② B2B Value Proposition and Solution 1/2
The process of finding the buying center’s pain points and proposing solutions is called the ‘B2B value proposition’. It is how you present value the right way. Which member of the buying center should you approach, with which solution, and who at your company should deliver it? If this isn’t designed correctly, you won’t get the results you want.
Let’s go back to selling coffee machines. Suppose you want to sell a coffee machine to a cafe. When you walk into the nearest cafe, the solution you offer has to differ depending on whether you meet a part-timer or the owner. If you passionately compare the one-year upkeep of their current machine with that of your new product, will that resonate with a part-timer? Not at all. Your pitch would look roughly like this.
“If the old machine takes 5 minutes to brew a cup of coffee, the new one does it in 1 minute, so you get to rest for the remaining time. It’s easy to use because you only have to knock out the grounds once. It has a protective cover, so there’s no risk of burning your hands. Please put in a good word with the owner. Here’s the catalog.”
There’s no need to talk about cost at all. So what solution should you offer the cafe owner? Should you talk about the low price of a new coffee machine? That may not be very appealing. Scrapping the old machine and buying a new one is a switching cost, so the owner may feel the cost burden has actually gone up.
The most appealing offer would be something like, ‘With this new machine, you can cut your staff from 3 people to 1.’ You frame it as a solution to the owner’s pain point: labor costs. You have to understand that a part-timer and a cafe owner want different things, and their interests may even conflict. To persuade a client’s production team, it works best to send your engineer to propose a direct solution. To persuade the purchasing team, your sales rep can approach them in several ways to offer a solution. For the quality team, an engineer and a sales rep can visit together, provide the required documents in advance, and learn their work process to remove their pain points. For the CEO, your executives might arrange a conversation over a round of golf.
Of course, this is only an example. You need to understand the tendencies of each buying center at your client and build a strategy around them. There is no single right answer. But what happens when the value proposition is wrong? Many of the companies that asked me for consulting had run into trouble because they misread their value proposition. Suppose you meet the production team or the plant manager and tell them your equipment can cut the headcount per machine in half… How does that sound to them? You are saying, ‘If you adopt this equipment, half of you won’t be needed.’ And if you tell the purchasing team that you can dramatically improve the production team’s stability, but they should expect higher production costs in the long run, will that pitch land? ‘You have to think about the pain and the gain of the person you are trying to persuade.’ Once you see it, the principle is almost absurdly simple, yet many people keep making the same mistake.
Now let’s look at the B2B buying center in detail. A B2B buying center is divided into as few as 4 to 6 roles, and as many as 8.
Let’s start with the Initiator, the person who brings information about a new supplier. You can also call this person the ‘contact point.’ It might be a client’s sales rep who visits the supplier’s booth at a trade show. If a client employee is the contact point, you can build a persona from that employee’s gender, job function, and so on. If a supplier’s CEO wins a supply opportunity while playing golf with a client executive, that executive becomes the Initiator. And if someone finds you through YouTube or LinkedIn, that person may be the source of information about the new supplier.
The second is the Buyer. Buyers are the counterparts you meet most often in B2B purchasing. They work in the purchasing department, influence supplier selection, and want good prices, fast delivery, and favorable contract terms.
The third role you can never leave out of B2B marketing is the User: the people who actually use the supplier’s product or service once it is delivered. They might be an engineer on the production floor or a contract worker. What matters to them is Value, such as ease of use and productivity.
The fourth is the Gatekeeper. A gatekeeper is, literally, the keeper of the gate. It reminds me of Hodor in the series ‘Game of Thrones,’ who held the door with his own body. It could be a security guard or a secretary. In practice, though, it’s most likely a purchasing or production manager. For example, a section chief or assistant manager on the purchasing team who should issue the PO (purchase order) may keep deliberately stalling. A client’s production manager who is friendly with a competitor may sabotage a test so that it fails. Identifying the gatekeeper is a very important part of B2B sales.
The fifth is the Influencer, someone who shapes the decision. This could be the client’s quality manager, logistics manager, or sales manager. Quality may request a range of documents; logistics may ask about QR codes, box sizes, or pallet materials; and sales may weigh in on product color or design.
Last, and most important, is the buying center member who is the Decider, the most powerful person. This is the person who can say yes or no, the key player. In B2B sales, what matters most is whether you can bring such people into your inner circle.
To be continued