Understand your B2B advantages

Transcript of Chapter 14

Have you noticed a pattern in the videos so far? I keep talking about B2B customer insight and B2B organic growth. Does it really matter if your company sells to other businesses vs. end-consumers? Is there a difference between selling conveyor belts to a company vs. selling dress belts to a consumer?

Yes, B2B customers can usually offer more insight for 5 reasons. First, greater knowledge with years of education, training, and time on the job.

High interest level, because B2B products can have huge financial impact, so your customer can become a hero at work. Consumer interest is so low you have to pay them to come to a focus group.

B2B buyers are usually more objective, making group decisions, following company procedures, and being held accountable.

B2B customers have keen foresight. They focus on financial objectives, so they can predict the benefits they want.

And B2B markets are more concentrated. A consumer-goods supplier might have millions of buyers, but a B2B supplier has far fewer.

So what? If B2B customers are knowledgeable, they’re able to help you design better products. If interested, they’re willing to do so. If objective, they make rational, stable, understandable decisions. With foresight, they can discuss their needs before seeing your prototype. And if there are just a few customers—you can directly engage them, priming them to buy your product later.

Imagine a supplier’s ability to understand customer needs, from complete certainty to guessing. If you make phones, your insight is high because you are a phone customer yourself. But if you make industrial pigments, there’s probably a lot you don’t know about the paper production they’re used in.

At the same time, B2C customers cannot give you much more insight, due to low knowledge, interest, objectivity, foresight and concentration, while your B2B customers can teach you a great deal. This means your B2B “insight gap” is much higher than that for the B2C supplier.

The question is: Will you make this a competitive advantage for your company? Check out this white paper, with 12 B2B vs. B2C differences, all with strong implications for driving better organic growth.