Business buyers are just as human as the rest of us. We’re selling to people, not companies. Yes, buying for business is a process and the decision to buy is driven by many factors (accountability, greater risk and the need to persuade multiple stakeholders being just some). It certainly takes longer than buying something for the family. The B2B sales cycle can frequently be very protracted – sometimes up to 18 months or more (unless you’ve been massively lucky), at which point you have to make sure you’re consistently carrying out that dialogue with your target audience across the channels of engagement of their choice, throughout the cycle. And yes, there are rational corporate “needs” but B2B buyers have desires too, and emotions, often disguised and even rationalised, also influence B2B purchase decisions.
By appealing to both the emotion and logic of your buyers, your brand is immediately more attractive, and memorable. B2B marketing really does demand a combination of rational and emotional appeals at specific points of the process.
B2B brands need to overcome the urge to focus on functional capabilities in order to create an emotional connection with their audience. Hard numbers and facts appeal to the rational brain. The abstract brain responds to more abstract concepts such as safety and trust. The tendency within B2B clients is to lead with the ‘WHAT’ and ‘HOW’, which invariably means: ‘We’ve developed this great new product ‘X’, this is what it does and why you need it, this is how we deliver it’. What we need to do is get B2B clients to bring the ‘WHY’ further up the chain.
By relegating the ‘WHY’ (by that I mean ‘why we do what we do’ i.e. our story) to the end – at which point it might not be noticed – or even leaving it out altogether (!!), it’s really no wonder that customers will not connect with a B2B brand on an emotional level.
Positive Thinking’s work with National Car Rental is a great example of this. Significant research highlighted the need to establish a clear point of difference for the brand from their competitors. We repositioned the brand so it stood for more than just great rates and service by creating Invisible Service; a proposition that put customers at the heart of all business The proposition was underpinned by 3 core values; Efficiency, National’s ability to provide effective solutions that integrate with a business’s needs; Transparency by ensuring no hidden costs and Flexibility to adapt products and services to specific needs. ‘In a word. National’ was the campaign that brought to life the service proposition.
So what you should be doing more of is telling the brand story and referencing the target’s business problems in order to create empathy. This should then naturally segue into why X product been developed. Ultimately, it’s much more powerful to communicate that we understand you (the customer) – what you desire and what you need – and hence the reason we delivered ‘X’ product to meet this need.
In this information-loaded world, you can stand out from the crowd and sell more effectively if you concentrate on marketing that tells the world what you believe in and ‘why’ you’re in the business that you’re in. By doing that effectively you can get prospects excited and engaged. It’s mandatory to communicate and answer functional needs – the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. But when you can also communicate and differentiate your B2B brand by appealing to B2B buyers’ wants and beliefs, you make a much more compelling – and winning – sales pitch.
Annette Simmons’ Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins includes a great quote:
“People don’t want information. They are up to their eyeballs in information. They want faith – faith in you, your goals, your success, in the story you tell.”
