New to Consulting Sales? 7 Secrets to Successful B2B Sales + Live Q&A

We are live. Welcome to episode number 98 of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for being here. What is new in the world of entrepreneurship? Sales, SMB sales, enterprise sales, secrets of successful B2B sales, And sales in the age of AI, all of that. And more specifically, how to get over the sales hump. No gimmicks, no shortcuts, no sleazy tactics, just how to build the sales muscle. Because if you're in consulting and struggling in sales, or you're about to get into consulting and don't have any sales background, I hear you. I've been there. Here's the uncomfortable truth. It is not your expertise that is holding you back. It is that muscle, the sales muscle. Most early-stage consultants assume that if they're good at what they do, let's say you're an amazing HR consultant or an IT consultant or a financial advisor or whatever specialty that you have, that domain expertise that you have, if you think you're very good at it, clients will see the value and just sign those contracts. But that's not how B2B works. When, when you're selling to a small— whether you're selling to a small local business owner or navigating a corporate buying committee, the rules are different. So if you don't understand the different rules for SMB, for small and medium-sized businesses, and those for for B2B, for the larger enterprise, you'll misread many things, including some of the normal friction that happens in sales. You'll misread this as failure. So you might burn out or quit too soon, or just decide that this consulting thing is not for you. I'm here to help you overcome these challenges because when I started my very first business, Just want to make sure here we have a good audio going. We are all good. Yes. Always have to double-check on technology, even in Silicon Valley. All right. Because when I started my very first business, I struggled in sales. I had zero sales background. I was a VP in this amazing, well-funded startup. It was a telecom startup, and I was in charge of delivering— my team and I, I was a VP at the time, we're in charge of delivering telecom systems, cutting-edge, bleeding-edge telecom systems to Fortune 500. And I moved from that after I was laid off. It was, it was a painful experience. So my heart goes out to all of those out— all of, all of you out there in the community who are recently impacted by by these layoffs that we're hearing about every other day. So I went from a VP in a startup that's pitching to the AT&Ts and the Comcasts of the world to pitching to small local businesses, very, very small businesses. It was humbling. So that's how I started. That's how I got into this thing called entrepreneurship. I could not get a job. It was a very dry market at the time, right? the bubble burst. And my co-founder and I, we had, we had a young— each, each had a young family to support, and we had to bring food to the table, pay rent. That the savings we had, that runway, that the little okay-sized severance I received was okay, but the clock was ticking and we needed to get something going. So we decided to take on this journey of entrepreneurship, and we struggled a lot for the first couple of years. It took 6, 7 weeks to get that very first project. Um, it was a $1,400 website, $1,400 project for a 4-page website. It took us 3 months to deliver. So we struggled in sales, we struggled in marketing, we struggled in delivering a basic 4-page website. But we figured it out. And 2 years into it, we thought we finally found our footing. Things were working. So naturally, we wanted to, my co-founder and I, wanted to get into bigger projects because we've heard from sales trainers and other people in our community that, hey, you want to get better margins, you want to grow, you have to go after bigger clients. So we shifted our focus from the very small businesses to midsize and to the larger clients. And I assumed because by that time, 2 years into it, and I could sell now that, hey, if I can sell to these small businesses, I can sell to the enterprise. And we would close those deals just as quickly. I was so wrong. The entire game changed. The structures changed. And we had to learn a new set of rules. And that's why I am doing this session today, because I want to help you understand what works when you're selling to SMBs, to small and medium-sized businesses, and what works when you're selling to the enterprise, and what shifts that are required if you are moving upmarket. That distinction matters more than most consultants think. So today I'll walk you through 7 core secrets that drive successful B2B sales, the same principles that I learned and I applied and I developed and grew sales teams to generate over $70 million in revenue across both actually the SMB and the enterprise clients. So with that, we'll jump right into it. Actually, before I jump into it, for those of you who are watching live or those who are watching or listening later, again, thank you so much for joining this livestream or watching this episode whenever you watch it or listen to it, and I'm here to support you. I'm on a mission to help entrepreneurs start growing their businesses. grow and scale their businesses. I struggled a lot. A lot of people helped me along the way, and this is my way of helping others. I do not want you to repeat the mistakes I made and the mistakes that I've heard from other entrepreneurs that I've advised over time. So if you have a question about a, about a challenge that you are facing today, it could be in hiring your first person, it could be in getting leads, it could be in qualifying leads, or maybe the proposal that you're sending out is just silence. It could be that you're struggling in retaining people, or you're not finding the right contractor, or you want to use AI, but it's just not working out well for you. Everything sounds so generic. If you— you could also be having some amazing wins. I want to hear about your wins. So whether you're facing challenges or you're having some wins, small or large wins, I want to hear from you so that if you're having some wins, I'd like to know what's going on, what's working well for you, and share with the community. And if you're having challenges, I am here to support and provide guidance. And if I can't provide guidance, I can at least point you in the direction where you can find guidance. All right, with that, let us— let's step on the mat. So one thing before we go into the 7 secrets, and that's really, really important. Most founders, they don't come into this thing called entrepreneurship with a sales and marketing background. I've read some stats where it says 68% of founders come into this with little or very— no, with zero or little background in marketing and sales. They're amazing at what they do, but when it comes to sales and marketing, very little. And from my experience, and I speak with 2 to 3 founders every week, most people have— they understand the basic ideas of sales and marketing, but most haven't done it themselves. And that's where most people struggle. So the one thing, the one mindset shift that is really important for you to experience and to go through is, is that when you are a consultant, when you're starting a business, when you're a founder, you're not begging for charity. You have a solution for a problem that someone has. So think of yourself as a problem solver. You're not a sleazy salesperson. You're not a pushy salesperson. You're not asking for charity. You're here to solve a problem. You're here to solve a problem for someone who is struggling with IT. They have— they don't have their systems protected. They're afraid of getting hacked. If you're an IT consultant, you you are the savior. You're helping them out sleep well at night. If you are a financial advisor, you're looking, looking after the long-term well-being of financial well-being of, of your client. If you are an HR consultant, you're helping a company owner or a manager hire qualified people, establish processes to ensure everyone is satisfied both the employer and the employee. You have a good performance system in place. You have a good retention. You have plans for improving employee retention, all that good stuff, or whatever your field is. You have subject matter expertise that will— that you use to solve problems. So I want you to think of yourself as a problem solver. You, you come in to diagnose and to align between what you can offer, the value you add, and then they obviously compensate you. And you're establishing a relationship with the client. Sales is about relationship. Business is about relationship. And for those of you who are watching and maybe you're not there yet, you don't have as much experience yet, maybe you're on the— in the younger age bracket, you finished college and you've been dreaming of having your own your own business, and AI seems to be taking all these jobs. It is taking some jobs, not all the jobs. I'll, I'll have a video on AI and consulting coming up here. But if you're— if you don't have years of experience in, in, in a specific area, it's never too late. Focus on a couple of things. Uh, it could be, again, it could be how-to. You could be an amazing AI prompter, okay? It could be that you really, you're very process-oriented, so you can build muscle. You can, obviously, if you're working today, you're picking up expertise from an experience from, from the work you're doing, but you can also volunteer, help out, like identify what, what you're very good at and, and develop, develop more skills, more experience. This way you can plan on taking the leap, leaving corporate and starting your own business. So even if you don't have the expertise and the skills, you can acquire those and then have your own business, and then you become this problem solver that I mentioned earlier. So spending a little bit more time on it than I wanted, but this is really important. A lot of people are afraid of sales and marketing because of the perception we have about salespeople, what we see on TV, what we see sometimes online when we go to buy a car, You're a consultant. You're not a pushy salesperson. There are tactics to help you close the deals faster, to make sure that clients' needs are addressed. I cover this. I have a few you can check out. I'll show you the channel in a little bit here. I'll share my screen. There's a bunch of— I have a number of playlists just on sales for those who don't have any sales background. So check those out. If you're very, very new to sales. Now, moving on to the secrets of successful B2B sales. All right, so the number one secret I have—I have slides. Yes, I do have slides. Let me share my slides. Yes, right here. Cool. Number one secret: pipeline over emotion. Pipeline, sales pipeline. You gotta have leads. You have to be talking to people and, and qualifying them and, and have those leads in a spreadsheet. I have that DIY CRM system. If you haven't seen it, check it out. It's at bbsu.net/cr. I'll put, I'll put the link here in, in a second in chat. So, so if you are thinking of Sales as, okay, I'll go and talk to a couple of clients, I convince them, I persuade them, they buy from me. It doesn't work that way. There, there are emotional waves that I think new consultants go through. Anyone who's in sales, you go through these ups and downs. You close the deal, you're happy, and, and, and you feel like you have a whole lot of oxygen. And then you lose the deal, or there are delays and you feel that you've been rejected and that you're not good at what you do. And then you start to question everything. So confidence gets impacted. Obviously cashflow is impacted if there are delays. But when I say pipeline over emotion, that is, I don't want you to have this one big lead that you're going after. And you delay or postpone or just neglect nurturing other leads. See, sales, especially in a B2B, the context of today's call sessions is B2B, so sales cycles will vary, but even though buyers these days are more educated, they do a lot of research before they knock on your door, that just There's stats on that, but there is still a process to have a first conversation and have having a signed contract. I have, I have a 20-minute video on the 5 stages of a sales funnel. You can check that out as well, but I want you to know that don't put all your eggs in this proverbial basket. I'll just count on this one, one lead. And actually, you're just having one, one egg in a basket. No, you want to have— you want to plant seeds across a number of companies and, and, you know, throughout your network. If you're starting out, you might just have maybe one or two leads. I get it. But, but don't just put all that energy and hope into this one lead to close, especially if it's a midsize or a larger customer, a company, because They take time. They take time. I'll talk about the time in a second, in a minute. But sometimes you are the perfect consultant. Your proposal lands very well. Everything you mentioned resonates well. You have a case study solving a problem very similar to the problem that the lead is going through today. So you check all the boxes. You're great. Your pricing is is great, the timeline is great, they love you, the chemistry is there, but even with all of that, the timing could not be right because the CFO, the chief financial officer on the client's end might say, hey, we're not going to do this this quarter, let's do it in 3 months. The board decides to put the budget elsewhere, or sometimes even for small businesses, Sometimes things happen, there's a slow month, and the owner in a small business, they feel like, I don't want to spend now, let's just do this later, right? So I want you to build, have parallel conversations. I want you to think of it as if you have a number of leads, you put them in the spreadsheet, and then I want you to grow that list horizontally, meaning adding rows in your CRM, in your spreadsheet. That means you're having conversations with more people. And then I also want you to expand that spreadsheet vertically as well. So, so you're adding more columns, you're adding more updates, you're taking someone from just a first introduction to maybe doing a demo, to having a conversation with the other stakeholders. So you're nurturing that relationship with the person that you are, the company that you are in conversations with. You might have a champion, someone within that organization that is just like you, they love you, they love the solution, but you still have to potentially present to 2 other stakeholders, so you're engaging with the lead and with that company, and you're spending, you're getting closer, moving closer, inching in on getting getting a proposal out and then negotiating the proposal and then signing that contract. So you're focusing on nurturing these relationships with a lead or 2, and at the same time, you are reaching out to other people in your network and whatever marketing effort you're going through, you're doing today, you're adding more leads. So don't think of— get too attached to one lead or to one opportunity and think that this is going to be the gate to the riches. It might be, but you never know. Timing could not be in your favor. Something could happen internally within that company, or something could happen externally because of regulatory environments or economic issues or like what was going on overseas. Now I have, I have a business out of Dubai and who knew that a war will start and then things will be impacted. So you always have to be prepared and you always have to have pipeline over emotion. Don't get emotionally tied to one deal and then, and then neglect nurturing, getting more leads and nurturing these other leads. I know, I know a group of consultants who, who are highly qualified They're one of the top in their niche, and they were counting— they formed a company and they were counting on this Fortune 100, really, really well-established brand. And, and they had— I mean, they can serve such clients. They just— they've worked really well. They've worked— they've done a lot of great work in such— in similar environments in their previous careers. So, so they got into this contract They got the contract signed, they got the work started, and then there was a corporate initiative in this Fortune 100 to put all contracts of certain type, including their contracts, on hold. So you have a number of consultants who left their, their jobs, started a business, were counting on this one client to help them through that first, you know, few months of their, of their new venture, and everything worked well, but the client decided to put things on hold. So these things happen. I'm not making this stuff up. It happened to me, it happened with others. So you always have to have more leads. You always have to be acquiring, finding, and nurturing leads so that you're not just putting this one egg in this one basket. Actually, it's not, not just one. Yeah, so the point here is that to have to plant a lot of seeds and nurture those seeds, maybe that's a better, better analogy than the eggs in the basket analogy. So that is the number one. The first secret is pipeline over emotion. Don't get too emotionally tied to one type of client or one type of, of lead, or sometimes we put our focus on, like, this friend of mine, and he has a contact within his company, and he's gonna get me in, and then I don't do any marketing, I don't do any— he's gonna introduce me to the decision maker, and I'm going to close the deal. So that is not how it works. Assume things will not go according to the plan. Assume that things will take longer. if you plan your cash flow, if you plan that things will take longer, sales and delivery and implementation and receiving payment, you'll be better prepared if they come in early. So that is the first secret, the number one secret, and if you're live with us here or if you're listening later, I want you to put a number in the comment how many active opportunities Do you currently have? Active opportunities meaning you're speaking with a lead, you qualified them and they're interested, and now you're starting to present a demo or send a proposal or have a follow-up call, have a follow-up meeting. How many? Just put a number, 2, 3, 4, and ask me if you have a question, ask me, I'll be more than happy to comment, but my recommendation is to make sure you're planting a lot of seeds. You never know which one will, um, will grow and which at what rate. And then you can, you can, you can, you can nurture that one, one, um, one lead that's showing a lot of signs of, of, of interest, uh, while without neglecting the other seeds. All right, so that is secret number 1. Let us go to secret number 2. Decision makers versus decision systems. So for those of you who are comfortable in selling to SMB, so you've gone through like me when I started, very small restaurant, very small dental office, those, those were the clients. If we're comfortable with that and we've sold to SMBs, Typically, typically there's one decision maker, the business owner. As the company gets larger, the business owner might have a family member or someone senior, their first or second employee. They'll get involved in that decision-making process, but that's typically, it's just a small number of decision makers or maybe just one. Okay, the owner. Now when it comes to enterprise, according to HubSpot stats from HubSpot and others, it could be you could be having six to ten stakeholders. So think about it. If you sell, let's say you sell just sticking with the HR consultant example. So you have. How many stakeholders, if you're selling not even to the enterprise, if you're selling to a mid-sized company, let's say a company of, I don't know, 500 people, although according to, I think, the BLS, even 500 and less is a small business, but in my mind, that's not a small business anymore. So if you are selling to a mid-sized company and you're selling HR solutions and you're consulting, So you have people within HR, those who need help in using AI to screen candidates, to create job descriptions, to use latest technology in vetting, you know, candidates, and also in onboarding candidates and all that good stuff. So you have the HR team themselves. maybe a director and maybe a manager. Then you've got their bosses. They could roll up to the CEO or the CFO or the COO. You have the financial, the director of finance or the CFO who has to approve the project. And obviously the larger the contract, the more stakeholders you'll have looking at it. You'll have potentially, they might want to have one of the managers or 2 of the managers to be part of this presentation that you're about to give to make sure that the end users, the managers are actually on board with the solution. You'll have, if it requires, depending if it's a cloud-based solution or something they have to manage in-house, so there's IT has to be involved. All of that. And I, we can list a few more. So Not each one of these stakeholders are going to be the day-to-day users of your solution, but many, many people and many different departments within a company are impacted by this decision. Very, very few systems, maybe highly specialized systems, are contained within a department. But a lot of the back office systems, if you're doing like an ERP or a CRM or we talk about HR, if you're implementing a CRM system, a whole lot of people are involved. So you might have a department leading this and they have the budget and they have the final say on your solution, but if your solution requires the help of IT, IT is going to have a say. If your solution is going to impact specific end users within that company, those end users will have to be impacted. So when you have these stakeholders, they have a stake in this, then the decision-making process is not just the business owner as in the SMB situation, it is these committees. You have all those 5 people, typically you present to these stakeholders and then they discuss it internally and then they raise their issues and then you're main point of contact will reach out back to you and say, hey John, I received these 10 questions, these 2 from IT, are you SOC 2 compliant? Are you— you've got the managers asking for another demo because one of them was out sick, so we want to get this other manager on board. And now the manager might be in love with the current system and they don't have the bandwidth or the mental capacity to take on this learning curve for this new system. So people have different motivations, not because they don't like you, they don't want the solution. A lot of times people just are busy, they don't have time to get a new system in. So, so you have a committee of people from different departments evaluating you and your solution and the impact of your solution on their day-to-day work and also on their strategic— how that you solution will help them strategically. So these are the things, and not only that, so we talked about the functional departments, the 2 other departments that will be involved, and they'll be lightly or heavily involved depending on the size of the company, the larger the company, the more involvement you'll have from procurement, the purchasing department, and also legal. Yes, your terms, your standard terms might not fly with legal, they might send you their own MSA, Master Service Agreement. They might send you their own paperwork, and then procurement has a whole lot of process, a whole lot of processes. They want to get vendor information. They want to make sure that you have a legal entity and that you have all the required insurance, all the insurance coverage that you never thought of having to acquire, but that's what mid-sized companies and big-sized and larger companies do. They require this. So all of that, not to discourage you, not to scare you from pursuing the enterprise. My job is to show you the way. Now everyone's journey is different. Everyone's way is different, but these are things that take place in a B2B sale. is that you have to go through this committee and you have to have the sign-off from legal and from procurement. So the one mistake that I see founders do in this specific category is that they get very excited when their main point of contact, let's say you're a social media, let me give you an example, when their main point of contact gives them the go-ahead, so let's say you're a social media social media consultant and you meet with the director of marketing or the CMO and they love your solution, you bring in some software and some consulting around it and they said, great, we love you, we want to proceed. So, and let's say they're new in that company or they're just new as a manager or maybe as a CMO, you know, I mean, if they're a CMO, they've probably done this, but if they're a manager, they haven't hired a contractor before, a vendor before, So they might, you might think and they might think that we're good to go and then silence and then they disappear because they have to fight all these battles within their company to get you approved. So my recommendation is don't go out and start reaching out to other stakeholders, that's just bad form. You want to go through your main point of contact in 99% of the cases. But ask your champion, your main point of contact, things like, hey, in similar situations, in my experience, other departments have to be on board with buying this solution. Typically management has to be on board, the budget person has to be on board, IT has to be on board. So I mean, from your own experience, you know who typically has to be on board. If not, Email me info@startupwithferas.com. I'll be more than happy to give you some guidance, or leave me a comment if you're not sure who is likely to be involved in approving your solution. So in a way, don't push too hard, but nudge and educate and remind the buyer, your main point of contact, that we need to get these other people on board. So that is something I highly recommend so that you're not stuck waiting to hear from the champion, and the champion is lost in the maze of getting people to approve your solution and your proposal. So equip your champion, your main point of contact, with like an executive-level summary of the business value of your solution, how it either introduces— increases revenue for the company, reduces cost, or increases client satisfaction or employee satisfaction. Like these are the things that executives care about. So make sure the proposal is not too deep in the weeds. You want to make sure there's a champion has the sort of the short, the concise messages that they can communicate with the different stakeholders when they're asked about the solution and why it's so great. So that is, secret, the second secret, going back to our, my slide, let's go back there. We talked about pipeline over emotion, decision makers versus decision systems. Next we have the sales cycle reality, which I alluded to earlier. So the sales cycle, if you're new to sales, just know that there is a process, a sales cycle that that any sales, any salesperson, any product or service that's been sold, you have to go through that, not because— it's just the nature of things. Look at your own behavior when you want to buy something. If you're buying a casual shirt, I don't know, you make that decision very quickly, but if you're buying a nice purse for your significant other, You're going to take some time. You're probably— if like you're me, like you have no idea about the different brands and whatnot. And if you have older, older daughters, you can— you can— they can be your assistant. They can provide guidance, right? Um, so, so, so if you're buying, it'd be— if it's a considered sale, if you're buying obviously a car, if you're buying a house, that cycle is longer because there's just more things to research. More boxes to check, right? So same thing in whatever you're selling. In most cases, unless it's some sort of urgent type service where you— it has to be done very quickly, very timely, uh, you have to be aware of a typical sales cycle. If you're new to sales, you haven't really done any of this stuff, you can research, you can go online, but Some data I'll share with you, some data from my own experience and also things I found on HubSpot and others, other sources, is that for a typical small business, SMB, the sales cycle, it could be anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks, and then for the enterprise, it is 3 to 9 months, and I can tell you from my own experience, at times it could be even longer. If you're doing work for the government, pitching the government, it will take longer. A lot of times they do their research in one year, they send an RFI, like a request for information, they do a bit of market research to budget for, for buying next year because they have to budget in the US government, they have to budget in their fiscal Q3, Q4. So in that like June, May-June time frame, that's when they do a lot of the market research and then they have to get approval for the budget in their Q4, which goes through September, the fiscal year, October 1st. So those are things that you have to be aware of, is that if you're selling to small businesses, the sales cycle is going to be longer on the average— it's going to be shorter on the average. The enterprise sales cycle is going to be longer, months. So the important thing here The important thing here is that you do not give up. You have a follow-up plan, a follow-up cadence. And in my video on, on the ultimate guide for proposals, winning proposals, it's my longest video that actually I got to show you. It's, uh, let me, let me bring it up here. One second. Yeah, I have it. Right here. I thought I had it ready. Second. There you go. Well, one sec. I thought I had it. No, right here. Yeah, so if you go to this video right here, uh, why most— I changed the title recently— why most consultants lose deals at the proposal stage. It's an hour and 4 minute video. I put everything I've learned in submitting more than 2,000 proposals over the last 20+ years, everything I learned and, and improving our close rate from— my close rate from 1 of 20, 5%, to 33%, almost 1 out of each 3 qualified leads. That's when we were getting north of 7 figures, when we were getting 7 figures and 8 figures. So I put everything I learned about, about proposals and how to— the proper way of thinking of proposal, I put it in this video. So when you have time and, and and take your notebook and, and, and go and listen and watch this, this video. And I have a lot of resources in that video, including an AI assistant, a custom GPT, and also a Google Notebook, um, Notebook LM, a notebook, um, that, that helps you. Once you set it up, it will help you generate proposals in minutes, not in hours. I'm not saying this as a gimmick at all. I spend a lot of time creating this custom GPT. So check it out, make use of it, and understand the whole thing about proposals and the proposal. I'll give you the hook here that most, 80% of proposals fail because people think of the proposal as one point in the sales process and it's not a one-point thing. You have to do certain things ahead of the proposal. You have to do certain things the right way in the right order when you are working on the proposal and there's some post-proposal submission actions that you have to take, and you can significantly increase your, your win rate when you follow these steps. So back to our programming, uh, let me go back here. So, so we're talking about this 3rd secret here is about about the reality of the sales cycle and what I wanted to focus— what I was highlighting was you have to have a structured follow-up, so you don't send emails saying, hey John, hey Jane, how's that proposal going? Hey, are we ready to sign? First of all, don't say hey. Don't start your email with hey. There's still people alive who do not like to be called hey, okay? Call me old school, it doesn't matter. Don't say hey, say hi, hello, right? Follow up on your emails, but the issue here is not— is that a lot of us struggle in finding reasons to follow up. Now think of when you have a 2 to 8 week cycle for the SMB, Couple emails, maybe a phone call. Sometimes if you know the guy and he says, or the gal who's buying, and they say, hey, text us, we'll text. Easy. Um, ask for their permission to do that. In, in other regions of the world, I know in, in the MENA region, they, they send contracts on, on WhatsApp. In the US, we don't do that in most cases. So, so whatever mean of communication your lead told you to follow, email or call or text, follow that. But for For the enterprise, we said 3 to 9 months. So what do you do? So you have to have a follow-up plan. So you can— you have to find a good reason to follow up. And typically you want— what I always recommend is add value in every touchpoint, in every time Um, in, in every time you, you send an email or you call, there is a reason for that call. So for example, let's go back to that social media marketing consultant we talked about. You just pitch a social media strategy and also implementation. You will be publishing their posts, you'll be curating content, setting up a process for approval, leveraging AI tools, to create derivatives of assets that they have, all that good stuff. So you send the proposal. The proposal is $10,000 for that initial audit of their current setup and then a strategy and then let's say $4,000 a month for you managing their day-to-day social media marketing, okay? So it's a pretty sizable deal. It's $10,000 upfront for the initial work and then for 12 months of $4K, that's $48,000. So total $58,000. It's a pretty sizable deal. So when you follow up, don't just say, hey, how's that deal going? Okay, now obviously you can be using some of these proposal tools like Proposify and others. You get signals if somebody's opening the email and if someone is looking at specific pieces of, you know, of the proposal. So there are those tools that will give you some insight. But find good reasons to follow up. So for example, in your discussions with these— with this company, with your main point of contact and maybe other stakeholders, you've heard a lot about their pain points. So if you saw a report, Fortune, on Forbes, or on maybe a local newspaper, anything that is relevant to their use case, anything that's relevant to the issues that they're facing, So that would be valuable if you see a competitor doing something that you're planning on doing. You can show them that, hey, here's what the competitor is doing. You can also send them— you have to do this with, with care— like the impact of not going forward with your, with your solution. So they're losing maybe branding opportunities, they're losing— they're not increasing their followers. So the cost of inaction, you want to highlight that. Not again, not in your face, but in a professional manner, right? Very friendly, professional manner. Share that with them. So, so you might ask for a follow-up call. They might go silent. They might just not get back to you. But trust me, trust me, if you are sending an email every maybe a couple of weeks or so with something of value, you are perceived as someone who is knowledgeable, who is proactive, who is on top of things, who cares about the situation because you're putting time and energy into it. And those things work well in your favor because remember what I said very early in this session, sometimes these other stakeholders take their time. They meet once a month to decide. And your own main— your main point of contact, they might be too shy to get back to you and say, I don't know, I, I haven't gotten the approval yet. I sort of misled you. I thought everything was in order, but internally I have to fight 5 battles. So sometimes they just go silent. Some people, they don't like to have a confrontation. They don't want to just email you and tell you to hold off. So, so, so that's just the nature of it. I can spend an entire hour on this part of, of following up. The main thing to remember, the one thing to get out of this point here is that have a plan to follow up, and it's a good muscle. And then you have to track that in your CRM spreadsheet, the DIY CRM. So you can go to bbsu.net/crm if you want to get a copy of that CRM spreadsheet. I have Money, I have a comment. Hello, thank you for being with us here. Money is motivation. Okay. Which I'm only— okay, which is faster, make money at home? So you want to make money at home. Well, what skills do you have? What is it that you are good at? And who is your audience? Always start with that, like in terms of vetting the idea, like what is it? What problems can I solve? And who do I solve these problems for? So is it small businesses, mid-sized businesses, large businesses? Um, is it like the more focused, the more— they say riches in the niches. And I have actually, I have, um, I have, uh, I have this video that I just launched, uh, 2 weeks ago. Yes, let me share this with you here since you just asked the question. If you go to the channel, check out here how to know if your business idea will actually work. I have this 10-step, 10-step program. Yes, I need one of those. No, it's a 10-step system to validate and vet your idea. So check out this video, just launched it a couple of weeks ago on vetting your idea and have a spreadsheet that you can use. So in terms of how you can make money at home, you can make a lot of money at home, but you can't make money easily. That's at least not what I teach. There's a lot of hard work behind making money. You can make it smarter. You can think by learning from others who have done it before, you can be more efficient. But you have first to define what is it that you can help others with, and then be very specific in terms of who you are helping, and then go after them. And you have to just follow up, follow up, follow up, and reach out to people. Hope that's helpful. All right, moving on to secret number 4. All right, let me go back to the slides, my one slide that I'm happy, happy Okay, here, let me see. All right, secret number 4, price is about defensibility. So for those of you who are just joining, we're talking about the 7 secrets to successful B2B sales. Okay, number— secret number 1, pipeline over emotion. Secret number 2, decision make— decision makers versus decision systems. Secret number 3, sales cycle reality. And then number 4, price is about defensibility. So, so what do I mean by that? When you sell to a business owner, the dentist or the restaurant owner or the local chiropractor or you name it, or you go to a very small daycare or small business, and you're typically speaking with that, with the business owner, the first thing that comes to their mind is, can I afford it? In most cases, do I need it? Yes. Is it going to help me? Yes. It's going to help the business, help me sleep well at night? Yes. Can I afford it? Because they're one, one One salesperson, one sales trainer actually, way back then, he used to say that. He said, when you're selling to small businesses, typically it's out of their pocket. You're asking money out of their pocket, out of their potentially their children's college fund. But when you're selling to the enterprise, you're not selling, you're not asking for money out of their pocket, you're asking for money out of their budget, and that's a huge difference, and that was one of the reasons actually to move upmarket when we were still selling to small businesses. So when you sell to SMB, can I afford it? When you are selling to enterprise, the question is typically from your champion, from your main point of contact, can I defend this internally? So they, you know, again, assumption here is that you pitched them, they saw a demo, you spoke with them, they liked what you offer, and now they gotta get it approved. So imagine, put yourself in their shoes. This person is going to go to their manager, so they have to convince their manager. They have to go to the CFO, or maybe their manager has to take it to the CFO. They have to get IT involved and other stakeholders, as we said earlier, all these stakeholders. So can you, can they defend that budget or that quote you gave them internally. So here, a couple of things to highlight. One is that you focus on outcomes, on the impact, the impact of your solution on the business. That's really important. We talked about it earlier about highlight the cost of inaction and tie what you do to business outcomes. So instead of saying, hey, I help implement the cutting-edge AI-enabled performance review systems. That's— these are features. These are facts, but they're features. Turn this to, I help increase employee satisfaction and employee retention by 20%, and here's my track record. That is a whole lot more meaningful and It's tied to outcomes, or I can increase, reduce cost of operation by 5%, or I can increase revenue, or whatever the case might be, tied to outcomes. Now, the one thing that some consultants— there's one trap that they fall into here is that when you're talking about money, when you're presenting to the enterprise, in our social media examples earlier, we talked about $10,000 that initial audit and strategy, and then $4,000 a month for a 12-month plan. So that's $48,000 plus $10,000, that's $58,000. So as a consultant, if you haven't sold at that level before, to you that's a huge number. It could be a drop in the bucket for— it could be a drop in the bucket for the enterprise. They spend $100,000 on other things, but in your mind, you're starting to second-guess yourself. Wow, this is a lot of money. Oh my goodness, they're not going to approve it. Oh my goodness, I overpriced. Oh my goodness, the scope is not as comprehensive as it should have been. You start all these whispers, all these voices in your, in your head. Okay, so the one thing that some people do is they prematurely Pre-discount, or they pre-discount, they prematurely discount. So as I'm writing this proposal, when I put these numbers together and it says $10,000 plus $48,000, it's $58,000, I'll scratch it and I'll say I'll offer it for $28,000. So some significant discount. Or after you send the proposal and they come back to you with some objections or some questions, you prematurely discount your offer. They haven't asked for a discount. So if you have a significant drop in your pricing, that is typically not a good sign for them because they tie sometimes price, you know, you have your experience, you have your expertise, that's impressive, but when you drop the price, people could perceive it as a drop in impact or drop in value. So be careful there. Of course it's okay to discount. Of course I want you to negotiate. I want you to— if they're asking for discount, give them a 5% discount, give them a month free. So, so you'll pay the $48,000 for 12 months, I'll give you the first month at no charge. I'll give you more training. I'll do this. We agreed to do social media on 3 channels, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. I'll throw in Instagram for 3 months. Do all of that to get the deal. Don't be strict. Don't be, don't be, uh, stiff or strict about, about the scope or pricing, especially initially. Later, when you're doing very well, when leads are knocking on your door, when you have amazing margins, you can be very choosy. That's fine. But initially, and if you're struggling with sales, bend over backward to get that contract signed, but don't prematurely discount. That's the point of this here. So, so, and think of it, 2 things. One is the defensibility. You want to be able, you want to equip your main point of contact with information and, um, and, um, how your solution impacts the business in a positive way, and you also, you do not want to pre-discount, especially something like significant. It will be a sign of weakness, a sign of lower impact, lower value, so avoid that scenario. So that is on secret number 4, price is about defensibility. Moving on to secret number 5, and then we will be wrapping that up with The seventh secret here in a few minutes, but let me go back to secret number five: risk mitigation wins deals. So risk mitigation wins deals. What do I mean by that? When you sell to the SMB, remember the visualize a small restaurant, a business owner, a dentist, a small daycare, right? They look at you, they look at you in the eye, the way you've been conducting yourself and the way you follow up, and they'll make an impression and they build that trust very quickly because you're meeting with them one-on-one and, and they maybe they check your LinkedIn process, or maybe someone referred them, referred you to them. So trust And that personal interaction will close the deal. They might ask for a reference, they might speak with that reference. If you're local, they know where you live, where you work. So trust is, is there, and it will, will close the deal, that one-on-one interaction. Now, and even if you're doing this online, remote, people do their own research and they find reviews about you and all that good stuff. Now when it's enterprise, it's not— trust has to be established, but it's a different way. There is some risk protection, there's some risk mitigation that companies go through to build that trust. So we talked briefly earlier about when you start to work with procurement, when your main point of contact gets all the approvals, gets all the stakeholders on board, that buying committee is ready to go, they send your proposal to procurement because the CFO, he or she said, this is approved, let's go. And you have to do a lot of negotiation with the CFO, delay other spending to get this contract to go through. So when you go to procurement, they'll ask you for a whole lot of documentation. You're— they have a number of insurance requirements, professional liability requirement, general liability, cybersecurity insurance requirement, and depending on, again, your field, there'll probably be highly specialized types of insurances that you might have to get for, you know, before you get into a larger enterprise. Again, the larger the company, the more of this paperwork will be required. It is red tape. It is bureaucracy, but it's part of the game. And yes, it could be frustrating, but trust me, these contracts will be larger in size, they'll be longer term. They could be— they could be with you. This company could— if you're doing your job well and they're still making money, and they could— you could have them as a client for a number of years. So the cost of acquiring this customer could be much higher than acquiring a small business as a customer, but so the initial investment in time to prepare, fill out all these forms, sign security requirements, have all the paperwork submitted, it might take you a few days if you've done it for the first time, you might have no idea what these things are, so you can Google them, you can go to ChatGPT or Claude and search what these things are. So don't copy and paste answers. Make sure, make sure you're compliant with the standards they're looking for before you say yes. Before you say I'm SOC 2 compliant, make sure you are if that's a requirement. So, so if you deal with data, their data privacy documentation you have to do— again, depending on your area of specialization, you'll have different, different things that you have to sign. My point here is that this is how companies, mid-sized companies, larger companies, this is how they mitigate risk. It's not about the chemistry anymore. It's not about how great you are or how great the solution is. Do you comply? Can they approve you through their systems? So be ready for that. And my recommendation is find an insurance agent Just like I always say, accounting, insurance, legal— you don't want to go cheap on those. Find an insurance agent who will help you navigate these requirements. I remember when we sold— started to sell to healthcare insurance carriers and, and companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield and other insurance carriers, national carriers. I mean, the, the list of, list of requirements was like mind-boggling. Like, oh my God, what are these? Like, one of the insurance requirements was coverage for $20 million, and I think the premium on that would have been like $6,000 a year. So, so, I mean, I said, oh my God, and we want to get that logo. I wanted to get that customer. I don't want to lose this sale. So, so, so I spoke with our insurance agent, and he was an amazing resource. He said he understood our business very well. So he said, you know, they're asking for all these things, like a number of those requirements they're looking for, they don't apply to your business. So why don't you go back and negotiate and explain to them why this doesn't apply to you and see if they can reduce this? So we were able to reduce this from $20 million to, I think, $5 or $2 million policy with significant reduction in the annual, um, the annual premium that we have to pay. So, so that's just an example. Again, the more— the first time it could be a shock, a cultural shock, a shock to the system that, my goodness, look at all these things that I have to do. So once you do it, once you do it for the first time, now you have templates. And we used to have a folder with all these answers for all these questions. So when I had a sales team initially, I used to do all the selling. Later on, I had this number of salespeople. We we had a CRM and we had actually a list of common questions we get from these companies, so the salespeople would go and grab answers to these frequently asked questions by legal, by procurement, and then sometimes by even like IT, so be ready for that ride, it could be, I mean, once you're bigger and you have a team, you'll have someone like in sales ops, they can manage this for you. But initially, you as a founder have to go through all this, and you might have to also get a lawyer involved depending if, if the company is sending you their master service agreement and it's a thick agreement with a lot of fine prints. Do not sign it without— no matter how bad you want the deal, no matter how bad you want the money, get— don't just put it in, in ChatGPT and ask, ask it to, to give you a summary. You can do that to educate yourself about the legal jargon in there, but do have an attorney review this and highlight things that are problematic. Sometimes they give you a clause in fine print about non-compete, meaning about, um, not non-compete, about, about exclusivity. So you can't work with any other brand in that vertical. Sometimes they have these no, no, about assignment rules. I mean, this is not the time to talk about it. Another episode. If you have questions about this, let me know. I'm not a lawyer, of course. I've gone through a whole lot. For every proposal we've sent, typically there are a bunch of legal paperwork I had to review, so I can at least guide you in how you would deal with it and then what things you want to check with an attorney on. But long story short here is that companies, big companies, they mitigate the risk. By having vendors like you go over all this doc— all these documents, all these processes, so that you are ready. Okay, and again, if you want to be very proactive, you can go and search on Google. We have, we have actually in on our Black Belt Startup one of the modules, um, and the digital product we have there, the course, one of the products on legal, and I list all the diff— all the different types of insurance and, and legal paperwork that you are likely you have to have. So, so if you want to be proactive, you can check out that module and see how you can get ready. So when you have a deal and when you have a lead, you're prepared. All right, let's go to secret number 6, and then we'll wrap it up with secret number 7. But first, let's talk about number 6: delivery signals authority. Delivery signals authority. So in the sales process, why, why am I talking about delivery in the sales process? Because when people choose a vendor, first they have an issue, they have a problem you're solving. Your solution solves this problem. So that's good. And different stakeholders potentially could have different, different aspects of the problem that they wanted to be solved. So that your solution checks off. Yes. Great guy. Great gal. Awesome. But now as a consultant, you're not just selling product. You are there and you're going to be there working with them and you will be there delivering, implementing the solution. So most people want to make sure that they're going to like you. They like your approach. They like your style. They like the way you deliver that solution. So to the extent that you can show, show and tell the way you serve clients, do that, obviously without spending hours on your delivery process. But in small— in a small business environment, you might call the business owner, email them, text them with an update, and that might be very sufficient. But for the enterprise, that champion, the person who loves you and who went around the company to get people to approve your solution, they also have to keep those stakeholders updated on how great of a job you're doing. So, so if you send sloppy documentation, if you have documentation that is— you don't send updates, you don't send a questionnaire before, maybe you don't send an agenda ahead of the meeting. If you don't follow these steps, then people can tell because in corporate, in enterprise, a lot of people have worked with other vendors and they're used to a certain level of service, of delivery. So it's really important to, at the right time in your, not the first thing you do, but as they like your solution, as they like your implementation, as they like you and you're moving along, one of the things that you can send in a follow-up email or during the pitch, how you service clients and impress them with the way you communicate, the way you have a cadence, you send end-of-week updates, you have executive summaries, you break down the work in milestones, that structure builds trust, and a lot of new consultants, they sort of undersignal that structure. So if you want to increase the chances of winning a deal, and if you want to go and work, if you want to pursue these enterprise clients, then you really have to have your delivery, your implementation, your fulfillment process in order. Now, if you are New to this thing called delivery and implementation. Let me let me show you. Actually, I have a great resource for you. Let me just share it with you here. If you go to startupwithferas.com, the website, not the channel. Let me go there, and I have this here. Let me share my screen. Trut trut trut trut. Yep, right here. So if you go here to go to the menu under Learn and go to Service Delivery, this comprehensive resource on service delivery— this is with the enterprise in mind, um, so I have articles, videos, all that good stuff on, on the delivery model for consultants from strategy to fulfillment. So, so there are a number of articles on how What is on hiring? But for example, what is it? What is this? If you're new to this, what is the service delivery model? Project management tips. What software to use? How to make sure the clients are satisfied and how to improve client satisfaction and retention? There are different task management strategies. All of that. How to, like in terms of project management excellence. Yeah, I mean, how you track time, how you delegate work. I think there's 25 or so articles on just how to— and you can start from sort of big picture, and then I have very, very specific articles on specific topics. So check that out if you're new to— let me here, I'll put this link right here. Here, but check out this resource. It's at startupwithferaz.com under— go under Learn and then go under Service Delivery, and you will find this resource. So maybe spend— I'll spend some time on it in an upcoming episode. Let me know in the comments if you'd like me to do that. So back to our secrets. So the last secret, secret number 7, And let me make sure I'm sharing my screen. Now I am. Here you go. Cash flow strategy. So that is, that's probably, I don't want to say the most important, they're all important, but that's, that's really important if cash flow, cash flow is tight. If cash flow is tight, cash is king. If revenue is tight, cash is tight. all sort of bad things happen mentally and then physically. So, so let's talk about this for a little bit and then wrap it up. So, uh, I have a comment here. Let me address the comment before we talk about secret number 7. So he says, I am 16 years old, uh, what I learned today to business— what should I learn today for business? Well, I am happy that you are, uh, you're, you're young at this young age and thinking about about business. A lot of folks, younger folks, are not thinking about business when they're 16. When I was 16, I think I was nowhere thinking about business. So, I mean, I would say at this age, I would say the number one thing, the prerequisite to have your own business is to have skills. So ignore what you see on social media about becoming a millionaire overnight. It doesn't happen. But about having a 7-figure business from home working 4 hours a day or 4 hours a week, it doesn't work. Life, real life is not like that. Check with anyone who has established themselves and have done well in business, and they tell you it's a lot of hard work. So if you are younger, typically you don't have as many life responsibilities. In some cases, younger people might have to have some family responsibilities, they have to fend for themselves depending on your situation. But you have time in— you don't have a spouse yet, I'm assuming. You don't have kids, you don't have responsibilities, you're not going to weddings or funerals in general, in general. So, so you have time. So to the extent that you can spend a lot of time learning skills Whether it's video editing skills, whether it's AI process automation skills, whether it's getting certificates, whether going through— you can go through the material on my channel and learn about marketing and sales and about entrepreneurship, about the mindset. And do— learning is education and application. And then see if you can get a job somewhere, see if you can maybe do something on your own and see how to promote a specific service remotely, you said from home, so it's about, you can't have a business or a business idea if you don't have skills, so you have to identify what skills you have today, and what is it that you want to do, and then find a gap between the skills that you have today, and then what you need to acquire, and then go out and get those skills. So that would be my recommendation to you, and then you can email me at, again, info@startupwithferus.com, or leave me a comment here about what you have in mind in terms of business ideas, and I can help you identify the skills that are needed, okay? But I'm proud of you, actually. I'm happy to hear that there's a 16-year-old person who's out there wanting to learn about business, and they want to have a business, and want to make money. But you say money, The handle is money is motivation. So be careful with that. That's another subject for another time, but if money is the sole motivation, this could be very problematic in the future, but we can talk about that later. But I want to go back to secret number 7 here, the B2B sales secrets for you to sell to the enterprise, to sell to SMB and the enterprise, and to build that dream that you have to grow that business. to scale it. So, so cash flow. What is the issue with cash flow? Well, if there's no cash, can't pay the bills, can't pay contractors, can't take some money home. So be aware that when you are selling to a small business owner and you tell them, hey, I, I ask for 50% upfront, in most cases they'll pay you 50% upfront. Or sometimes they say, okay, I'll just do 25%. You can negotiate, but you'll get some money upfront, which is sweet. You want money in the bank is good. Cash is king, always. So, so that's— you do the work, the project takes 3, 4, 5, 6 weeks, you get the rest of the money, you're good. Maybe you have a milestone. Don't just keep a whole lot of money till the completion of the project. Have a few milestones. I talk about this in that proposal, proposal video I mentioned earlier. I talk about some tactics to get more money earlier, and you're not waiting for the— when the project is dragging, when you're 99% complete and there's one more thing to do and the client is not paying you till this one thing is completed and it's dependent on them, it could actually impact your cash flow. So have some milestones and then collect money upon the completion of these milestones. That's for small businesses. For the enterprise, when you're selling to bigger companies, You'll have all sorts of terms. So they could tell you, we'll pay you net 60. That means 60 days from when you invoice. They could tell you net 90. It could be net 30 depending on the company. And then procurement, the lovely team of procurement, their job is to squeeze the vendors. Can you have— can you have better terms? Can we pay you later? Can you give us a discount? This this is too much money. The business, your champion, the person inside the company who is pushing your contract through, they're done. They've vetted, they've got the approvals. Now procurement will have another, sometimes, not all the time, they'll have another cycle of negotiation with the vendors, see if they can squeeze some out of them. So I spoke about this in detail in that proposal video, so check it out. But what I want to highlight here is that Cash flow. You have to have a cash flow strategy. If your project takes, let's say it takes 2 months to complete, and the client says we will pay you net 60 from when you complete the project, that means you can work for 60 days to finish your work and then they'll pay you in 60 days from then. That is 120 days of you doing the work, potentially having contractors, others to help you, so you're paying other people. And you're not getting the cash. So, so that's— you have to be aware of this. I mean, it could be an amazing lump sum that you get at the end that will make you do that, and you'll do very well for 6 months after. But what will you do in this 120-day period when you don't have any cash? So especially if you're just starting and you don't have other deals in the pipeline, you don't have other customers. filling in that gap. So be aware. I'm not saying you walk away from these deals because again, they're lucrative. They could be lucrative long-term, nice logo, all that good stuff, repeat business. So be aware of those terms, negotiate to the extent that you can. Procurement might play hardball with you. Just use the same approach that you use with your business person, with the champion. Say you're professional, you will help them reduce expenses. I mean, use the same outcome-based points you used in the proposal with procurement, and sometimes you might agree to a 2% discount if they'll say, we'll pay you net 10 if you give us a 20% discount, if you give us a 2% discount. They say net 30, net 60, net 90, but we We can do 2%, if instead of paying you $50,000, they'll pay you $49,000, but in 10 days instead of in net 30 or net 60, but you have to agree to that $1,000 discount. So they'll have, I don't want to say games, that's just their job is to protect the interests of the company and they'll negotiate with the vendor. So 2 things here, you can negotiate back within reason and then build milestones, bill build a, a plan, a project plan with specific milestones, and, and have some payment terms, your payment terms tied to the completion of those milestones. So maybe 25% on, or even 10% on start, and then 40% midway through on producing the audit document, and then the rest of it at the very end. So, so be aware of the cash flow reality when you are working with enterprise. And to the extent that you can, ask for some money upfront, even if it's 10%, it's good. And then have some milestones so that you don't wait till the very end of the project before you collect. All right. So those were— let me go back to the 7 secrets, the 7 secrets of, uh, yeah, uh, to successful B2B sales. So pipeline, the decision-making process, the sales cycle, how enterprise can defend the budget, and then risk mitigation, and then the way you deliver the project is important, and then cash, your cash flow strategy. These are really, really, really important. And before we wrap up here, again, as I said earlier, if you're liking this content, Hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, share this with those who would benefit, and if you have a question, a challenge you're going through, leave me a comment on whichever platform you're on, or email me at info@startupwithferas.com. Feras is spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S, so info@startupwithferas.com, and I'll be more than happy to answer it. I keep all that information confidential. I'll get back to you. If you don't want to put something on, on, on, in the universe, on a comment where everybody can see it, you can email me. I'll be more than happy to get back with you within a few days. Um, I do get back to all the emails I get. And if you are— let me just also share this with you here. I said I would. I do have— here's the channel. Um, I do have this, uh, I have another, another video on, on, on, uh If you're ready to take the leap, 26 Profitable Business Ideas for 2026. So check it out as well. And I do have this SMB, actually this SMB versus enterprise framework. This is, if you're not, those 7 secrets that I mentioned, I have them here in a row, each in a row. And then I summarize a lot of the points that I covered. So if you want to have a cheat sheet with you all the time, uh, download this, I'll put this on, um, download this framework. And it's— you can make it your own, you can customize it. Let me put the link here and we should be good to go then. Where is it? Right here. Yeah, here you go. The website is bbsu.net/smb-enterprise. All right, with that in mind, we'll wrap it up. And thank you for, again, for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.