The current state of B2B sales in 2024

Here’s how a sleazy business tanked a sales pitch and will get a terrible review. 🔔⬇️

First, I get about 60 call requests monthly. I say “no” to 99% of them.

The BDR space is still crowded by sales reps who don’t understand what sales looks like in 2024:

– Buyers want to do their own due diligence first
– Average B2B deals take a year to close – the first 8 months being light research and exploration
– The fact that SDRs are hired to dial phones all day doesn’t mean their prospects run businesses by jumping on random calls all day long
– Lack of brand affinity is a terrible way to build a business

👉 So here’s what happened.

One of my productized businesses required outreach for a fully outsourced solution. No human time involved so this could scale.

(It’s a service + SaaS mix, outsourced vendors plus a product).

📲 We don’t have appointment setters and inbound callers to field calls. And we can run ads to our funnel/offers, just don’t have resources for a demo.

I get a DM with a clear offer for 20 free leads handled by the vendor (outreach + appointment setting and closing).

Note: I have 200+ similar pitches in my spam inbox. Everyone is selling leads nowadays – this one had appointment setting and closing based on a script so it looked slightly more completed (and 20 leads free).

👨‍🏫 Here’s what went wrong:

1. The rep insisted on a call and I hate calls. This pitch could have been an email. I’ve signed up for courses and masterminds and communities for $5K – $15K each multiple times this year just via email.

2. The 30min demo took one hour. Hate this.

3. It required ANOTHER CALL for the pitch. Hate this. Took ANOTHER hour.

4. The pitch required a $8,500 setup. I said no and closed.

5. They nurtured me, and I wanted to run this on autopilot. So I paid the setup fee.

6. The service ended up being different from what I paid for. No outreach, but ads driven. We can do this in-house.

7. They wanted to upsell more for funnels. No.

8. They required monthly ad spend through them. No. 🐷

Bottom line, this deal went sideways due to a sticky offer that had NOTHING to do with the actual process and execution.

The most horrible way to conduct business – and this will impact every single vendor offering similar solutions (even if their process works).

I’m attaching our simple sales demo process that we use with one of my teams.

The best way to ruin a brand is applying sleezy offer techniques to cheat prospects and keep upselling for services they don’t need.

Avoid these like hell.

~~~

🔜 I cover data-driven B2B trends and playbooks that deliver results. Follow me Mario Peshev for strategies that work.

🔁 Share with your network and stop the madness with sales outreach going sideways.

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My name is Mario Peshev, a global SME Business Advisor running digital businesses for 20 the past years.

Born in Bulgaria, Europe, I gained diverse management experience through my training work across Europe, North America, and the Arab world. With 10,000+ hours in consulting and training for organizations like SAP, VMware, CERN, I’ve dedicated a huge amount of my time to helping hundreds of SMEs growing in different stages of the business lifecycle.

My martech agency DevriX grew past 50 people and ranks as a top 10 WordPress global agency and Growth Blueprint, my advisory firm, has served 400+ SME founders and executives with monthly ongoing strategy sessions.


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