Three Key Strategies for Modern B2B Sales Success

The rules of engagement have shifted dramatically in today’s B2B sales environment. With the proliferation of digital tools and increasing complexity of customer demands, sales teams are being forced to evolve past traditional sales strategies, or risk being left behind. In this blog we’ll explore three key strategies that B2B sales organizations can use to their advantage.  

The B2B Sales Process is Digital

Today’s buyers expect more than ever—instant answers, seamless online experiences, and solutions that feel made just for them. For manufacturers and distributors, meeting these rising expectations means leaning into data-driven insights and embracing virtual connections to stay ahead of the curve.

Today, 7 of 10 B2B buyers see online buying as more convenient. To retain current customers and new business, companies must ensure a high-level of personalization throughout the buying process. To achieve this, companies are embracing AI-driven sales planning and operations tools that simplify purchases and infuse personalization throughout the customer life-cycle.  

These challenges have prompted B2B leaders to consider the following: 

• Can we utilize our data to create a tailored and proactive buying experience that increases our wallet share?
• Are there bottlenecks in our sales process—such as customer agreements, one-time quotes, lengthy approvals, or manual data entry —that we can eliminate?  
• How well are we personalizing interactions to meet the specific needs and preferences of each customer? 
• How can we ensure our sales team, both new and veteran, feel empowered daily with impactful customer insights?
• Can we measure how effective our sales activities are currently?

These questions point to the need for smarter tools and workflows. Let’s look at three strategies that leverage predictive tools and intelligent data-science for sales success. 

1. Up-Level the Customer Buying Experience 

The modern customer buying journey demands more than just a transaction—it requires personalization, consistency, and ease across every channel. Zilliant Revenue Intelligence empowers sales reps to meet and exceed these expectations by turning complex data into actionable insights. Here’s how Zilliant Revenue Intelligence up-levels the customer experience in multi-channel selling:

Deliver Personalization with Every Customer Interaction

Many companies struggle to deliver a truly personalized customer experience—from quoting to e-commerce to marketing emails, intelligently recommending the right products at every touchpoint remains a struggle—leaving opportunities on the table to engage customers and drive loyalty. Zilliant Revenue Intelligence flips the script by dynamically tailoring recommendations through all channels, to each customer’s unique preferences and buying patterns. Using advanced data science, Zilliant enables sales reps to suggest products that align with customer needs, increasing order value and fostering loyalty.

Give Sales Data-Backed Talk Tracks

Sellers can lose a deal by trying to expand it. This fear often results in a lack of cross or up-sell. With Zilliant, sales reps are empowered with relevant insights into the customer’s previously viewed items, abandoned carts, and similar business' buying patterns. This continuity eliminates friction, builds trust, and ensures sellers don't miss the mark with upsell recommendations.

2. Give Time Back to Your Sellers

Sellers often find themselves bogged down by inefficient manual processes when managing agreements and negotiating pricing. These roadblocks can lead to frustrated customers and ultimately, lost opportunities. Zilliant gives time back to your sellers by streamlining agreements management and simplifying the pricing process. Let’s look at this strategy in context: 

Streamlining Agreement Management

Managing customer agreements often involves juggling spreadsheets, endless email chains, and siloed systems, making it difficult to prioritize, update, or enforce agreements effectively. Zilliant Agreements Management eliminates these inefficiencies by providing a centralized, intuitive platform for managing agreements throughout their lifecycle.

Sellers can:

• Reduce Margin Leakage: Proactively monitor, amend, and renew agreements based on business changes such as volume commitments or Consumer Price Index.
• Limit Gut Feel Pricing: Empower sellers to understand the financial impact of price changes within contracted pricing across key KPIs.
• Boost Customer Sentiment: Streamline the creation, negotiation, and roll-out of new agreements.

By removing administrative headaches, Zilliant frees up sellers to focus on customer interactions rather than rifling through static and outdated spreadsheets. 

Simplifying the Quoting Process

Quoting is often one of the most complex and time-consuming parts of the sales process, especially for manufacturers dealing with intricate configurations and unique customer requirements. Zilliant CPQ transforms this challenge into a streamlined, efficient process, empowering sellers to deliver fast, accurate, and competitive quotes.

With Zilliant CPQ, sellers can:

• Produce Accurate Quotes with Ease: Guided selling ensures sellers navigate complex product configurations seamlessly, reducing errors and accelerating quote generation.
• Leverage Real-Time Pricing: Dynamically calculate cost estimates and deliver up-to-date pricing that reflects current market conditions, ensuring quotes are competitive and profitable.
• Streamline the Buying Experience: Integrated visualizations and self-service options make it easy for customers to see and understand their options, boosting confidence and satisfaction.

Zilliant strategically eliminates inefficiencies and automates repetitive tasks, giving valuable time back to your sellers. 

3. Optimize What Sellers Do with that Extra Time

Once sellers are freed from time-consuming manual tasks, the real opportunity lies in maximizing the value of that extra time: How do you ensure that additional time gained translates into meaningful revenue growth? Zilliant Revenue Intelligence leverages predictive analytics to empower sales reps with actionable insights that drive retention, recover lost business, and uncover new revenue opportunities—all without the need for complex analysis.

With Zilliant Revenue Intelligence, sales reps are empowered with:

Recovery Insights to Enhance Customer Retention

A key challenge for sales teams is identifying when a customer’s purchasing behavior begins to decline, before it’s too late. Zilliant Revenue Intelligence provides proactive recovery insights—with these insights, sales reps can:

• Receive early alerts about declining customer volume at the product subcategory level.
• Act quickly to re-engage customers with tailored recommendations before churn occurs.
• Retain revenue streams that might otherwise be lost, building long-term customer loyalty.

Product Insights to Win Back Lost Business

Reclaiming lost revenue can be time-consuming when sales teams lack clarity on where to focus. Zilliant analyzes historical data and narrows the focus to actionable opportunities. Sales reps can quickly identify:

• Customers who have decreased or stopped purchasing specific products.
• High-value product categories with potential for recovery.

These targeted insights allow reps to act efficiently and reclaim lost revenue without wasting time on manual data analysis.

Unlocking New Opportunities with Data

The strategies outlined above all leverage one of the most underutilized assets in B2B organizations. This asset is data. Companies invest massive amounts in sales technology and processes to better manage and track customer relationships, but don’t have a system that organizes and transforms data into actionable insights. 

Ready to transform your sales team with Zilliant Revenue Intelligence, Zilliant CPQ, or Zilliant Agreements Management? Contact us today to discover how our solutions can drive your success.