5 Things successful salespeople do to sell more APIs

Selling APIs or Excipients to other pharmaceutical companies can be quite a challenge, but can also be rewarding once you make a good deal or when you notice that your B2B sales are increasing.

If you want to increase your sales here are some tips that will definitely help you become more efficient in closing good deals – simply by learning how to show your value to your prospects. There is only one thing on the mind of your prospect – is the salesperson able to fix our problems?

If the answer is no, your deal is definitely off! Always think of how to create value for your prospects.

Clarify your value proposition

Once you have been asked what you do, make sure to have a quick, clear and explicit response. You can actually practice this. If you can’t explain exactly what you do to your business prospect, you are done – the business deal is hopeless!

Make sure to script out and memorize your value proposition. This is the one and the only thing from the sales perspective that you actually have to know by heart.

For instance, instead of saying: “We are a supplier of Sertraline HCl and we have a GMP certificate”, it’s better to present yourself as: “We help producers of antidepressant medicines to provide APIs compliant to the right quality standards and delivered Just-in-time.”

Always have a clear answer regarding what you do! The first impression really counts.

Focus on their challenges

One of the most common mistakes that salespeople make in their everyday practice is selling their product list and qualifications. This is wrong! Your prospects are not interested in the endless advantages of your product compared to others.

They only want their problems solved efficiently. Prospects now purchase solutions to their challenges. If there are no challenges, don’t have false hope that you will sell your product.

It is time to start thinking and investigating which challenges might be present in the world of your prospects.

Promise things

“Thanks for your inquiry, I’ll come back to it before the end of the day”. Make sure you promise things and to live up to those promises.

This is very important because here you can show them that you are a reliable partner. The key to a successful relationship is trust.

If you want to show that they can trust you, you’ll reach your goal faster by making it a promise. Now that you have promised, you must keep your promise!

Even if you don’t have the answer yet, they will appreciate it if you call them to give them an update.

Be proud of your premium pricing

Focusing on the lowest price only is definitely a wrong strategy. Do not lower your price in order to increase the number of sales. By keeping your price low you will be dealing with the worst kind of prospects. 

Own your premium price in the market and be confident. It’s not about constantly dropping your price because good prospects shouldn’t care about your price.

They care about the value that you are providing to them. They care about the efficiency of your product to overcome their challenges. Instead of focusing on the price, try to focus on the real value that you are offering to your customers and your clients.

Offer 3-option proposals

Every single proposal should have three different options. Most of your competitors are used to provide only one option to a prospect. Only one option is quite limiting in terms of possibilities that the prospect can choose from. This reflects directly to the number of closed deals. If you have done a great job by finding out what the prospect needs and what his challenges are, you still do not know which option the prospect is going to choose.

So, what you need to have is a basic option – the cheapest option that would still solve the problem of a prospect, for example, a lower price for a batch with a short shelf life.

The second option would be at the higher price level, and the third option is the premium option – way outside prospect’s budget. You can think of a small discount at a quantity 4 times larger than requested.

You never know, sometimes the prospect will go for the premium option if he is convinced that you are offering a very effective solution to his challenge.