Blog / Selling on WhatsApp: tips for success

Selling on WhatsApp: tips for success

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By Johannes Mansbart

CEO & Co-Founder, chatarmin.com

Last updated at: September 14, 2024

WhatsApp Strategy

☝️ The most important facts in brief

  • WhatsApp Sales Overview: Introduction to WhatsApp as a sales tool, emphasizing its popularity and global reach among businesses.
  • B2B and B2C Usage: Practical examples of how WhatsApp is utilized in both B2B and B2C contexts for effective sales.
  • WhatsApp Sales Strategies: Do's and Don'ts for crafting effective WhatsApp sales strategies, including automation and customer engagement.
  • Case Studies: Real-world examples showcasing successful implementations of WhatsApp for sales, highlighting both B2B and B2C scenarios.

WhatsApp is the most popular Messenger app in the world, with over two billion users worldwide. Millions of businesses use WhatsApp professionally for sales. In this blog article, we will cover

  • how to use WhatsApp for sales
  • how to choose the right WhatsApp for your business
  • B2B and B2C Use of WhatsApp for Sales
  • Practical WhatsApp Sales Examples
  • Do’s and Don’ts of your WhatsApp Sales Strategy

Use WhatsApp for Sales: Use Cases of B2B and B2C WhatsApp Sales

Find and engage happy customers that contribute to your WhatsApp Sales Machine both in a B2C and B2B way

Feel free to book your WhatsApp Sparring Session, if you feel overwhelmed or rather want to speak to an expert, instead of spending costly time reading:

Johannes Mansbart

Johannes Mansbart

CEO & Co-Founder

Three ways to create a WhatsApp Sales Machine: WhatsApp Sales differences between “the three WhatsApps”

In order to get you technically set-up to start using WhatsApp for Sales, there are three ways to do it:

Use the WhatsApp Business App for WhatsApp Sales Use WhatsApp Business Premium for WhatsApp Sales Use the WhatsApp Business Platform for WhatsApp Sales

Here are the main differences between the “three WhatsApp Business account options”, so you can take advantage of your favourite WhatsApp Business solution right away, to create your WhatsApp Sales Machine in your most optimal and preferred way:

FeatureWhatsApp Business AppWhatsApp Business PremiumWhatsApp Business Platform
Monthly CostsFreeFree€99.00 + META Costs
Free Conversations
GDPR compliance
Automations and Journeys
Support Agents and Ticketing
WhatsApp mobile app
Dashboards and Analytics
Custom Logins and 2FA
Documentation and Segments
API Integrations
WhatsApp Desktop Users410Infinite
Multi-Messenger
Klaviyo WhatsApp Integration
Shopify WhatsApp Integration
Shopware WhatsApp Integration
More than 256 broadcast addressants
Hyper-Personalization

So, depending on

size digitalization industry and ticket size

of your business, perks like

GDPR compliance broadcast campaigns at scale personalization CRM integration marketing segmentation and decentralization

will be more or less important. Whilst small businesses with a headcount of one to three will most likely start WhatsApp Sales with one of the two business app options, we recommend businesses with a customer base of more than 1.000 consumers, or a sales- or marketing-team, to create their WhatsApp Sales Machine in the most GDPR-compliant, scaleable and customizable and automatable way possible: Using Chatarmin, relying on the WhatsApp Business Platform to make Sales via WhatsApp.

Die Unterschiede zwischen der WhatsApp Business App, WhatsApp Business Premium und der WhatsApp Business Platform.

Whilst WhatsApp Business and WhatsApp Business Premium serve small businesses, at some stage you will need a professional solution for your WhatsApp Sales Strategy

WhatsApp for Sales Comparison: WhatsApp Sales via Chatarmin and the WhatsApp Business Platform

Let’s look at some practical examples, so you can see where your business seems fit to start to use WhatsApp for Sales:

Business with a sales and marketing team, B2C and B2B clients

Understand, that sales & support are the core of your revenue-machinery in your business. Next, understand support & sales need each other like siblings. In this case-calculation, you'll get demo'd what it means, to generate more top-of-funnel-leads, to harvest more bottom-of-funnel-revenue. Only possible, through a working system between sales&support, integrated throughout all your marketing techstack:

Loom Video Thumbnail

Source: Chatarmin, Q2 2024

Serving a mix of B2B and B2C Use Cases will most likely require some headcount and operational expenditures and structure. Also, at this size of a business you cannot afford a non-GDPR-compliant solution anymore. It would just create too much business risk and a weakness towards your clients and competitors. Here is how you can do it:

WhatsApp Sales for B2C

In this case you need the scalability of passive lead generation through a WhatsApp Chatstart Link with custom journeys, only available through the WhatsApp Business Platform, which Chatarmin is built upon. Moreover, you want to create custom journeys for different lead magnets and traffic sources such as WhatsApp Ads and WhatsApp Influencer Marketing as well as a mobile popup on your WhatsApp or API Webhooks pulled by Shopify or Klaviyo for automated D2C eCommerce lead gen.

Kreiere Chatstarts, verwalte Chats und versende WhatsApp Kampagnen mit Chatarmin.

Create endlessly customizable Chatstart Links to embed in Social Media Profiles, Ads or Offline QR-Codes to scale your WhatsApp Sales Efforts effortlessly and scalably

Thus, if you want to truly scale your B2C WhatsApp Sales Engine, there is no way around Chatarmin and the WhatsApp Business Platform.

WhatsApp Sales for B2B

Serving B2B clients via WhatsApp usually splits operations between Sales and Marketing. Both departments have interests:

Sales wants to communicate one-to-one with their personal clients, in a sales- or hospitality-case Sales wants to be able to write custom offers, make phone calls, and document touchpoints and create reminders Marketing will want to be able to create Marketing campaigns at scale to push for automated WhatsApp Sales

WhatsApp Kampagnen erhöhen den CLV deiner Bestandskunden.

CLTV Uplift adding WhatsApp to the retention marketing and sales mix

Both teams have the same goal: Increasing User CLTV by serving the client individually or at scale. Both teams want to have the company benefit from more revenue and profit by making use of WhatsApp for Sales.

To align all interests, it is needed to document touchpoints, personalize reminders, have the Sales team be able to write custom offers effortlessly at ease, and make sales in a personal one-to-one way. All whilst Marketing wants to do WhatsApp Sales informing B2B Clients about product and legal updates, as well as putting out their automated but personalized sales campaigns via WhatsApp.

The WhatsApp Sales Case of mixing B2B and B2C in operations is only scalably and transparently doable via Chatarmin and the WhatsApp Business Platform.

Otherwise, you will not only breach GDPR, but lose sight of company communication streams, revenue possibilities, sales accounts touchpoints and source-of-truth-CRM-reliability.

To take it one step further, request Chatarmin to integrate with your CRM like Hubspot, Salesforce or Pipedrive, and optionally even your Email Marketing Tool such as Klaviyo, in order to create full data transparency amongst all relevant communication channels with your clients, generating WhatsApp Sales all across your revenue efforts.

Here is yet another comparison of your three WhatsApp Business options, so you can decide on your own.

Since WhatsApp Business Premium might not yet be available to you, we want to just show you a quick comparison between WhatsApp Business Premium and your two other WhatsApp business account options for your technical WhatsApp Sales Setup:

FeatureWhatsApp Business AppWhatsApp Business PremiumWhatsApp Business Platform
Monthly CostsFreeFree€99.00 + META Costs
Free Conversations
GDPR compliance
Automations and Journeys
Support Agents and Ticketing
WhatsApp mobile app
Dashboards and Analytics
Custom Logins and 2FA
Documentation and Segments
API Integrations
WhatsApp Desktop Users410Infinite
Multi-Messenger
Klaviyo WhatsApp Integration
Shopify WhatsApp Integration
Shopware WhatsApp Integration

Now, let’s dive into the details of each and every technical possibility of setting up your WhatsApp Sales Machine:

WhatsApp Sales via WhatsApp Business Platform

If you

scale B2B WhatsApp Sales through a team of Sales Representatives each accounting for their own clients and/or

scale B2C WhatsApp Sales through a customer database of at least 1.000 leads or more

and/or

want to automate, personalize, integrate your communication, and do all that in a GDPR-compliant way

then the WhatsApp Business Platform, thus Chatarmin, is the right technical solution for your WhatsApp Sales Machine.

The WhatsApp Business Platform benefits at a glance:

  • Infinite scalability of your target group
  • GDPR compliant customer contact
  • Use with an infinite number of devices
  • Agent system: allocation and access of all marketing, sales and support employees
  • Automations, flows and integrations
  • Segmentation, tagging and analytics
  • WhatsApp templates and text modules
  • Multimedia-based WhatsApp campaigns and newsletters for outbound and inbound use
  • no video- or phone calls via WhatsApp Business Platform

build your abandoned cart whatsapp automation with chatarmin

Create fully automated, CRM- or Shop-integrated and GDPR-compliant automations like this through Chatarmin's unique flow-builder feature

Automating B2C user journeys in all your customers’ steps along the sales funnel is crucial in order to scale your business theoretically infinitely. Make sure you use a WhatsApp Sales Solution such as Chatarmin in order to accomplish that level of professionalism and scalability.

Setze WhatsApp entlang der gesamten User Journey deiner Kunden ein.

Choose your WhatsApp Sales Strategy for every step along your customers' journey

Also, you can draft and send personalized offers in a pdf-file directly through Chatarmin in a one-to-one or also segmented and scalable campaign-way.

Feel free to tag and segment your clients both in B2C and B2B WhatsApp Sales, so your Sales Team only has access to the right chats and user profiles, all whilst you and your marketing team have full data transparency, sending out campaigns in a segmented, personalized and scalable way through Chatarmin.

Request your 30 Minute WhatsApp Consultancy to get started with your WhatsApp Sales Machine ASAP:

Johannes Mansbart

Johannes Mansbart

CEO & Co-Founder

WhatsApp Sales via WhatsApp Business Premium

If you happen to be quite some steps away from reaching a professionalization threshold as described above, the next best option to opt for your WhatsApp Sales is the WhatsApp Business Premium solution. So, let’s look at the next-smaller WhatsApp Sales Setup, which is the WhatsApp Business Premium App:

WhatsApp Business Premium app at a glance.

  • Employee accounts: 1
  • Linkable devices: 11
  • Assign chats to employees: Yes
  • Approved WhatsApp newsletters: No
  • Sales and support features: Advanced basic features
  • Privacy compliant: No

So, if you are a small business of less than five people, not ready to scale WhatsApp Sales on a B2B or B2C side, make sure to check out your WhatsApp Business App account to see whether WhatsApp Business Premium is available for you.

In that case, being somewhere between the threshold of the WhatsApp Business Platform and the WhatsApp Business App, you might want to make use of this in-between-WhatsApp-Business-Setup that allows a little more than the WhatsApp Business App, but still a lot less than Chatarmin and the WhatsApp Business Platform.

WhatsApp Sales via WhatsApp Business App

Let’s take a quick closer look at the WhatsApp Business App, so you decide if this is the right setup for your WhatsApp Sales Strategy:

WhatsApp Business App at a glance

  • Employee accounts: 1
  • Linkable devices: 5
  • WhatsApp desktop compatible: Yes
  • Assign chats to employees: No
  • Approved WhatsApp newsletters: No
  • Sales and support features: Basic features
  • Privacy compliant: No
  • Broadcast addressants: 256

If you are a tiny team, that has only a few hundred users, subscribers or clients, the WhatsApp Business App might just be the right WhatsApp Sales Machine for you. Have your WhatsApp Business App installed on a mobile in your office, use it from time to time, and even have your employees or team members use it remotely through WhatsApp Desktop.

Communicate in a non-scalable and non-GDPR-compliant way, that enables you to just about privately chat with your clients and stakeholders. For any solopreneur or self-deployed business owner, make sure to use the WhatsApp Business App which is a free way to generate WhatsApp Sales at ease.

Choose the right WhatsApp for your sales

We hope that it is now a no-brainer decision for you to choose from the three options of activating WhatsApp Business to get started with your WhatsApp Sales.

Keep in mind:

  • SME's are well-treated with the free-to-use WhatsApp-Business-App
  • companies that want to scale their efforts and integrate their MarTech-stack within their WhatsApp-strategy, need a third-party-vendor such as Chatarmin, to use WhatsApp
  • GDPR-compliance is only achieved through a third-party-vendor like Chatarmin

We hope the differences are clear and you have an easy decision now, which WhatsApp to even go for, in the first place.

B2B Use of WhatsApp for Sales: Practical Example of a B2B WhatsApp Sales Machine

Austrian traditional family business “Kammerberger” has thousands of B2B clients amassed over the last years of building their company. Selling crops and raw materials offline and online, they were looking for a way to scalably market, and at the same time personally sell, through WhatsApp. At this stage of a company, and scale of communication, it only makes sense to build a WhatsApp Sales Machine through the WhatsApp Business Platform, in this case the Chatarmin solution.

B2B Sales through Chatarmin, example family business Kammerberger.

See how Austrian family business “Kammerberger” uses Chatarmin to directly sell via B2B Chat

Above you can see how Kammerberger sells through personal drafts in direct WhatsApp Chats. Building a GDPR-compliant, scalable, yet personal WhatsApp Sales Machine. Below, you can see the Welcome Flow Setup “Kammerberger” uses to welcome, enrich and segment newly created B2B WhatsApp Leads:

WhatsApp Campaigns for scalable B2B Marketing through Chatarmin.

See how Kammerberger makes use of 90%+ Opening Rates in their B2B WhatsApp Campaigns. Be aware opening rates of non-blue-ticked addressants cannot be tracked

So, Kammerberger takes the best of all Chatarmin-worlds, to use WhatsApp for Sales both in a Sales- as well as Marketing-Case.

B2C Use of WhatsApp for Sales: Practical Example of a B2C Sales Machine

waterdrop® is an Austrian 9-figure-Shopify-D2C-Brand that leverages Chatarmin for massive CLTV increase.

Abandoned Cart waterdrop® WhatsApp Automation by Chatarmin

Abandoned Cart automation by waterdrop® built with Chatarmin, triggered by Abandoned Cart Shopify Webhook

waterdrop WhatsApp Kampagne mit über 90% Opening Rate und über 30% Click Through Rate sowie einem RPR von über €3,50.

_waterdrop® WhatsApp Marketing Campaign built with Chatarmin, reaching RPR’s of well over €3,00 in Case Study examples.

Chatarmin is initially built for eCommerce businesses running on Shopify and Klaviyo. We have written a lot about D2C eCommerce WhatsApp Marketing Strategies as well as D2C WhatsApp Marketing Best Practices. So, we will not write too extensively about it.

Just make sure you have enough traffic, clients and/or leads to make use of Chatarmin’s flow builder, campaign feature and tagging as well as segmenting options.

Klaviyo WhatsApp Markeitng für D2C Brands mit Shopify Shopsytem.

Use Chatarmin's unique Klaviyo-Feature that makes it the best Klaviyo WhatsApp Integration in the world

Join 9-figure brands such as waterdrop® or farmrio that use WhatsApp for their B2C WhatsApp Marketing and Sales efforts.

Comparing B2B WhatsApp Sales to B2C WhatsApp Sales: Do’s & Dont’s

Here is what to DO and what NOT TO DO in WhatsApp Sales, both for WhatsApp B2C and B2B Use Cases:

ActionB2CB2B
Mass-mail Cold Audience
Double Opt-In
Activate Existing Audience
Automations and Journeys
Support Agents and Ticketing
Dashboards and Analytics
Decentralized Sales Reps
Centralized Marketing Campaigns
Custom Offers and Hospitality

Make sure you transparently and holistically take your WhatsApp Leads along your WhatsApp Marketing and Sales journey. So, they will not be intimidated by your first WhatsApp Touchpoint with them, and you will not spam them through irrelevant and too frequent campaigns and reachouts.

Just make sure you use your WhatsApp Sales Machine in a natural and engaging way, and you will harvest benefits and results non-comparable to any other Sales or Marketing Channel available.

Bonus: WhatsApp for Sales & GDPR

If GDPR is a very prominent topic, since maybe you are in institutional or government sales, or happen to be in a static corporate environment, make sure you check out our GDPR-stament by me, Chatarmin-founder Johannes Mansbart. Simply text us “GDPR” through the Chat Beacon in the bottom corner, or clicking on this Chatstart-Link and you will get the free 7-page statement on our latest GDPR-comparison of the WhatsApp Business App and the WhatsApp Business Platform. Thus, stating how and that Chatarmin is indeed GDPR-compliant all across the globe.

Chatarmin is the GDPR-compliant WhatsApp Sales platform

Chatarmin is your GDPR-compliant, automatable and personalizable WhatsApp Sales Machine

Summary: Build your WhatsApp Sales Machine: How to get started both B2B and B2C WhatsApp Sales

Get started with WhatsApp Sales by

choosing the right WhatsApp Business Solution defining your B2C Sales Needs through WhatsApp defining your B2B Sales Needs through WhatsApp getting your free consultancy on how and when to start professionalizing your WhatsApp Sales efforts

If WhatsApp happens to be a very relevant communication channel in your culture and latitude, and you are not yet or not yet professionally using it, you are missing out on a big chance to boost sales through WhatsApp. Start creating your WhatsApp Sales Machine now to sell and market your business products and services through WhatsApp. We from Chatarmin gladly help you realize your business goals on that journey.

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