The main difference between B2C and B2B sales

I often speak with founders who’ve come from a B2C background and are now entering B2B.

Or their experience is with coding small-ticket self-serve apps.

They don’t get exposed a lot of B2B sales, and how the mechanics of it really works.

So they go about creating landing pages. Websites. Maybe ads.

And then crickets.

In this newsletter, we’ll dig into the major difference between B2B and B2C buying, and how this impacts sales.

Table of Contents

• The biggest difference between B2C and B2B buyers

• What makes B2B really unique

• Why do companies buy

• What motivates companies to buy

• So how do you deal with this in sales?

The biggest difference between B2C and B2B buyers

Plain and simple - when you’re running a B2C product, you are selling to an individual that can 100% make the decision on how they spend their money.

Often, you’ll be selling products that strikes their ego. It makes them feel good. You’ll sell wants, not just needs.

A lot of the purchase process is emotional in B2C.

Do you really need the latest JRPG that came out of FromSoftware, even though you already have over 35+ video games in your library, most of witch you never finished?

Nope, you really don’t need it. But you’re going to get it anyways. Because it looks cool. And you want to. And you might have the cash to afford it.

It’s similar with B2C apps/saas. Most of these products will make your life better, but aren’t necessary in nature.

Now, when it comes to B2B, it’s totally different.

What makes B2B really unique

I had a founder recently ask me “isn’t it all about people to people anyways?”

I call major BS on this in sales. P2P, or R2R, or whatever other acronym you can use was created by a handful of marketing gurus over a decade ago to sell speaking gigs. It makes people feel good.

But at the end of the day, a B2B process implies that the company is allocating resources towards something.

Even if a prospect really wants it. They don’t have money. It’s not their money. It’s someone else’s money. The CFO’s money.

They’re not spending their own cash. They can’t just say yes, even if they want to.

And that makes B2B selling significantly different, and a lot harder.

Why do companies buy

The age old advice is that companies buy for these reasons:

1. They want to save money

2. They want to make money

3. There’s a legal obligation/compliance reason/they want to minimize risks

There are other tools that they will buy - some operational that helps with just running a business. Like a CRM isn’t really tied to any of that stuff, but it’s hard to run a large business without it.

What motivates companies to buy

There are really only 4 motivators for companies that will drive them towards evaluating B2B software:

1. Solve a current pain

2. Get immediate gain

3. Solve future pain

4. Get future gain

No. 1 gets 80% of the wallet share. No. 2 will get some if the company is in a state of growth. No. 3 gets a tiny little slice. No 4. gets almost nothing.

And this is significantly different than B2C, when you think about it. We often spend money on gain when it’s our own money.

But in B2B, most of the money is spent on pain.

So how do you deal with this in sales?

Now that you have an understanding of the differences between a B2C purchase and B2B purchase, how do you work with this in your sales process?

Deploy a pain-based methodology.

I teach FOUNDER to my clients.

• Facts - what systems do they have, what are they using, people involved, processes, etc.

• Objectives & Pains - where are their workflows breaking down, and where do they need to get to. This creates a gap in their current state that you can use to sell against.

• Uncovering Impact - how do these problems impact the business. What’s the cost?

• Negative Consequences - what happens when the impact doesn’t resolve? Do they need to do layoffs? Will they go out of business?

• Driving Events - are there dates or milestones they need to hit to avoid the negative consequences?

• Reaching a Decision - how will they buy this? What criteria do they have? Who’s involved? etc.

You can quickly see through this methodology how different it is than selling a B2C product. Often, in a B2C purchase, there aren’t any negative consequences. And reaching a decision is as simple as “do I want to spend my money on this or not?”

In the B2B world, you need multiple people to agree on this.

They need to agree on the pain. They need to agree that the pain is impacting the business. They need to agree that change needs to happen. They need to evaluate this pain against all other pains they have to deem it important enough to allocate resources to.

It isn’t a simple task. Multiple people need to be involved.

So if you’re running your sales cycles now purely on gain, or future gain. And only working with one person. Chances are, you’re getting really positive feedback from your intro calls, but not closing a lot of deals.

So tweak your approach. Businesses allocate funds to solve problems. Understand those problems and how they compare to other problems. Understand how it impacts the business. Understand who cares a lot about these problems and get a group of people to reach consensus.

This is what you need to do in your sales calls. Through your discovery, your demo, your proposal. Your email follow-ups.

String it all together, and you get a B2B sales process.

Let me know what you think of the newsletter! Always want to cover topics that you care about.

For more practical early-stage sales tips, connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for more hands-on help implementing your first sales process, reach out for coaching packages.

P.S. Starting the waitlist for the next group coaching cohort starting in September. LMK if you’re interested. Package info here.