B2B sales consulting

B2B sales consulting is the work of an external advisor with the owner or the management board on how the company wins business clients: who it sells to, how it reaches decision makers, how it communicates value, how it runs the process from first contact to contract and how it measures that. At TechMine it takes the form of months of 1:1 cooperation in which we build and test all the elements on the company’s real clients. The result is a sales system that stays in the company after the cooperation ends.

We work on a monthly retainer with an agreed scope and rhythm of sessions. The rate depends on the scope (sales alone or also the business model and processes) and the intensity of the work. You get a specific proposal after a free diagnostic call. The simplest comparison is the cost of part of an experienced sales director’s salary, with the difference that after the cooperation the company keeps all the know-how and the implemented process, rather than a person who may leave. The sales audit is priced separately, as a product fixed in time.

Building a sales system usually takes 6 to 12 months, depending on the intensity of the sessions and the company’s starting point. It is regular 1:1 online advisory sessions, assignments between sessions and ongoing implementation of the next elements: value proposition, qualification, prospecting, conversation scripts, tools and measurement. The strategy workshops at the beginning are often run on site. The sales audit alone takes 2 to 3 weeks.

For B2B technology and service companies with 10 to 50 employees: software houses, implementation firms, integrators, producers of technical solutions, agencies, expert and engineering firms. What they have in common is that they sell complex services in a long cycle, and sales are led mainly by the owner. We have also worked with much larger companies, because fit is decided by the nature of the sales, not the size. We do not work with e-commerce, retail or SaaS companies still looking for product-market fit.

In this order: first a diagnosis of what actually keeps sales tied to the owner (often it is undocumented knowledge about the client and the offer, not the lack of a salesperson). Then strategy: the ideal client profile and the value proposition written down so that someone else can use them. Next the process: stages, qualification criteria, conversation scripts, prospecting. Finally tools, measurement and handing the process over to the first person. The owner does not disappear from sales overnight. First they stop being the only person who knows how to run them. More on this here: the company depends on the owner.

No. A sales system as we understand it is the way the company operates: strategy, process, communication, tools and measurement. A CRM is one of the tools, and we choose it to fit a finished process, not the other way round. If you are looking for a company to implement a B2B e-commerce platform, a client portal or configure a CRM as a separate project, that is a different category of vendors. We cooperate with proven partners in those areas. If you are looking for advisors who will build a repeatable client acquisition process in the company and only then choose the tools, that is what we do.

Yes. The B2B sales audit is a separate product. We examine five areas (strategy, process, communication, tools, measurement) on data from the company: CRM exports, call recordings, proposals, interviews with the team. Each area gets a maturity level on a four-level scale, and the report ranks recommendations by impact on revenue. It takes 2 to 3 weeks and can be ordered with a follow-up review after 90 days. What you do next with the results is up to you.

Yes, it is one of the areas we work on most often. We design stages matched to how a buyer of advanced IT services purchases: who decides, how long the cycle takes, which questions come up before the decision. We set criteria for moving between stages, needs discovery, the moment to present the offer and the way of closing. We configure the pipeline in the CRM only once the process is documented. We describe the starting point in the article B2B sales process: stages, diagram and an implementation example.

Training changes people’s skills at specific moments of the conversation and makes sense when the process and strategy already exist. An agency delivers meetings or leads during the contract period and makes sense when the offer is clear and what is needed is volume. B2B sales consulting builds in the company what both of these need in order to work: strategy, process, communication and measurement. In most of the technology companies we work with, that foundation still has to be built, which is why training or an agency left no lasting effect.

Classic strategy consulting ends with analysis and recommendations, and implementation stays on the company’s side. In a small service company that usually means the report ends up on a shelf, because the owner has no team to carry it out. Building a sales system reverses the proportions: less analysis, more implementation. The next elements are created in sessions, tested on real clients and refined based on their reactions. The result is a working mechanism, not a document.

That is the core of our specialization. Łukasz Zjawiński has built and run technology companies himself, including a software house, and since 2018 he has been working with owners of software houses, implementation firms and integrators. The typical pattern in these companies is dependence on a few large clients and no repeatable process for winning new ones. We describe how to solve it in the article how to build sales in a software house.

Yes, and that is our most common client. Systematizing sales in a small company is not about building a sales department, but about writing down what today sits in the owner’s head and turning it into a repeatable process that can gradually be handed over. We measure scale differently than by team size: if one client spends at least several tens of thousands of PLN with the company per year, working on a sales system makes economic sense.

The market divides into a few types: large consulting and training companies with teams of consultants, agencies combining consulting with prospecting or sales outsourcing, firms implementing CRM and RevOps, and boutiques where an experienced consultant works directly with the owner. TechMine belongs to the last group, specializing in B2B service and technology companies, with its own SalesMachine methodology. The choice depends on the problem: a missing foundation (offer, process) calls for consulting, a lack of volume with a working offer calls for an agency, a missing tool with a documented process calls for a CRM implementation. We describe the selection criteria above on this page and in the guide how to choose a partner for growing B2B sales.

The first changes in client communication and qualification usually come within the first weeks. As the first effect, clients often mention an increase in average order value and margin, because the way of talking about the offer changes. Repeatably opening new clients from prospecting requires a few test cycles, so realistically from the third to the sixth month. A complete, documented process that can be delegated is the result of the whole cooperation.

Most of the work happens remotely, in a regular rhythm of online sessions, which is why we work with companies across Poland. The strategy workshops at the start of the cooperation are often run on site, at the client’s company or in Katowice, where TechMine is based.

In most small technology companies, the process first. A salesperson hired into a company with no documented value proposition, qualification criteria and stages learns on your clients and usually leaves after a few months, and the owner concludes that “salespeople cannot sell our services”. When the process exists and works in the owner’s hands, hiring and onboarding a salesperson is the last stage of the consulting, not the first. More: a sales team in a small company.

With a free diagnostic call, about 45 minutes, through the consultation form on this page, by email at hello@techmine.pl or by phone at +48 32 49 44 248. If you prefer to check for yourself first what stage your sales are at, take the free online diagnosis.