Walnut's #WeAreProspects Campaign is Shaking up the B2B Sales Industry

The B2B sales experience is broken. Well, at least that's the way it seems when you compare it to the B2C industry. For one reason or another, business buyers have been left to suffer through sales practices that are outdated, time-consuming, and fail to put their wants and needs at the forefront of the conversation. Sales cycles are rigid, and reps follow an inflexible framework regardless of the features the prospects are interested in. 

In most cases, the typical B2B sales process looks something like this:

The marketing team goes out to unearth suitable leads that can be "qualified." This means they fit a certain set of criteria that allows them to pass prospects onto the sales team. From here, sales reps will begin discussing the software's various benefits and features while organizing a potential product demo. Most of the time, the demo is a generic exhibition of the product's core value proposition and offers very little personalization. 

If this stage is successful, the rep will finally get to talk about the various prices and packages, upon which they will rely on their sales skills to close the deal and convert the prospect into a paying customer.

Sounds exhausting, right? Well, that's exactly how the vast majority of B2B buyers feel after almost 80% of respondents in a Gartner study described their most recent purchase as "very complex or difficult." Fortunately, a few companies are looking to bring an end to overly convoluted buying experiences once and for all.

The #WeAreProspects campaign 

In order to give the B2B sales industry a much-needed transformation, Walnut, the market-leading SaaS sales experience platform, has launched its #WeAreProspects web campaign. Throughout the campaign, Walnut will be partnering with a myriad of companies in an attempt to unify the SaaS industry with the ambition of simplifying the B2B buying experience and driving more value to prospects. 

Each of the companies partaking in the campaign has agreed to provide special offers on their products to encourage the movement. Let's take a look at some main participants and what they are offering:

• Contractbook - A collaborative contract management platform that automates the sales cycle and syncs contract data across enterprise systems to provide a smooth sales experience for both buyers and sellers.  They help teams avoid the tension and even mistrust that can arise through traditional contract executions.

• Cloudshare - B2B companies can save time and money by shortening sales cycles and closing more deals through the ability to generate customized, interactive demos in just a few clicks, allowing prospects to test drive the product early in the sales journey. As part of the campaign, you can receive special discounts when signing up for an annual contract.

• Similarweb - Similarweb Sales Intelligence provides sales teams with digital insights such as traffic patterns, engagement analytics, and technology utilized to assist them in finding the most relevant prospects. As part of the campaign, customers can get a free trial of the software.

• Dooly - Dooly's interconnected workspace makes it simple for revenue teams to exchange information with those who need to know. The platform provides a unified experience for sales teams, making the buyer's journey as straightforward as possible. You can obtain a free 14-day Dooly Premier trial by simply mentioning you came from the #WeAreProspects campaign.

• Postal - An easy-to-use and powerful offline marketing engagement tool that serves as a one-stop shop for go-to-market teams to scale, execute, and measure their offline marketing plan in order to grow their brand. Mentioning you came from #WeAreProspects will land you a free trial of the software. 

• Sales Assembly - Sales Assembly provides professional assistance and helps accelerate the success of every single team, person, and individual inside internal revenue divisions. They recognize the importance of each person, and have said, "The best in SaaS don't put metrics and measurements over real relationships and connections". 

• Apollo - Apollo allows ​​marketing teams to create lead lists that convert, and allows for sales teams to outreach and target over 250 million prospects with laser precision. No more wasted time here! 

Why the B2B sales industry must change

Now that we know the major players on board with the campaign, let's take a look at some primary issues in the B2B niche that these platforms are trying to overcome.

No access to the product

As mentioned, prospects are made to jump through too many hoops before they can access the product and take it out for a test drive. It's been well understood for a while now that buyers prefer to self-educate rather than be "hand-held" throughout the sales process. With this in mind, companies like Walnut (who is leading the #WeAreProspects campaign) are breaking down barriers in this area by allowing sales reps to develop high-quality product demos without needing back-end teams to get involved in the creative process. 

Long sales cycles

A survey of almost 900 sales leaders found that it takes most businesses (75%) around four months to sell to new customers. In fact, almost half of these businesses admitted that the onboarding processes could sometimes take as long as seven months in some cases. 

Furthermore, 57% of vendors claim that sales cycles have become longer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which shows that things are getting markedly worse in this area. As such, many of the SaaS providers taking part in the campaign have developed solutions that aim to sharply reduce the time it takes to bring a prospect from lead to paying customer.

Seller centricity 

SaaS companies tend to adopt a seller-centric strategy. This means they adapt their operations to give each seller everything they need to improve their number, rather than focusing on the wants and needs of the prospect. However, customers are largely channel-agnostic when seeking the information they need to purchase a product or service. In other words, having the seller act as the "gatekeeper" to the product will only cause bottlenecks that hamper revenue production.

Final word

With Walnut and its partners spearheading the effort, it looks as though another significant disruption in the B2B business will occur, putting the prospect at the center of focus. In turn, prospects should start experiencing a lot more value in the buying journey through reducing sales cycles, streamlined internal communications, and easier access to the product - and it's about time.