Defining B2B sales

- B2B is short for business to business. It refers to companies whose sales teams sell products and services to other businesses. They play in a broad range of industries. For example, software companies, manufacturing companies, consulting services and even property management to name a few. Now, companies also sell to regular consumers like you and I we refer to that as B2C or business to consumer. Some organizations have both B2B and B2C lines of business. For example, a car manufacturer can sell directly to businesses that need a fleet as well as do people buying a car on their own account. While both B2B and B2C organizations usually have sales teams, the roles of B2B salespeople are generally more complex than those of people selling directly to consumers for a few reasons. First, since B2B buyers are not using their own money they may have procurement rules that they are required to follow. For example, a company might say that their employees can only book travel from a list of approved hotel vendors or that they're required to get at least three price quotes from different vendors when buying a product or service and that they have to take the lowest quote. B2B buyers might also have a defined budget cycle which requires planning ahead. Let's say a company wants to buy a new software system they'll have to incorporate the budget for that software into next year's budget and then wait until next year to buy the software. In this type of case, the B2B salesperson might need to get the prospective customer a quote this year but still have to wait for the sale until next year. On the positive side, knowing that your customer has money earmarked for you for next year can be good for your future pipeline. Another key difference between selling to an individual and to an organization is that in B2B selling you have many influencers to consider in the same sale. The buyer might be a manager in the IT department but the VP of marketing may be the owner of the budget and it's the marketing team members who will need to use the software every day. So you need to build support from each of these groups before getting a signed agreement and need to understand the different criteria of each group and even after the sale is made. If the marketing team members don't use the product and it's sold as a subscription, they might cancel so you need to keep them happy. B2B sales often requires an understanding of complex products, customized services and demanding customers. The complexity and often large deal size makes the work challenging and generally leads to a well paying career path.