Selling an idea to yourself is easy. Selling that idea to somebody else like an investor is hard. Selling a technical product to a business and getting them to pay for it is harder still! Marketing and selling any product or service from one business to another business (B2B) is often called ‘consultative selling’ because it is a complex and lengthy process.

It is complex process because it involves multiple relationships with ‘buying influences’, i.e. anyone involved who can directly or indirectly influence the decision to (or NOT to!) purchase. This in turn makes it a lengthy process because you’ve got to build and manage multiple relationships with people that will all have different needs, agendas and opinions.

The job of a professional salesperson is to manage all of those relationships during the buying process and at some point bring them altogether to help them make a single purchasing decision in their favour. Its for these reasons that making that first sale can take any business an inordinate amount of time, money and effort!

As complicated as this sounds there are some characteristics about B2B selling that helps make the process manageable. One trait is that businesses do not behave like consumers. Businesses do not make impulse purchases during layovers in airports or in shopping malls on a Sunday afternoon. Companies generally only spend money to achieve one of three outcomes:
  1. They want to achieve or accomplish something new.
  2. They need to fix something that has broken or isn’t working.
  3. They want to avoid something bad happening.

A few examples of what they might be for a tech company include:

  • Purchasing a set of injection molding tooling to build a new product
  • Buying a new app or IT system to replace an out of date or inefficient one
  • Hiring a lawyer to review a supply agreement to avoid any misunderstandings

Another important trait about B2B selling is that there is usually one person involved in the buying decision that can make the final call to buy or not. This person is typically the ‘economic buyer’ and could be the purchasing manager or the CEO. Their seniority or influence is strong enough to override others and make the final decision. Managing  the relationship with the economic buyer is therefore a critical aspect of any successful sale because their influence will ultimately determine if a sale is made or not.

Taking into account the three main reasons why businesses buy things and the various people that are involved, directly and indirectly, in the purchasing decision you can ask yourself the following questions to help build up a clearer picture of the field of play and how your product or service fits in:

  • What is the prospect/customer trying to accomplish, fix or avoid?
  • Does our product or solution fulfil that unmet need or not? If not, why not?
  • Who are the buying influences involved in the purchasing decision and are we covering them all?
  • Which one of them will have the final say in whether or not they buy?

The answers to these questions will give you insights and ideas into how you can market and approach your product to prospective customers and clients.

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