Find Strategic B2B Buyers

 

Strategic Buyers Disrupt The Status Quo

Successful B2B marketers enhance their position in challenging accounts by conveying valuable insights to strategic buyers who covet growth, competitive advantage, image and productivity.  If you can propel strategic buyers to these goals, you will become part of their sphere of influence.

Invest time learning about the specific objectives a strategic buyer wants to attain. This will give you the confidence needed for making a provocative statement related to what you've learned about them.  And, you will have earned the right to position your targeted price relative to this value.

The last thing that motivates a strategic buyer is the budget.  They will always find discretionary dollars for strategic decisions. Once they have created the strategy umbrella under which actions are implemented, they delegate parameters for tactical buyers to implement.

When Confident That The Die Has Been Cast

Once your value proposition has been adopted by a strategic buyer, help tactical buyers save face. Treat them like strategic buyers and prove your capabilities, demonstrate your expertise, and establish a strong relationship.

This sort of strategic selling, if done consistently throughout your company, will raise the barrier to entry for all competitors in search of your targeted accounts, while helping you to penetrate theirs without them even knowing it.

 By John Bernardi

Earn The Right To Charge The Price You Want

Premium Prices Are Not An Entitlement

If the best-in-class company in your category charges a prestige or premium price, this doesn't entitle you to position your price near the rim of their price umbrella unless you can match their brand reputation for an excellent customer experience - before, during and after the sale - including the value derived from their products and services.

If you don't exceed the NetPromoter Score acid test of being told that you consistently deliver total satisfaction and can prove it by the frequency referrals you receive, your price is probably too high.

Cheap Doesn't Mean Low Price

Use Your Words Wisely

Cheap Doesn't Mean Low Price

It's like finger nails scraping a blackboard when I hear someone say that their product is cheaper, or that they are looking to buy something that is cheaper.

Do they really mean that?  Cheap translates to "poor quality", not better value.

If a quality product happens to be available at a lower price, wouldn't it be better to say that it's less expensive or more economical?

With this as the backdrop, can someone tell me what they'd rather buy or sell that is "cheaper" than the alternative?

"Value for Money" Buyers

Procter and Gamble and Kellogg's, inventors of the "value for money concept" in the 1930's, develop their product and pricing strategies around three behavioral personas:

1. Effectiveness buyers want to do more with the same resources
2. Efficiency buyers want to do the same with fewer resources
3. Economizers want to do less with far fewer resources

Through the early 2000's companies have profited from a variety of self-centered pricing strategies i.e. skimming, penetration, customary, etc. Our new digital and global economy has changed all that, so companies that do not directly address one of the three value-for-money behaviors will fail.

As we continue evolving, all buyers will be fully entrenched into one of these behaviors, but on an opportunity by opportunity basis, and not for all of their purchases.

So, if a company is unable to categorize sales opportunities in this fashion, it will not be ready for the different colored light that is visible at the end of the "funnel".