Daniela Aldana
Co-Founder and CEO at Qentaz
From early on in her professional life, Daniela has been involved in the world of entrepreneurship. Today, she is the CEO and Co-Founder of Qentaz, a startup that helps micro-businesses understand and manage their finances to make better decisions that aid their growth. Additionally, they aim to achieve the inclusion of these businesses in the financial system by improving banks’ relationships with this segment. Now, she has all the tips for achieving success in B2B sales and she shared them with us.
Qentaz’s Key Sales Process Tips for B2B
During the interview, Daniela shared Qentaz’s sales strategies with us. From these strategies, we gleaned three very useful tips for any B2B business.
- Understand very well what the main metric is that your potential customers need to see to buy from you – what metric moves the needle for them? If you can move that metric with your product, it will lead to a successful sales process.
- Identify the match between your product and the problem your customer has at the moment. You must thoroughly understand your potential customer to grasp their pain, and the way to achieve this is by asking many questions. This way, the product or deliverable will always exceed your buyer’s expectations.
- Make the most of Sales Pilots: B2B sales typically demand a period to get to know and test the product. You should maximize this period to understand which metric is most important to your customer and what their main pain point is.
The Relationship between Capital Raising Process and Sales
Daniela believes that in the end, it’s a similar process because you are selling your product, but to a different customer. This other customer, the investor, is interested in different things, typically where the company is heading, what the vision is, how the team is structured, what problem is being solved, etc.
So, in this process, just like in sales, you need to thoroughly understand this type of customer and their needs and focus. For this, there needs to be prior research to know who they are, what they do, what they have done, what interests them, and with this, you have the first impression of how to approach them. Then, in the first meeting, you need to inquire a lot as well, focusing on those points of interest and sidelining less important ones.
“While some people have more natural skills than others, a salesperson is made. There are many types of salespeople who function differently in different contexts. This is where I believe there’s a lot of opportunity to become a salesperson because there’s no single defined stereotype.” – Daniela Aldana
Building Customer Trust
We asked Daniela how Qentaz manages to build trust with their clients on such a sensitive topic as finances. For her, trust is tied to an important component: financial education. At Qentaz, they focus not only on teaching their clients how to use the product they sell but also on understanding their context and gradually educating them about financial matters in a friendly manner. She concludes that for clients to trust your business, there must be a genuine human connection between your team and your client.
Turning a NO into a YES
Finally, Daniela provides two of her best strategies for turning a “NO” into a “YES”:
- Understand the reason for the “no.” Why? Take action based on this and implement the feedback received. Once implemented, you can go back to your client and say, “We’ve already changed this aspect you didn’t like.” This way, the person feels heard. Daniela explains that many times the process falls through because the salesperson doesn’t listen and the client doesn’t feel heard. “Keep your ears open, then analyze what can be done, and perhaps that will turn those ‘no’s into ‘yes’s.”
- Not only ask for the reason for the “no” but also ask what they would expect in the future. Understand what the person wants to see for that “no” to become a “yes.”
