I Thought This Podcast Was About B2B?

I want to talk about the crossover between B2B and B2C and we can use the best techniques to get the best results.

First of all, let’s define what we are talking about with B2B on this podcast. Although some of the same concepts apply, this podcast is directed at business owners and sales people for smaller B2B companies, generally with sales under $5mm in revenue and who sell to other small or medium sized companies. 

There are very few resources for small companies selling to other smaller companies, which has always been surprising to me over the years, and it hasn’t gotten better over time.

If you’ve listened to some of the past episodes, you might have noticed that a lot of them weren’t specific to B2B. The reason for this is that the fundamentals of selling and running a business are the same whether B2B or B2C and whether you are talking about offline or online techniques.

What makes B2B different than B2C? In the simplest terms it’s the type of customer you have. 

The question becomes, how do you get through to decision makers? You have to find ways, offline and online to penetrate the corporate structure or gatekeeper to get to the decision maker before marketing and selling even starts to take place. 

When you are dealing with another business professional, oftentimes the owner or CEO of a company at the smaller sized company, you have to approach them differently than just a consumer off the street.

Once you have found where your target customer hangs out, you want to find out if there are more people involved in the sale than just the top level decision maker. In B2B, the decision maker might be the owner or CEO, but it’s very likely that they will have some other executive at the company evaluating the proposal as well so you need to find that information at early in the sales cycle to make sure you are spending time selling them as well as the top level decision maker. 

Most B2B resources out there teach you that you need to do a formal analysis, provide tons of data, do a formal presentation about how your product or service is superior to your competitors, etc.

We are hardwired to think and react emotionally to most decisions. Whether consumer or B2B decision maker, emotional feelings about the sales process is unavoidable. Only after a decision maker has made this emotional decision does logic come into play and that along with urgency is what kicks them over the decision to make the purchase. It’s fascinating to me how we do this as humans, and it’s because our emotions are often stronger than our logic.

If we don’t evaluate growth techniques through the lens of this basic understanding, we are going to spend a lot of time on things that don’t work.

I would challenge you to sit down and think about these differences and similarities and the techniques you are using. Are the tactics you are using currently effective in B2B? If not, what can you do differently. If you are taking these things into consideration, keep them on the forefront of your mind when evaluating any new marketing strategy you hear about or are being sold on.

Key Talking Points of the Episode:

B2B and B2C share some similarities, but also important differences.The type of prospect in B2B is very different from B2C and must be approached differently.Selling is always emotion driven including in B2B.

Please subscribe and rate the show on iTunes and give me your honest feedback and what future subjects would help you out the most.

Resources Mentioned: 

Grab the FREE eBook “Top 10 Secrets for B2B Small Business Owners” at http://www.growyourb2bcompany.com.

Website: https://www.salesdouble.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YourSalesDouble