Know: ‘timing is everything.’

14
Marketing Insights from A to Z

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usiness-to-Business
Marketing
15
Most marketing is business-to-business (B2B) marketing even
though textbooks and business magazines devote most of their atten-
tion to business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing. The disproportion-
ate attention to B2C has been justified by saying that (1) B2C is
where most of modern marketing concepts first arose, and (2) B2B
marketers can learn a lot by adopting B2C thinking. While these two
statements are true, B2B is having its own renaissance, and maybe
B2C marketers have a lot to learn from B2B practices. B2B, in partic-
ular, has focused more on individual customers, and B2C is increas-
ingly moving into one-to-one customer thinking.
The sales force is the main driver in B2B marketing. Its impor-
tance cannot be overestimated, especially when selling complex cus-
tomized equipment such as B-47s or power plants or selling to large
national and global accounts. Today’s companies increasingly assign na-
tional and global account managers to manage their largest customers.
Account management systems will grow in the future as more of the
world’s business becomes concentrated in fewer but larger companies.
But today B2B companies also are driven to replace high-cost
sales calls with less expensive contact channels such as tele- and
videoconferencing and Web-based communications, where possible.

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As videoconferencing improves and costs come down, companies will
reduce the number of field visits to customers and save on the high
costs of transportation, hotels, dining out, and entertaining.
Another force that might reduce the role of the sales force is the
growth of Web-based market exchanges. Price differences—especially
for commodity materials and components—will become more visi-
ble, thus making it harder for salespeople to influence buyers to pay
more than the market price. (See Sales Force and Selling.)
hange
Change, not stability, is the only constant. Companies today have to
run faster to stay in the same place. Some say that if you remain in
the same business, you will be out of business. Note that companies
such as Nokia and Hewlett-Packard gave up their original businesses.
Survival calls for self-cannibalization.
Your company has to be able to recognize Strategic Inflection
Points, defined by Andy Grove of Intel as “a time in the life of a