How do you win customers in B2B?
In B2B, people rarely buy in one go. Several people are involved, weeks or months pass and options are compared internally. Winning customers therefore consists of a series of steps:
- Becoming known among the companies in your ideal customer profile, even before they search.
- Capturing demand as soon as it exists, with pages and ads that give the answer.
- Handing over the lead to the right account manager, with context on who it is and what they looked at.
- Having the conversation and closing the deal.
Marketing and sales each have their own steps, but the result depends on how well those steps connect.
What does marketing do, and what does sales do?
There is a simple line for dividing the work:
- If the work requires knowledge of your product, your customers and your market, it belongs with your own team.
- If the work requires knowledge of channels, tools and measurement, an agency can do it faster and better.
On the marketing side, it is about:
- Campaigns on LinkedIn, Google and Meta, aimed at the job titles and companies in your customer profile. Which platform fits depends on who you want to reach.
- Visibility and website: the pages a buyer finds when they start searching, and a website that leads them to an enquiry.
- Measurement in enquiries and sales meetings per campaign, not in clicks.
- The link with your CRM, so every lead reaches the right account manager with company details. We set that up with marketing automation in HubSpot or your own CRM.
Your own team keeps:
- The expertise. You know why a buyer chooses your product and which question they ask at the table.
- The customer profile. Which companies do you want as customers, and which not? That decision steers every campaign.
- The sales conversation. An account manager who knows the customer closes the deal.
Where it often goes wrong in B2B
It often stalls at the handover. If marketing fills in the customer profile itself, targeting becomes broad. That produces reach, clicks and enquiries that look good in a report. Sales follows them up and hears that the company is too small or in the wrong sector.
You recognise it by three signals:
- The monthly report is about clicks and impressions, not conversations.
- Nobody can say which companies were a good lead this month.
- Sales receives leads without a source and without context.
Everyone does their job, and still few customers come out of it. More leads do not solve that. What helps is a shared agreement on what a good lead is and what happens to it next.
How do you turn leads into deals?
A lead only becomes a deal when sales picks it up in time and with context. Three agreements make the difference:
- One definition of a good lead, set by marketing and sales together.
- Follow-up within a day by the account manager who fits the company.
- Feedback from sales: which leads became a meeting, a quote or a customer? With that information, campaigns learn what to steer on.
That feedback also shows what your marketing delivers in revenue, rather than in clicks. Together, the agreements form a pipeline from buying signal to sales meeting in which every step is measurable.
What we saw with clients where marketing and sales work together
In our projects we see that winning customers works well once those agreements are clear. Marketing builds the system, sales judges which lead is good, and that judgement goes back to the campaigns.
At Partnify we built the link between HubSpot and Meta. Partnify decides which lead becomes a deal. That judgement goes back to the campaigns, which learn from it which leads become customers.
every deal in HubSpot feeds back to Meta, so the campaigns learn which leads become customers
At Templari Benelux you see the same division on the sales side. We identify which companies are researching on the website and line them up for the sales team, which has the conversation.
"No more cold calling, but more targeted and personal."
How do you choose a partner for customer acquisition?
Ask these questions in the first meeting with an online marketing agency:
- Does the agency ask about your customer profile, or offer to decide it themselves?
- Does it report in enquiries and sales meetings, or in clicks and reach?
- Does it work in your CRM, so the data stays yours?
- Does the person you speak to also do the work?
If the answers are right, the collaboration fits a B2B online marketing strategy that carries through to sales.
New customers are made in the handover to sales
Winning customers in B2B works when marketing and sales follow the same line. Campaigns, measurement and the link with your CRM can be left to an agency. The customer profile, your expertise and the sales conversation stay with you. That is where the difference lies between a good report and a new customer.
