Creating Value for B2B Customers

Creating value for customers, the company and its collaborators has been a centerpiece of my approach to building marketing strategies. In my mind, trying to create a strategy without creating value is akin to a fraud.

Working with business customers is different from working with individual customers. Business customers usually have what we refer to as "rational buyers". The people spending money for a company are buying products that will make their business successful. There is a lot of attention to cost vs benefit of each purchase and those purchases should contribute to the success of their business. In other words, people making buying decisions are paid to make optimal purchase decision and their career depends on making the best purchase.

In many cases there are several individuals involved in the purchase. There is the person or group that will use the product or service being purchased, there is the individual that must approve the purchase and there is the person who must write the check. As companies grow there may be multiple people involved in each stage of the purchase process.

So how do you develop a strategy that will work for building value for these customers while delivering value for your company and its collaborators? Clearly each business customer will have different needs to fulfill its value requirements. 

As you know I am a big fan of the MVOSSTE (Mission, Vision, Objective,Situation Analysis, Strategy, Tactics and Execution) framework. This framework can be used for business and individual customers. Again, it requires the strategist to understand the mission and vision of the organization, have measurable objectives and conduct research as he foundation for strategy building.

The research for business customers, in addition to understanding the market, the size of the market, the customer composition and the financial requirements for success,  should identify the purchase processes that customers use. For small companies, the owner or manager may make all purchasing, approval and check writing decisions. Mid size and larger companies may have central purchasing units or they may have purchase decisions made indepently by each operating unit. Government entities likely have a more bureaucratic approach with separate departments for each phase of the purchase process.

For a company dealing with business customers, it is important to have a marketing strategy built to match the purchasing process used by their set of customers. If your company serves large, small and government businesses, there may be a need formulate layered marketing group for each type of business.

When one person makes all of the decisions building a personal relationship based on trust which will allow real problem solving is critical. That purchasing individual can lay out the value that has to be delivered and what success looks like for their business. 

Building a relationship based on trust and mutual success are still foundational and critical to large business and government companies. Research for these companies will need to clearly define what success looks like for those individuals in the approval process. This may require a more sophisticated account representative that can navigate the various purchase hurdles and create trust among multiple layers in the organization. 

Understanding the purchase process for businesses will be critical for building a strategy using Price, Place, Product and Promotion. Each type of business may require different pricing, different products, different logistics and promotion efforts.

For example, large companies may want lower pricing but have the ability to buy in larger volume over time (contractual agreements). Smaller companies may need a lower price but may be willing to do without some of the product attributes.

In the product category, large  customers may need product guarantees and quality assurance clauses in contracts. Small customers may need technical support. 

In the place category, small customers may need "just in time" product delivery while large customers may need large inventory shipments to widespread warehouses.

 In the promotion category, small companies will probably need a good sales force and periodic product updates and promotions. For large companies, a sophisticated sales force and promotion strategy will likely be required.

A multi-layered strategy will require tactics and execution plans to support each layer.  The MVOSSTE  process will provide the marketing strategist with framework to develop a complete marketing plan. AI can be a helpful tool at every stage of the process.

I have covered the theories and approaches in past posts on this blog and the steps are covered in my latest book Winning Marketing Strategies Using Generative AI.

If you would like some one on one help with the process contact us at gwrresearch.com


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