKR management, employee engagement management, meetings management, task management, and more. All of these features will be a great addition to your OKR journey.
Decide between market development and disruption
If you want to achieve growth, you need to boost the B2B sales process and get as many customers as you possibly can. The two most common techniques B2B companies use when trying to grow and expand their customer base are market development and market disruption.
Both of these techniques are there to increase your sales and number of customers, but they aren’t suited for every company, so you should decide which one of them works best for you. And to do that, you need to understand them properly.
So what is the difference between market development and disruption?
Market development is a growth strategy that allows a business to expand its market share and move beyond its existing customers. To do this, businesses target a new demographic, new industry, or a new geographical location for example.
Market disruption, on the other hand, entails coming into an industry that is already well-established and making a name for yourself in it. Brands often do this by doing and offering something completely new and different from their competitors to the target market.
This can be anything from offering a better price all the way to utilizing the newest innovations, as long as it puts you on the map.
Think about these two strategies and decide which one would better fit your company. Once you’ve made your choice, you can do more research on your preferred method.
Final thoughts
The B2B industry is extremely competitive nowadays. Companies need to work hard just to keep their heads above water and even harder if they want to be profitable. Due to this, growth seems almost impossible, but that’s far from the truth. All you need are some good techniques for business growth.
