What Makes Business-to-Business Marketing Different?

B2B Marketers Experience Longer Sales Cycles

The B2B purchase cycle is an extended process, often lasting several months or longer. Marketing to B2B prospects
requires different actions, depending on what stage of the buying cycle your prospect is in.

B2B Products and Services are More Complex

B2B products and services are typically complex and sophisticated, with many of the benefits or detriments not
readily apparent. B2B marketing needs to take the technical, the subtle, the intricate, and make it clear,
understandable, and persuasive.

B2B Selling Propositions are More Complex

B2B selling propositions are complex propositions that must present value-based differentiated solutions that support
rational buying decisions. Fluff may get attention, but it’s not going to sway the purchasing decision. Complex
differences must be articulated and delivered through intelligent and compelling communication strategies.

There are Fewer Identifiable Buyers

B2C marketers know they can put their product in front of millions and that a sizeable percentage of that market are
potential purchasers of that product. There are far fewer potential buyers of B2B products—and they’re harder to find.
Sure, you may find a company you think needs your product or service, but you may spend the better part of a year
trying to find the right people to influence within that company.

B2B Pricing is Different

The pricing of B2C products doesn’t change very much from store to store. Pricing of B2B products, however, are
often different for every buyer and every sale. Products in the B2B world are less standardized, and pricing can be
very dependent on just who the buyer is. The price is determined on the basis of numerous factors and specifications,
all of which take significant time to calculate and add greatly to selling costs.

B2B Marketing Must Speak to a Different Set of Buying Emotions

B2B marketing is not “emotionless.” While B2B prospects are generally not moved by common B2C motivators, like
impulse or status, different individual emotional motivators apply. For example, the fear of making the wrong
decision, the level of confidence in the forecasted ROI, the level of trust established in the seller’s people—all of these
are very real emotional motivators in the B2B world. Nike’s Just do it wouldn’t play too well in the B2B world.

Corporate Brands are Usually More Important

Corporate brands are usually more important to B2B buyers than product brands. While practical purchase criteria
drive product selection, (i.e. product performance, capabilities, price), the value B2B buyers place on the corporate
brand drives and completes the actual purchase decision. “Can I believe in this company? Can I trust them? Will they
deliver what they promise?

B2B Prospects Conduct More Research

The risks and implications of making or failing to make the appropriate purchase decision are usually high for B2B
buyers. Therefore, B2B prospects conduct more research, seek more information, evaluate references, and research
alternative products, manufacturers, solutions, and providers. They do this not only for personal benefit, but because
they also need to “sell” the recommended purchase to others.
B2B Marketers Have Less Research Data
If you’re Proctor & Gamble, you don’t put a product on the shelf until you’ve spent millions to know that it will be
successful. Few B2B companies have that luxury. Sure, a lot of money may go into product research and
development, but little gets spent on market research. This makes success a lot more dependent on the experience
and savvy of the B2B marketer.

More People are Involved in the B2B Purchase-Decision Process

Most business purchases have multiple parties in the purchasing organization influencing the decision-making process.
Therefore, you must identify and reach multiple parties in multiple tiers within the prospect’s organization with
messaging that resonates to each individual’s interests and concerns—for example, the "economic buyer" concerned
with ROI, the "technology buyer" concerned with performance, and the “end-user” concerned with ease of operation.

B2B Requires Different Channel Strategies

For many B2B organizations, the “seller-to-end-user” relationship is not exclusive or direct. Complex networks of key
publics require different channel strategies relevant and appropriate to each channel member’s level of involvement.
In addition to end-users, many B2B companies must also market to distributors, dealers, independent
representatives, outside consultants, specifiers, and supply-chain partners, to name just a few.

B2B Sales Rely Heavily on Personal Interactions

Unlike sales to consumers, B2B marketing doesn’t happen through tightly controlled, highly crafted communications
vehicles like television commercials or other mass media. One-to-one customer relationship building, through personal
interaction, demands sophisticated sales management and an educated, knowledgeable, trained staff whose words
and actions are aligned with corporate brand objectives.

B2B Marketing Starts on the Inside

Most people working within a B2C company have little, if any, actual contact with the customer. In B2B, countless
people within the company, not just marketing folks, have access to and interact with the customer. All of those
people need to understand the brand, live the brand, and deliver the brand every day. Therefore, the B2B marketer’s
first job is to market internally and align others in order to create brand ambassadors.

Multiple People from the Seller’s Organization are Typically Involved

Sales of complex, technical, or sophisticated B2B products and services often include the expertise and involvement of
multiple people from the selling organization. Sales and marketing may be joined by representatives from executive
management, design, engineering, manufacturing, customer service—all of whom have the ability to influence the
sale. All of these people need to be aligned with the brand to maximize selling success.

Third Parties have Greater Influence in the Buying Process

B2B purchasers often look to third party influencers for opinions, insight, consultation, or referrals. B2B sellers must
market to and through industry experts, trade organizations, trade shows, trade publications, peer organizations, and
other third party channels. B2B purchasers use information from these sources to support and help sell their purchase
recommendations.
Market Research Report - What matters in B2B selling?
We’ve done some work for you – speed-read the highlighted sentences of customer/vendor expectations
analysed in a newly released report which is can be found at;
http://www.supersmous.co.za/DownloadFiles/QuadS-Market Research Report English May 2005.pdf

Précis:
1. (on why vendors fail) deficits in the B2B sales process strongly impact vendors’ chances of success
2. (on a sales process) key questions are how good it is, how well it is used, and how it benefits the
organisation.
a. systematically analyse wins and losses
b. (on loosing) considerable resources are wasted pursuing sales opportunities with a low probability
of success
c. (on loosing) lack of contact with the real decision makers
d. (on a formal win/loss process) Learning from wins and losses is the best way to improve the sales
process and prevent mistakes from being repeated.
e. (on understanding the sales cycle) Relationships with the right people are often an issue of timing
– late entry into customer’s evaluation cycle is quoted by 47% of vendors as a reason for losing.
3. (Customers say) salespeople’s subject matter expertise now tops their list of expectations.
a. knowledge of their own offering, and the understanding of the customer’s business
b. greatest need for improvement is in salespeople’s understanding of their customer’s business,
industry and specific needs.
c. Salespeople without sufficient expertise about their products cannot address customer needs
d. Brevity and clarity on solution and price
e. Ensuring customers actually get what they buy
f. (on listening) vendors dramatically underestimate the importance of how well the customer feels
understood during the meeting.
g. (on presenting a solution) potential questions and objections should be prepared in advance and
incorporated into the presentation to prevent them being raised at all.
h. (on gaining attention) “frequently” grant a first meeting if the vendor can refer to a concrete need
4. (on CRM) maximum return-on-investment from many CRM systems has not been realised.
5. (CSF for success) that project team members are not involved in the sales process or that their advice
is not taken into account.
6. customers say that the most frequent reason for refusing a vendor’s proposal is the superior solution
offered by their competitor
7. (on Managing Strategic Accounts) The customer’s experience with a vendor during contract fulfilment
heavily influences their desire to entrust the vendor with more business.
a. (on exploiting success) value propositions are mainly used as a sales tool for winning business, but are
rarely shared with or reviewed by the operations staff that are responsible for delivering them.
8. The customer is a company, not an individual. Vendors who lack the skills to contact the real decision
makers have difficulty tailoring their offering to meet the specific needs of each individual.
a. (on Winning Complex Sales) selling to a company involves a number of decision makers, each of
whom must be convinced of the advantages of the same product or solution. Decision makers at different
levels do not necessarily have the same needs and requirements.
b. (on influencing the buying process) correctly identifying and potentially influencing the decision criteria
should play a more important role in the vendor’s sales process.
c. (on the importance of a "relationship") a factor effectively beyond the vendor’s control is rated higher
than factors they can influence, such as understanding customer needs, proposal quality, presentation,
and references.
9. (why move vendors?) The number one reason customers feel motivated to move away from their
existing supplier despite a longstanding relationship, is a superior solution offering from a new vendor.
a. (on changing vendors) customer’s impression that their current supplier’s product or service is not up-
to-date

The Usability Acid Test

I slogged eMarketer last week for misleading reporting on Twitter usage, so in the spirit of fair play, I'll show them
some love for an interview they did with Kevin Ertell, Vice President of Retail Strategy for ForeSee Results.

In the interview, Kevin nailed the top thing that every single business should have on the top of their to do list:

"We’re seeing at many, many retailers that the amount of people that say they came to make a purchase today is
20% or higher. Yet, those people’s conversion rates are nowhere near 20%. So, there’s a massive gap there, and a lot
of that gap can be attributed to usability issues. "

Kevin is talking retailers, but developing a core usability practice should be a no brainer for any type of business, no
matter what their online objectives are. It just doesn't make sense to spend all that time, money and effort driving
leads to a website that then lets those leads slip through hundreds of cracks. I'm a big believer in picking one thing
and doing it really, really well. For online marketers, that one thing should always be delivering a great user
experience. If you have to make a sacrifice to do it, do it. Nothing is more important than this.

This is one of those things that falls into the common sense category, but very very few companies do usability well.
There are a lot of really horrible user experiences out there. Here are 5 usability acid tests to hold yourself to:

Have you crawled inside your customer's minds? The percentage of companies I know that have done robust
research into understanding how their prospect's brains tick is almost nil. This is the first place you have to start. Why
are they coming to your site? What do they want to do? Like I always say, a good place to start is just to stand over a
prospect's shoulder when they're on your site and start asking why. Sure, it's not sophisticated usability testing, but
it's a beginning. The important thing is just to start doing something!

Can they find what they're looking for? Prospects are coming to your site because they're looking for something.
Everybody is looking for something. And the vast majority of your visitors will be looking for a handful of common
things. Make sure they find them. Make sure the cues and paths are easy to find, clearly lit and simple to follow.
Provide site wide assistance in the form of clear sitemaps and internal search tools that don't suck.

Can they do what they want to do? Again, prospects come to your site with an objective – something they want to
do. The better you understand that objective, the more successful you can be in helping them meet it. Your job - your
only job as the site designer - is to understand the paths your visitors want to take and remove any possible friction on
those paths. You'll have business objectives (i.e. capturing lead information) but these should never take priority over
your visitor objectives.

Do You Make Your Visitors Do Too Much Thinking? (thanks Steve Krug!) - We do very little thinking when
we navigate websites. Most of our online wayfinding is done subsconsciously. The minute you make a prospect stop
and think, you've introduced friction and reduced their site experience. You should be able to get to where you're
going on the site quickly and intuitively. It's not a puzzle to be solved. It's a tool to be put in the hands of your
prospects to help them do the things they want to do.

Do you have a servant based site philosophy? - This final point sums up all the previous ones. You don't own
your website..your customers do. Your goal is to meet their needs. Call it a servant based site design philosophy.
Never make them sacrifice their objectives to meet yours (as in collecting lead information in a long form before they
can get to where they need to get). If you provide enough value, they'll meet you half way, but never force the issue.

This acid test for usability, if answered honestly, will help you understand how far you are away from a robust
usability discipline. Assess and then make it a priority for 2010. There is no better place to spend your time!