Stay Aware of B2B Distinctions

Smart retailers cultivate various streams of income to protect against damage if one stream dries up. To bricks-and-mortar, add your online selling. If you sell products, consider what services you can offer, and if you sell services, add a product line. If your transactions are almost exclusively people buying for themselves or their families, develop commercial accounts.
     Regarding the last of these, remember how business-to-business (B2B) customers are distinctive. A respected analysis by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University of Nebraska identified these:

• In general, end-users prefer fixed pricing because they can then leave the transaction with the belief they got the best available deal. However, with B2B customers, the salesperson needs to be flexible, creative, and skilled in adjusting and negotiating pricing and terms to fit the situation. What’s the size of this sale? What’s the likelihood of and likely dollar amount of follow-on sales? What payment arrangements is the shopper expecting? What out-of-the-ordinary requests are being made?
• Because B2B purchases may involve many decision makers, understand the information needs of each role. For instance, Initiators identify the need for what you’re selling, but Buyers authorize the purchase.
• B2B customers are likely to attend to technical specifications. Initiators pay attention because they’ll want to convince the Buyers. Gatekeepers like the specs because they gather information to route it to others. For all, technical specifications reduce the feeling of risk.
• As do end-users, B2B customers determine purchases based on emotional reasons. But the emotions are more likely to relate to the working relationship with the salesperson than to a desire to make an impulse buy.

     Business-to-business customers often expect a person-to-person relationship. According to research at University of Geneva, there are two dimensions to that expectation:

• Secure business attachment. Your B2B customer may want to rely on you for quick answers to questions about purchases made from your business and for quick solutions to problems with purchases.
• Close business attachment. Your B2B customer may want to develop personal bonds with you or your outside sales agent, exchanging information about family and friends, for instance.

     The research findings also suggest a way to learn the mix of secure business attachment and close business attachment each of your B2B customers wants: Watch as they interact with others who are close to them. This can mean paying attention to how the various participants in the purchase decision relate to each other.

For your profitability: Sell Well: What Really Moves Your Shoppers

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Learn the Relationship B2B Customers Want