If you are selling your products or services to businesses, here’s an extremely important thing to keep in mind: Businesses are not buyers. People are. After all, “businesses” do not make purchase decisions. It is the people at these businesses who make purchase decisions. So while you might think you’re a “business-to-business” marketer, what you should actually see yourself as is a “people-to-people” marketer. 

With that in mind, here are some questions to answer in order to increase your marketing success… 

Who are the people that you are selling to? 

While your target market might be composed of “mid-sized manufacturing firms in Southern California,” you need to know who the people are at these firms that will be making or influencing the purchase decision. Are you selling to the Purchasing Director, General Manager, Controller, CEO or Administrative Assistant? Will it be a group decision or is there just one decision maker? 

What do you know about these people? 

Can you make any generalizations about the demographics of the people you’re marketing to, such as age, gender or educational level? What does their typical work day look like? What pressures do they face? What are their hot buttons? 

The more you know about your typical buyers, the stronger your marketing message can be. 

What problems can you solve for these people? 

People buy solutions to the problems that they have. Here’s a useful exercise: Make a list of all of the products or services you offer, and then map each of these benefits to specific problems that it can solve. 

While you’re thinking about the problems that you can solve for your customers, you should also determine how your solution is better than your competitors’.   

What are their hidden agendas?  

The people who buy from you probably won’t base their decisions solely on factors such as price, quality and service. They also have emotions, fears and hopes that drive their decisions. They’re dealing with internal politics. They’re worrying about how this purchase decision will affect their career. They’re wondering if buying from you will make their own job any easier. 

Sure, they want to do what’s best for the company – but they’re also likely to do what’s best for themselves as well. After all, they’re people, and this is how people are. You need to keep all of this in mind and provide solutions that work on both the personal and business levels.