The essential additional skills for business to business selling competence.
Making higher-value B2B sales is very different from selling to an individual. Business to business selling demands a superset of knowledge, abilities, and practices.
What is business to business selling?
While all selling involves communicating with people, business to business selling is communicating with businesses about their purchase of plant and machinery, infrastructure, improvement solutions, components, consumables, and investments. A B2B seller may represent products or services in one or more of these categories.
How is business to business selling different?
The following are five significant differences between business to business selling and business to consumer selling. Each requires additional knowledge, skills, and habits to navigate successfully.
1. The number of people involved.
The most obvious B2B sales difference is the number of people involved in decisions. Of course, some decisions are made by individuals in isolation. This is true for low-value commodities and sometimes for components. Even for low-value items, several people are usually interested in what is bought.
For business to business selling, I assign buying role labels to six groups: Veto; Official Decision Maker; Assessor; User; Decision Influencer, and Approver.
Each group has a different function in the B2B decision-making process. Although one individual is usually officially empowered to make the decision, this person rarely makes any high-value buying decisions without being sure of support from other roles. To do so risks reputation, career progression, and relationships.
Of these buying roles, which is the most influential?
I'm sure you will have realised that the answer may be different in each sales situation. Why then, are most B2B sales based on conversations with a single person?
Whoever the person is, he or she will have either claimed the decision-maker role or have been granted it by the salesperson.
At best this is perilous because all information is filtered through this one person's perspective. At worst, it means complete exclusion from the customer's buying process.
B2B salespeople need to engage with those in all six buying roles. For large requirements and those impacting a lot of people, there can be dozens of people with significant influence over a buying decision.
2. The budgeting and buying process.
So many B2B sales gallop towards a conclusion without the salesperson having any idea if the customer has set aside enough money to pay for it.
The assumption is that the customer wouldn't waste their time if they didn't have the money. This might be a fair assumption if the salesperson communicates with a budget holder with sufficient funds and complete freedom to spend the money. Except for the smallest of sales, this is seldom the case. Even cash-rich organisations can't spend on a whim. All organisations with more than 20 or so employees, set up elaborate procedures to ensure that money is not spent unless the need and justification are clear, documented, and approved according to established policies and procedures.
Customers can change their minds at any point in their buying process. Budgets can be reduced or diverted for other purposes perceived to have more importance, urgency, or political support. Being satisfied by one of the common budget question fob-off responses such as, "Don't worry about the money", is like driving while wearing a blindfold.
3. The customer's customers and market.
Salespeople who merely know their product or service offering are perceived to run with the crowd. The business decision-makers involved in all but the smallest purchasing decisions are senior executives concerned with the challenges of running their business. They want to discuss solutions that address their needs, problems, and opportunities, not products and services.
A business to business salesperson's credibility with senior executives rests on his or her market and industry knowledge much more than products or services. It is necessary to understand what the customer sells, how they sell it, and who they sell it to if a salesperson is to establish credibility with senior decision-makers.
4. The Customer's Business
When selling to individuals - private citizens - it is appropriate to be a student of human nature. Since we all have first-hand knowledge of human nature, it's not such a great leap to understand another person's perspective.
When selling to a business, it is appropriate to be a student of business and very few salespeople have any experience of managing an enterprise. If business to business salespeople are to have empathy for the challenges faced by the leaders and policymakers they need to influence, gaining an appreciation of what's involved is essential.
More than this, B2B salespeople must equip themselves to assess any business they might sell to just as effectively as a top management consultant. They must make themselves commercially astute.
5. Organisational dynamics (politics).
Politics in a sale to consumers or individuals seldom extends beyond the dynamics between a husband and wife or between family members. People everywhere have different ideas about the best way to get things done and different levels of personal ambition. Politics exists in every business.
Many B2B sales are won and lost without ever having direct contact with the most influential people involved in the decision. Business salespeople need the ability to get things done through others.
At the very least, those who intend to be influential must be able to discern the political ebb and flow in an organisation.
Business to Business Selling Competence
High-value B2B salespeople need to coordinate the efforts of others in their organisation and manage customer interactions throughout the customer's buying process. Some B2B sales take a year or more to conclude and most take at least several weeks. Business to business selling demands vastly more knowledge, many more skills, and much better organisation than for B2C selling.
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Article by Clive Miller
The content on this website, our courses, and assessments are focused on B2B sales. If you need to develop business to business selling skills, we can help. Telephone +44 (0)1392 851500. We will be pleased to discuss your needs or talk through some options. Alternatively, email custserv@salessense.co.uk or use the contact form here.
