Sonia Simone of  Remarkable Communication recently posted this list on her blog. Thanks to B2B Social Media for highlighting it. 

Sadly, the concept of customer focus or of being customer-centric has become badly tarnished.

A lot of the blame for this lies with marketers and comms agencies who produce ludicrous slogans that claim devotion to customer’s interests: just think about all the syrupy guff that comes out of the financial services sector.

For companies who want to cultivate customers – rather than harvest them – an understanding of what they want will always boost the bottom line.

Using Sonia’s list, I reckon there’s a really useful exercise here for anyone involved with customers:

• divide the list into five sets of ten
• rank each set of ten in their order of importance
• act accordingly…

Fifty things customers wish you knew. From Sonia Simone of  Remarkable Communication

1. I don’t need you to be perfect, but I do need to know I can rely on you.
2. Telling me what you don’t know makes me trust you.
3. It means a lot when you take the time to thank me for my business or a referral.
4. You don’t need to do all that much to be a superhero. Just do exactly what you say you will do.
5. A friendly voice on the other side of the phone means more than you can imagine.
6. Your employees treat me about as well as you treat them.
7. I don’t mind spending the money, as long as I feel I’m getting real value.
8. My life is really stressful. If you can reduce that stress, you become immensely valuable to me.
9. I want to tell you what would make this relationship better for me. Why don’t you ever ask me?
10. I don’t understand a lot of the messages you send me. Can you make them clearer?
11. My life is very complicated. If you make it easy for me to just buy a simple all-in-one package that I can use without learning anything, I’ll take it and be grateful. (I’ll even pay a premium for it.)
12. I want to trust you, but it’s hard for me to trust anyone.
13. Once you’ve won my trust and loyalty, the truth is you can screw up once in awhile and I will forgive you. If I don’t think you’re taking me for granted, that is.
14.  When I refer my friends and you give them exceptional service, that makes me look and feel smart. I love that.
15.  I spend an awful lot of time being scared to death.
16.  The wealthier I get, the more I like free stuff.
17.  A lot of the time, I secretly feel like a lost little kid. I don’t admit it, but I want to be taken care of.
18.  I’m lousy at admitting I was wrong, but I respect you when you do it.
19.  I like to get little goodies no one else is getting.
20.  I don’t understand how to use your Web site, but I can’t admit that because it would make me feel dumb.
21.  There’s no worse feeling than feeling like I was suckered into trusting you. If I’m screaming at you or one of your employees, that feeling is probably behind it somewhere.
22.  Our relationship isn’t equal and it never will be.
23. I get crazy jealous if I think you love another customer more than you love me.
24.  I don’t have any interest in your excuses. In fact, I usually don’t notice them at all, and if I do, they annoy me.
25.  I find myself endlessly fascinating.
26.  I hate salespeople, but I really like to buy things.
27.  I only like to communicate over the phone/Web/mail and I hate when you try to make me communicate with you over the mail/phone/Web.
28.  I want to buy your product, but I need you to help me justify it to myself.
29.  There’s something in my life I’m afraid of losing. If you can make me feel like you’ve protected it for me, my gratitude will be intense and eternal.
30.  I’ll give you anything you ask if you can help me not feel silly.
31. I want you to do the hard work for me. Even better if I can get all the credit.
32. I’d rather do it the convoluted hard way than learn something new.
33. I’d love to know something about your product that I could use to brag at a dinner party.
34. I have the attention span of a goldfish. Go too long without contacting me and I’ll simply forget you exist.
35. Money is no object when it comes to my obsessions.
36. What you think you’re good at is not what you’re good at. Ask me, and I’ll tell you what you do better than anyone else.
37. I like it when I feel like you’re talking just to me.
38. It infuriates me when you answer the phone while I’m talking with you face-to-face.
39. Embarrassment scares me more than death.
40. I’m lazier than I would ever admit.
41. I’m more selfish than I would ever admit.
42. I’m more vain than I would ever admit.
43. I’m more insecure than I would ever admit.
44. Despite all that, I secretly think I’m a better person than most people. Help me believe that and we’ll be fast friends.
45. I believe I deserve much more than I’m getting.
46. I want to tell you everything you need to know in order to sell to me, but I’m lazy. Make it easy enough and I will. (Especially if you flatter me a little.)
47. I don’t know what I want most of the time. You need to figure it out for me.
48. I mostly daydream about making life better for myself, but I’ll take action to keep from losing what’s mine.
49. I believe that most of what’s wrong in my life is someone else’s fault. Let me keep that cozy illusion and I’ll believe anything you say.
50. It really is all about me.

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Back to The Long Hello - making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Mapping audiences and their connectivity within a ‘sphere of influence’ is the first step in creating a marcoms strategy that gets the right messages to the right people 

Using the sphere to motivate buyers 

Marketers can use the sphere of influence to target the bullseye – the centre of the market that contains buying decision makers – BDMs. 

Our goal is to ensure that each audience has a positive influence on the centre, that their opinions will confirm the validity of our brand messages and motivate consistent buying decisions. 

It’s about driving accurate perceptions of the brand into the place they matter most: the world of BDMs. 

Populating the sphere 

The graphic highlights some of the audiences typically found in B2B markets. It could certainly contain others, such as wholesalers and agents; the general public; and special interest groups or lobbies. 

Any audience within the overall market that influences the centre – either directly or indirectly via another audience – should be included within your sphere. 

Having populated the sphere, it’s useful to look at how the audiences are connected and how they might influence one another. 

Assessing the significance of the influence 

To understand this, marketers need to be talking to the centre – the BDMs within the customer base. As mentioned in other posts on The Long Hello, marketers need to get out and about amongst these people and find out who is influencing their decisions and why this matters. 

This is important because customers are not identical – buying motivators will vary from one customer to the next. There will certainly be some generic, commercial influences in terms of the Five Factors of Value, but there will also be some (surprising) variations in the degrees of influence exerted by different audiences within the overall market. 

All of this information can be mapped-out on the sphere. You may find that individual customers warrant their own sphere – a dedicated map that details how buying decisions are influenced and made within that particular company. 

Who’s influencing the audiences? 

Just as marketers need to know who’s influencing BDMs, we also need to know how brand perceptions are being created within individual audiences. There’s more ‘fieldwork’ for marketers here in terms of meeting these people and building an ongoing understanding of how they relate to the brand. 

In particular, marketers need to be alert to any variance between brand perceptions and brand messages. If the two are not aligned, then you need to act in order to adjust this imbalance by using the appropriate tools in marketing’s portfolio. And these soundings and adjustments need to be taken on a continual basis in order to ensure that perceptions in the overall market are in line with the brand messages you are delivering.

Related posts:

Managing brand perceptions

Brands build business

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

The minibook addresses key issues that anyone working in marketing may face with B2B brands. It’s easy to understand and uses clear examples of the challenges and solutions in a logical order. 

B2B Marketing for Dummies ends with Ten Top Tips for success in B2B marketing:

Be patient. Remember that people in business don’t buy on impulse – they carefully consider purchases and consult multiple stakeholders. 

Consider your Web of Influence. Always create a map of your market to help you make the best B2B marketing decisions. 

Be thoroughly strategic. Establish how your brand distinguishes itself from the rest of the pack with a brand planning process that leaves no question unanswered. 

Be focused. Create a strategic proposition that makes your brand irresistible over the competition. 

Prioritise your market. Use the Web of Influence to pinpoint the decision makers who’ll give you the best return for your marketing investment. 

Be choosy. Don’t waste time and money on marketing placed in the wrong channels. 

Be positively different. Show people their working world in a way they’ve never seen, and they’ll want to know more. 

Have multi-dimensional ideas. Remember that you need to satisfy many different stakeholders, so you need creative ideas that are flexible. 

Make the most of your website. Ensure that your site caters for all of your customers and tracks their activity so you can use that information for constant improvement. 

Tap into social media. Don’t get left behind – use social media networks to influence your markets! 

B2B Marketing for Dummies was produced by IAS b2b Marketing and John Wiley & Sons, publishers of the ‘For Dummies’ guides. Download a copy at http://www.b2bfordummies.com/

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

This means it’s essential to generate brand messages that are not only credible, relevant and compelling, but also highly reassuring to each component of your overall market.

The following extract is from an article by Cees Bruggemans, Chief Economist of First National Bank. Register for his free e-mail articles on www.fnb.co.za/economics

The outlook for 2010 should production-wise see a steady recovery in manufacturing activity, probably increasing at a pace of 5% plus. Domestic motor vehicle sales are projected to grow by 7%, with subsidiary parts of the motor trade (used cars, parts and accessories) showing even firmer recovery.

Car exports should gain 30% and total vehicle production should grow by 17% in 2010, importantly supporting manufacturing output gains. 

Mining, retail sales, building activity and electricity are more difficult to call. Given global recovery trends, mining volumes should rise strongly unless held back by sector-specific reasons. Electricity output should follow in its wake. But it is not obvious how strong these tendencies may prove to be. 

Residential building activity should show some gains off very low base levels, even as non-residential activity for now keeps tailing off. Construction should benefit from large turnkey projects (power stations, road building) but one wonders about political tensions at local government level further disrupting activity levels as the political cycle moves from one set of elections to the next.   

Along with steady gains in government employment levels, and a more modest revival in private service activity generally, household incomes should be rising this year. This should underwrite an upturn in retail sales volumes, even if mostly jobless growth for now may remain a drag on non-durable consumption recovery. 

Overall, one is pressed to assume growth modesty, if only because there is so much to be modest about. 

A more vigorous recovery profile would require a quicker uptake in business risk-taking, a greater appetite among banks to grant credit and for consumers to increase their debt uptake, and a faster revival in job growth, with fewer sector-specific (mining, construction) drags. 

Yet such renewed vigour is to be shown rather than assumed, even if the typical cyclical turn from recession to recovery is with us. And thus we do well to allow for a slow GDP growth coach in the 1.5%-2.5% range, until ‘surprised’ by greater vigour. Hopefully it won’t keep us waiting too long. But then again who can say? 

It perhaps does create scope for some more policy support, provided some growth sacrifice isn’t deliberate policy in order to keep the private debt bulge, import bill and inflation bias contained longer term within more acceptable ranges than encountered during 2004-2007.

Then again the economy looks far from entering another outperformance binge shortly, and at least the debt bulge and import bills should remain naturally contained for the time being while the ‘new’ credit and consumption disciplines and fixed investment hesitancy prevail.

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Promoting the business, professional and technical magazines published by McGraw Hill, the message is as fresh and relevant today as it was fifty years ago: sales start before your salesman calls.

In July this year, the Business Marketing Association staged a ‘live’ version of the ad 

‘The Man In The Chair – Live’ is well worth watching because it tells it like it is: B2B customers and markets need to know about your company, what you are selling, how it will help them and why they should believe you. And all of that comes before even considering to buy from you. 

The graphic below is from a whitepaper by Tippit Inc and it illustrates the phased nature of the B2B buying process. It’s such an important graphic for marketers because it provides a roadmap for developing and positioning marcoms that are relevant for each phase in the buying process - ranging from initial awareness through to purchasing and beyond.

Working with funnels

The concept of marketing and sales funnels is not new: essentially they are a development of AIDA and the Hierarchy of Effects which categorise the buying phases as: Awareness, Interest, Evaluation, Desire/Conviction, Action/Purchase. Nowadays, its usual to add something like ‘Support’ and ‘Retention’ to account for maintaining loyalty in the post-purchase phase.

The shape of a funnel will vary according to two main factors: the amount of buyers in the market; and the timescale of the sales cycle. Markets with lots of buyers have funnels with wide openings or mouths – so that you can ‘pour-in’ lots of potential buyers:

 Time

From a marketing perspective, Tippit puts it like this:

The funnel is the most commonly used metaphor to describe B2B sales cycles. But funnels come in dif­ferent shapes and sizes depending on the nature of your target market. For example, the complexity of a purchasing decision guides the frequency and breadth of interactions between buyers and sellers. This, in turn, determines the shape of the funnel.

To be a successful marketer, it’s important to understand how certain variables shape the funnel, and what type of funnel governs your market. This understanding can help marketing professionals like you choose the most effective set of marketing tactics for your organization’s goals.

Using the funnel to segment marketing messages: the Perception Cycle

In the Tippit whitepaper, ‘buyer activity’ is categorised or segmented as follows: 

• Browsing
  information gathering as normal part of job
• Downloading
  business opportunity or challenge identified
• Project
  business case for the product or service established
• Shortlist
  qualified vendors selected
• Decision
  purchase is made

Marketers can use the categories to segment the type of messages that are most relevant in the perception cycle.

The perception cycle is the market’s process of acquiring information that builds associations and opinions about a brand and what it represents.  

First impressions

In the ‘awareness’ phase, buyers are gathering information that begins to build their knowledge about a subject and its related products and services.

They are starting with a blank canvas and are forming opinions and perceptions. This process of discovery is a critical point in the perception cycle because first impressions really do matter.

This is a major opportunity for marketers to influence first impressions or to shift initial perceptions that have not yet become entrenched. For example, someone searching the web is likely to fall into the ‘awareness’ category, as opposed to someone who goes straight to your site because they already know of you – perhaps from an ad they just saw. 

Will a Google search find you? And if it does, what will they find there? Will it be relevant and what further action will it motivate?

Most importantly, will it keep them in your funnel?

In the funnel: five-by-five

Wikipedia defines the term ‘five-by-five’ as: ‘a signal that has excellent strength and perfect clarity - the most understandable signal possible.’

As the funnel narrows – not everyone who is ‘aware’ converts to a buyer - the relevance of marcoms messages and the accuracy of their positioning need to be increased.  

Equally, as the funnel narrows, the influence of those still in the funnel increases: at some point, the influence will be sufficiently strong to sanction the purchase. Some people will only fully enter the funnel at an advanced stage of the sales cycle – perhaps towards the end of the Project and Shortlist phases once their colleagues have already completed the processes of Awareness and Consideration.  

Very often, these late-entrants hold the purchasing authority. They might be guided by the opinions of others, but they will still draw their own conclusions and make their own judgements – as decision-makers, that’s what they do.

At this point in the cycle, the relevance of your message is critical. Excellent strength, perfect clarity and the most understandable signal possible: concise and compelling.

Relevance and positioning: what are you saying in the funnel and how are you saying it?

Two earlier posts, Building brand relationships and B2B buying: What? How? Who?, focus on identifying audiences within B2B markets and how to create relevant messages for them.

Having established the various audiences in the funnel, it’s a relatively easy task to identify how to communicate with them across the marketing portfolio: in essence, a detailed knowledge of each audience within the overall market will provide guidelines for the most effective means to communicate with them.

It all comes back to relevance: relevant message, relevant medium – five-by-five.

Working your way through the marcoms funnel

By their nature, B2B funnels are much narrower than those in B2C. However, not all your products and services will necessarily fall into the same-shaped funnel. As a generalisation, B2B tunnels will become narrower as the complexity and cost of your products and services increases.

Here’s what Tippit has to say about managing communications in narrow funnels:

Target hard-to-reach buyers
Hone in on key buyers in decision committees by profiling the organization. This means get­ting resourceful and creative to uncover and connect with influencers who would benefit from your remarkable content and, ultimately, your offerings.

Create and distribute remarkable content
A library of marketing assets is critical for complex and expensive purchases with long sales cycles. Your content must educate and convince buyers that your solution is proven and makes sound business sense to them and others in the decision committee.

Execute a multi-channel pursuit
Engage buyers with a combination of communication techniques (online retargeting, email, and phone all work well). Use multiple touches to deliver to sales a verified list from within a hard-to-reach target.

Managing the ‘perception cycle’ for higher ROI

B2B marcoms are a cycle of interactions with your market that should be carefully balanced so that the right message is getting to the right people at the right time.

By thinking in terms of a funnel, marketers can raise ROI by increasing the relevance of their messages and targeting them more accurately. And this approach certainly brings structure to managing the five basic principles of creating and presenting marketing communications: what, who, how, when and where.

Click on the link below to download the whitepaper from Tippit Inc

What’s the Shape of Your Funnel? Why funnel shape means everything in B2B marketing

Read more on creating and positioning marcoms:

Market reflections: managing brand perceptions

Leveraging B2B’s buying motivators - results-driven marcoms     

Marcoms: Outcomes are the differentiators - how outcomes create ‘Value’

Preventing price pressure - the influence on ‘Value’ on B2B buying

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

In the rush for instant marketing gratification, don’t trample the rules!

By Tim Hazlehurst
IAS b2b Marketing

Now that the B2B marketing chips are down, it is easy for marketers to be drawn into tempting but subjective routes that are offering sales salvation when the board is desperate for results.

A lot of people (Bob Lauterborn, Jack Trout and Michael Treacy etc.) spent a lot of time researching, identifying and highlighting certain fundamental rules. Rules about the marketing process. Rules that can be accelerated but not ignored! 

Technological and tactical advances can lead you astray

I’ve seen communication tactics evolve from the commercial traveller with the Bell and Howell presentation, through video and direct mail, to the wonders of the digital age. All of them have created tremendous opportunities and made our discipline more sophisticated and enjoyable.

But the rules of engagement are still the same!

So, when you are bombarded with better tactical solutions from providers (often with vested interest as it’s where they specialize), such as: 

• Demand generation
• Online rather than offline
• e-mail campaigns
• C R M solutions
• Lead Nurturing
• Data Management

… all promising the business uplift you crave, don’t forget the established, unchanging rules!

1. The Rule of Brand Strength

There is a direct correlation between your Brand Strength and your ability to attract and convert enquiries

It may be more efficient now but, through many years’ measurement and experimentation, we have proven irrefutably the correlation between attraction and conversion and your brand strength.

2. The Rule of Relevance

In the early 80s I wrote a paper called “The Face in the Crowd”. We had proved that segmented direct marketing produced 3x more response than non-segmented. Since then, every technological development has enhanced the opportunity/ability to enter into meaningful dialogue with your clients and prospects to enhance your brand strength.

And when you appreciate that “Your Brand is the Sum of your Contact” you understand why planning and integrating ALL your contact is crucial for maximising your relationship building.

3. The Rule of the Relationship Timeline

The lure of leads can drive logic out of the process. The process is to coax prospects along a relationship timeline which can be accelerated but not circumnavigated.

Of course the timeline operates differently for repetitive, comparatively low cost specifications and purchases, to infrequent capital purchases, but it operates nevertheless.

I always asked prospective clients’ Sales Directors how long their company’s timeline was and the average answer was 1-2 years… “So why do you send your sales people to call on a prospect whom you have never been in contact with before and why are you disappointed when they don’t sell!” would be my follow up remark – which won me begrudging respect more than it did friends!

4. The Rule of the Sales & Marketing Disconnect

It always exists. Sometimes to the complete detriment of the Relationship Timeline. Sometimes below the surface. But an Integrated Contact Strategy understood and enthused about by all the brand’s touchpoints is the solution to minimising this disconnect.

Make sure the CEO champions this.

5. The Rule of Process Efficiency

The secret of optimum lead conversion/market share gain/business growth (call it what you will) is about minimising the timeline. This is where picking the right tactical mixes to suit individual audiences (based on constant evaluation of individual’s contact preferences and dialogue mix historic performance) is crucial.

But beware going to a Bow and Arrow maker and asking them what weapons you should use for your next attack!

6. The Rule of Creativity

Nothing minimises the Timeline more than stunning, relevant and engaging creativity. Using Creativity reasoned out in accordance with these 6 rules of B2B Marketing delivers the maximum results.

And a thought on the current environment: it would be easy for the under-pressure Marketing Director to opt for lower-cost lead generation solutions but the sobering fact is that buyers and specifiers are craving more sincere, genuine relationships, in addition to lower cost and higher value.

Who can blame them? Their needs are as great as yours.

Stick to the rules to succeed (or survive). 80% won’t. But then, as a rule, only 20% truly succeed anytime.

Read the original article at B2B Marketing Magazine Online

More on B2B fundamentals:

The Man in the Chair – well worth watching on YouTube      Getting real in B2B – what do you represent?

The WOMsta Monsta – Social Media and B2B     

In B2B, outcomes are the differentiators - outcomes make the difference

Cultivate consistent customers, prevent price pressure - CCC & PPP: the two objectives of B2B marketing

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

One reason why marketing doesn’t always pull its weight in B2B is that there is often such a strong emphasis on relationships with customers. Developing and sustaining these relationships can shift attention from managing the brand’s relationship with the overall market. And this can undermine the potential to strengthen sales, margins and customer loyalty. 

B2B is all about relationships. Isn’t it? 

Yes it is. But which ones? The ways in which a B2B company is regarded by the market as a whole can have a powerful influence on buying decisions. 

The impact of this influence on buying decisions is proportional to the complexity and cost of a company’s products and services. As complexity and cost rises, so too does the influence of the overall market. 

Looking beyond the sales relationship 

Galen de Young of prominent American agency, Proteus B2B Marketing, says, “Growing your existing business with a particular customer or client may very well be about cultivating the relationship, but getting customers in the first place is not.” 

“Relationships with prospects will almost never swing a sweet deal your way. If your ability to get in the door – to get to the table – relies upon your relationship with the prospect, you might get the job if your price is the same as your competitors’. If your price is higher, your prospect might say he’ll give it to you if you can get your price in line. Is that really what you want?”

Looking at the market as a whole: the world beyond customers 

An earlier post looked at the commercial significance of ‘market reflections’ and how these can be positively-influenced by consistent, relevant brand-messages. In addition to direct customers or end users, B2B markets often contain many components:

• distributors and wholesalers
• overall solution-providers
• specialist consultancies or professions
• support and service providers 
• user-groups
• financial analysts
• commentators in the media
• standards boards and regulators
• industry associations and the general public

Each of these represents a market reflection - the way the brand is seen by individual components of its market.

Brand-based relationships: opening doors, protecting margins, maintaining loyalty

The idea of ‘The Long Hello’ is to cultivate market reflections that continuously reinforce consistent, positive perceptions of your company. 

And this positioning can only be achieved through marcoms that deliver brand-messages that are relevant to each component of the market.  In terms of the results this approach delivers, Galen de Young from Proteus puts it this way: 

Properly positioned companies don’t have to sell. They merely have to facilitate the buying process.

“If your company is well positioned in the marketplace – if it’s seen as being one of the leading suppliers of specific solutions and a company for which there are few credible substitutes in the market – you’ll not only get to the table quickly and easily, you’ll be proactively invited.”

“You’ll also protect your margins. Profit margin is a function of positioning. Properly positioned companies don’t play the low-price game. They don’t have to. Their prospects see them as having something different. Their prospects don’t have to be convinced; their prospects want to buy.”

Read the full Proteus article

Related posts: 

Recession marketing. No such thing?      Brands are dead. Brands are more important than ever

Marcoms: leveraging B2B’s buying motivators      PR & B2B. The perfect couple

Marcoms: outcomes are the differentiators

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

These are the criteria that influence and motivate B2B buying decisions. This extract from an ealier post looks at analysing how products, services and processes create Value in relation to each of the Five Factors.

It is a simple approach, but it produces bottom line results: marketers can deliver fact-based messages that go to the heart of what B2B markets are really buying.

Analysing Value

Begin by choosing a product or service and the way in which it is supplied. Then start a review of your selection in relation to the definitions for each Value Factor – as listed a little way below.

This review should include a performance-ranking of 1 to 5, with 1 being ‘poor’ and 5 being ‘exceptional’. By exceptional, I mean being at least equal to your competitors or better than them.

Here’s an example for the first definition under ‘Response’: if you think you beat the competition in listening to how you affect customer’s success, then you score a 5.  But, you need to support your ranking with a credible statement as to why you should score a 5 – as to why you excel… 

To help get the process started, here’s the type of questions you should perhaps be asking in terms of ‘Response’: 

• How do you identify and then meet your customers’ needs?  
• Who manages your communications with customers and what are the results of this communication? 
• In terms of customer expectations, how do you rate yourselves at fixing problems and delivering the outcomes the customer wants? 
• How does your performance in these areas compare with your competition? 

The Five Factors of Value:

1.  Response

• Continual communication with customers: listen to how you affect their success
• Identify and meet changing customer needs
• Speed of problem solving and solution delivery 

2.  Service

• Accessibility: an open and reassuring organisation
• Clear product information and project status
• Pro-active and innovative 

3.  Time

• Competitive lead times
• Dependable
• Consistent delivery format 

4.  Quality

• Consistent products, services and processes
• Meets the brief or specifications: fit-for-purpose
• Achieves the customer’s operational goal 

5.  Price

• Competitive
• Rational
• Structured 

My suggestion is to begin by involving your sales team in the analysis. Then, once you have built a series of rankings and supporting statements, begin broadening the evaluation process to include opinions from other core functions such as finance, technical, production and distribution. 

It’s an enlightening process and is the first step on building an understanding of how to accurately address B2B’s five buying motivators.

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

All marketers understand the need for getting the right messages to the right people. What’s not so straightforward is defining the messages and who should be getting them.

Marketers need to be looking at what their market is buying, because B2B marketing is not about selling, it’s about buying.

An incisive approach to defining relevant and motivating messages is to identify how B2B products, services and processes contribute to customers’ success. As marketers wishing to understand buying motivators, we need to look at what is being bought, how it affects customers’ success, and who is buying it: the What-How-Who of Buying.  

What motivates buying in B2B? Fear?

A lot has been written about how fear is a key buying motivator in B2B – fear of not making the right choices and the subsequent consequences for those involved in the buying decision. The old adage that it’s safe to buy IBM is often trotted out to support the argument that, in B2B, fear is the key. And this is further supported by the idea that minimising fear by minimising risk is a key element in successful B2B marketing.

Surely, this can’t be true in the age of the information superhighway, where customers and user-groups are swapping experiences and opinions on the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter? Given all the information that is available about B2B companies and their products and services, I’d agree that confusion may be present in the buying process, but I’m finding it hard to accept that fear is still a factor.

No. Fear does not motivate B2B buying – Value does.

Communicating the Value produced by products, services and processes is a sure-fire way to differentiate a B2B company from its competitors. It’s also a guaranteed way to cut through confusion in a rational way that will motivate the market to listen and to buy. 

In B2B, Value comprises Five Factors: Response, Service, Time, Quality and Price. These are the criteria that influence and motivate B2B buying decisions. In order for marketers to address these criteria – to start ‘talking’ to the motivators – we need to analyse how products, services and processes deliver Value in relation to each of the Factors.

How to start analysing Value

Begin by choosing a product or service and the way in which it is supplied. Then start a review of your selection in terms of the definitions for each Value Factor, as listed a little way below.

This review should include a performance-ranking of 1 to 5, with 1 being ‘poor’ and 5 being ‘exceptional’. By exceptional, I mean being at least equal to your competitors or better than them. 

Here’s an example for ‘Response’: if you think you’re better than the competition in listening to how you affect customer’s success, then you score a 5. 

But: you need to support your ranking with an honest statement as to why you should score a 5… To help get the process started, here’s the type of questions you should perhaps be asking around ‘Response’:

• How do you identify and then meet your customers’ needs?
• Who manages your communications with customers and what are the results of this communication?
• In terms of customer expectations, how do you rate yourselves at fixing problems and delivering the outcomes the customer wants? 
• How does your performance in these areas compare with your competition?

The Five Factors of Value:

1.  Response

• Continual communication with customers: listen to how you affect their success
• Identify and meet changing customer needs
• Speed of problem solving and solution delivery

 2.  Service

• Accessibility: an open and reassuring organisation
• Clear product information and project status
• Pro-active and innovative

 3.  Time

• Competitive lead times
• Dependable
• Consistent delivery format

 4.  Quality

• Consistent products, services and processes
• Meets the brief or specifications: fit-for-purpose
• Achieves the customer’s operational goal

 5.  Price

• Competitive
• Rational
• Structured

My suggestion is to begin by involving senior sales people in the analysis. Then, once you have built a series of rankings and supporting statements, begin broadening the process by canvassing opinions from other core functions such as finance, technical, production and distribution. 

It is a simple approach, but it produces bottom line results: marketers can deliver fact-based messages that go to the heart of what B2B markets are really buying.

It’s also an enlightening process and is the first step on building an understanding of how to produce marketing messages that constantly address B2B’s five buying motivators.

The results will also start to generate guidelines as to the audiences that should be getting these messages.

Read more about Value in B2B marketing:

How Value protects margins      Marketing is not about selling, it’s about buying

Outcomes make the difference      The commercial power of brands in B2B

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line