In yesterday’s post I spoke about how the human brain’s resistance to lose, makes the job tougher for a product management person to get a new product into the market. Nobody wants to be seen as a fool in case something goes wrong. The hurt of losing is very acute.

On the other hand there’s a positive side for the marketing person to utilise. Since marketing is applied psychology, you need to use this same concept to your advantage. That’s how brands are built. They are the trust / the promise that a user feels, when buying something from a known name (brand) versus buying an unknown name.

In the B2B space, therefore once you have entered into an account and done an excellent job, you need to spread your tentacles and try to do as many things as possible. Since the customer trusts you, they will prefer to first come to you to check out before going out into the market to find a new vendor.

So while getting into a B2B customer is tough, once there and if you have done an excellent job, the possibility of doing long term business is very high. So when looking at a B2B customer, you need to look at the lifetime value of a customer before taking any decision of refusing an order. Especially if it is at the time of entry into the account, you have to keep this dynamic in mind. Even if you have to make loss on a one time deal, for the first time, you should pick up the deal, provided you are clear that they do a lot of buying where they will involve you. You can then make up for the money you lose, by getting a logo to brag about in your brand building as well as the long term revenue possibilities.

You will also sometimes come across customers who will always want you to lose. For those types of customers, you should be ready to leave them at the earliest.

But coming back, the same feature of the brain which causes us hurt can also be used to increase revenues by ensuring that the customer realises why they trust you versus trying a new vendor.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!