Product development is an important part of your business development as you seek to achieve B2B sales to help grow your startup or SME.
However, there is a fundamental principle that you must keep in mind as you develop products and solutions:
Buyers really don’t care about your product!
To get business customers to buy from your startup or SME, you must go beyond thinking about features and technologies.
You must understand and deliver to the broader needs of business customers—Business Buyers.
Business Buyers are looking for product and service providers that:
They seek guidance and assistance in pretty their key problems, priorities and challenges.
These can be strategic, operational or financial in nature. They often relate to what I call the “BIG 3”
- Increase revenues
- Decrease costs, risks
- Increase customer retention
Business Buyers are looking for product and service providers that:
- Educate Them: Provide advice, expertise and points of view to help them address their key priorities, objectives and challenges
- Help Them: Complete their buying jobs
B2B buying is complex and B2B buying jobs will typically involve:
- Multiple Discussion Makers (as many as 6-8 8 typically in larger organisations) using
- Multiple Information Sources (B2B buyers use on average 3-5 sources)
- Multiple/Discrete Buying Jobs:
- Problem Identification
- Solution Exploration
- Requirements Building
- Supplier Selection
- Consensus
Therefore, the ultimate aim of your product development strategy is to:
Make it easy for business buyers to buy.
Often referred to by Sales coaches and experts as buyer enablement. This achieved by providing:
Examples of resources and tools to educate buyers and help with their purchase decision making include:
- Case studies
- Demonstrations
- Free Trials
- Peer to Peer Engagement
- Customer References
- Diagnostic Tools
- Performance Statistics
The key to determining which tools, activities and resources are right for the customers (and buyers!) you are targeting is by listening to your business customers.
Watch out for buying risks and inhibitors
When developing tools and resources to advise and help business buyers with the buying decision process, be sure to address any risks, concerns or inhibitors that may deter business buyers from wanting to buy.
Inhibitors could pertain to matters such as service levels, faults, damaged or poor product and breakdowns that could occur with your product or service offerings.
A good way to address is to gather your team and conduct a thorough assessment of your product and service offerings, processes and systems to identify:
- What could go wrong?
- How would these issues be fixed? By whom? How and when the resolution would be communicated to customers
For further information about approaches to understand business customers, read Listening to Customers: The Foundation for Start-Up and SME Innovation and Business Growth
By understanding the various sources used and steps undertaken by B2B buyers to make the purchase decision, your start-up or SME will be able to develop a very tailored and focused marketing and sales strategy as you will have clarity as to:
- The information and tools to be included on your website
- How best to make the initial contact with your key prospects
- How to structure and position discussions and meetings with prospects
- How to nurture the upsell and cross-sell of your offerings to existing customers
Need help determining the right strategy for your business?
Related Reading
Michael’s Top 10 Sales Tips for B2B Startups and SMEs
Acquiring large corporates as customers and clients is the holy grail of startups and SMEs. Here are my top tips to winning the large B2B sale!
It’s Not About What Customers Want, It’s About Jobs To Be Done
B2B product and service providers should focus on what customers want to accomplish. In other words, the JOBS TO BE DONE. It’s not about what customers want.