In the last two posts I had written about building trust and reducing fear in the B2B marketplace.

One of the best ways to build trust is to educate the customer. But you can’t educate the customer if you cannot think like them and understand the conversation going on in their mind (Robbert Collier said that). Only if you can understand the questions they could have, when wanting to buy something for which you have a product / service , will you be able to educate them.

In B2B scenarios typically cycle times are quite large, especially for things which are part of a plan. There are some things which are needed because of some emergency and get done quickly. Otherwise the work on a B2B project could start about 3-6 months before they actually place an order.

Depending on the size of the companies you are targeting, the level of the person who would be looking for the information will change. Also in very large organisations, they may actually employ specialised consultants for helping them on certain decisions in choosing vendors.

The other challenge is that until you have some amazing new Hitech gizmo, chances are that they may already have a vendor providing those product or services . If that be the case, then the kind of education that you will need to provide also changes.

Today information is available freely to everyone. Large companies employ hundreds of employees, some of whom can be tasked to do the research and fetch the information. What is needed by the leaders is actionable guidance. This makes the task of educating a B2B customer tougher.

If you provide products or services that are widely available and the customer already has an incumbent, then your education should be directed more towards educating for creating dissonance. Typically all the issues that you have seen customers face before they started using you.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!