Tips to effectively sell into industry.
The manufacturing industry recently held a convention, but none of the machines showed up because they were too busy working overtime. 😂
Jokes aside… have you noticed that tech giants like Google and Microsoft are making significant investments in building out their industry research and teams? Google has really differentiated itself in the healthcare space while Microsoft is creating a number of ‘industry clouds’ to better support industries such as financial services, healthcare, and nonprofits.
Why are they doing this? Because you can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to industry selling.
🏥 Industry Insights 🏥
Flora grew the nonprofit industry team at Microsoft from $100M to over $1B in revenue in under 5 years. Sharing some tips that helped her better learn the nonprofit industry and train the growing team:
- Find and follow industry influencers: Every industry has its experts. Identify some of the top people who are talking about key trends and follow them on LinkedIn, subscribe to their newsletters, and listen to their podcasts.
- Do a discovery call: In founder land, we reach out to our ICP to learn from them rather than sell to them. It is astonishing how many people are willing to share their experience to help you learn and make you better. Find someone who fits your ideal buyer profile in the industry and ask if they’d be willing to spare 30 minutes to tell you more - bonus points if you buy them coffee. And hey, it may even turn into a sales relationship down the line (#1 rule: always be selling!).
- Read annual reports: One of the best ways to learn about a company and an industry is by reading any reports they publish - it’s worth the extra time to understand their priorities and what is driving them.
- Immerse yourself: This isn’t always possible, but if you can, try to get in the door. Volunteer, join a board, take an externship - put yourself in their shoes so you can understand their day-to-day challenges, it’ll open your eyes to how your product or service can better solve their problems.
- Hire an expert, if you can afford it: If you see a bigger opportunity to lean in and make an investment to drive growth, hire from the industry. Even if their experience isn’t directly ‘relevant’ to B2B sales, every buyer they sell to will trust them more, accelerating your growth and time to sale. Bonus is that they can offer training to your team, lean into that!
- Host a customer panel: At your next team all hands, invite a few customers from the same industry to join a panel. It’ll be a great networking opportunity for them, and it will help your team learn the industry challenges they are facing on a day-to-day basis and gain different perspectives.
🤖 AI Magic 🤖
Of course, AI can help with your research. Try putting the following prompt into Claude.AI to speed up your process:
List the top three challenges for businesses in [industry] including current events, economics, politics, and industry trends.
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Originally posted on ReveNews Sales blog. You can subscribe here!
