Oscar Torres is the director of Esade's Executive Education Program B2B Management.
I have always recommended that owners and CEOs of B2B companies bear in mind, in the way they organize and run their businesses, the idiosyncrasies of the B2B business.
Fundamentally, this means remembering the key difference between selling to consumers and selling to a company. When a company manager buys something, he or she buys with someone else's money and therefore buys while measuring the risk of working with us. This simple detail changes everything.
In my opinion, Philip Kotler's 4Ps of the marketing mix work for B2C but are less applicable to B2B relationships. Neither the product, nor the price, nor the place of sale, nor any incentives to buy will be relevant for the manager who is gambling on whether to trust us. Instead, what is relevant is what I baptized years ago as the ‘B2B mix’, in which it is not so much the product, but the solution to a specific problem; not so much the brand, but the trust that a company generates; and, above all, the people with whom they interact during the decision-making process.
This requires the general management of a B2B company to implement a management model that takes this idiosyncrasy into account. In an earlier article, I argued that this management model must consider that:
- We are in what I call a ‘people business’, as trust in people is a key part of what the customer values when making their decision;
- We must see the B2B relationship as a process that enables us to improve business generation;
- Managing must use data to monitor the behavior and efforts of our teams to help the client;
- It is essential to understand that B2B marketing differs from B2C marketing;
- We do not sell products but a specific value for a specific context.
Considering these aspects when managing our company will help us generate a better, more predictable, and scalable business.
But what can go wrong?
After many years of sharing this management model with owners and CEOs of B2B companies, the feedback from many of those who successfully implemented the model is that the great challenge was not the model itself, but the resistance encountered in the culture of their organization. This reminds us of Peter Drucker's well-known quote that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. However, in my opinion, these words are quite negative and only describe a situation rather than providing a solution. I prefer to put it this way: strategy defines the why, culture enables it.
In other words, strategy defines the reason for change, and culture facilitates change.
If culture is essential to make things happen, let's take culture by the horns and make it work for us, don’t you agree?
A company's culture is difficult to describe, but it is intimately related to the behavior of those who lead, which in turn is reflected in the mindset of those who execute. The culture of a company travels top-down. Employees will consider acceptable the behavior they see in their managers.
If we think of a Van Gogh landscape, we can immediately differentiate it from any other artist by the details that the painter used to create it. In B2B, a differentiating aspect, and consequently a key to compete, is the behavior of our professionals when in front of the client. Our B2B culture means our client either sees us as a great Van Gogh, or just another one in the crowd.
We should be asking ourselves: is a B2B culture needed? In my opinion, we should reflect on the importance of developing a culture that brings value to the B2B relationship, and consequently builds trust when the decision-maker takes the risk of trusting ‘the B2B mix’ (that is, our solution, our company, and our people).
But can a culture adapted to B2B build trust?
It undoubtedly will when the mindset of the people in the team understands that ‘selling’ is just ‘helping’ and we must make an intellectual effort to understand the customer's context. It is a mindset that forces us to be more analytical in our mission and so help and deliver contextual value, and it must come from the top down.
Our clients cannot infer the mentality of our teams, but clients can interpret their behavior.
And I can assure you that their behavior in the field and towards the customer either generates trust or mistrust.
When our salespeople approach a customer by talking about the product or our company, they are seen as egotistical and fail to generate trust. However, when they demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the problem, they are seen as more credible and trustworthy, and this adds value to the B2B relationship. Managers in a B2B company must assess the behavior of their professionals because it is part of what the customer assesses.
In addition, when scaling our business across channels, we need to consider cultural fit, as I discussed in another article.
I often say: sellers must sell, sales managers make sellers, and CEOs create the conditions. Salespeople must know how to sell, but this will only happen if we have a sales manager who knows how to develop good salespeople. This will be one of the conditions that general management must consider when creating a management model adapted to the idiosyncrasies of B2B. The aim must be to foster a B2B culture that builds trust into the solution, the company, and the people – and so minimizes the element of risk in the client’s decision.
Ultimately, the ability of B2B professionals to build trust is intimately linked to the B2B culture, and this reflects the mindset and behavior of management. Companies get the people they deserve. Therefore, if we want to generate a better, more predictable, and scalable business, we must build a system that educates in the values of B2B culture.
