Fundamentally, marketing is about motivating people to take action.  People buy for emotional reasons and then look for rational reasons to support that emotional decision.  We may try to convince ourselves that we are only interested in rational benefits and a clear cost/benefit relationship, but the reality is that we always find a way to do what we really want to do.

There is no such thing as a purely business decision.  People make decisions, and it is the people within that business that drive those decisions.  In most companies purchasing procedures are fairly well organized to minimize the impact of individual motivations that may be more self serving than business serving.  But if you are competing only on the basis of those rational processes and procedures, you are going to find yourself coming up short more often than not, and not realizing why.  That doesn’t mean that you need to change you game completely and start offering personal incentives to key decision makers (bribes and perks) – that’s illegal and it should be.  What it means is that just as is the case in consumer goods marketing, you need to understand the purchase decision within a broader human context.  How the product fits within your customer’s ‘lives’.  Business decision makers have business lives as well as personal lives.  B-to-B marketers need to understand both.  Most people compartmentalize their personal and professional lives, but a lot of how you look at the world as a person will affect how you operate within a business environment.

B-to-B Segmentation

Below is an Adler’s Personality Dimensions Map of SME (Small and Medium sized Enterprises) Decision Maker Segments linked to their attitudes towards banks as an example.

Let’s go one step further and linked those business segments with consumer segments:

The primary motivations of what we call Dolce Vita businesses (usually family run businesses such a restaurants) is to keep the business alive and healthy as a means to provide income, security and happiness to all of the family members and extended family members (employees) that work there.  This fits very much with the paternal attitudes of the Provider parent and senior consumer segments.  Consequently, you can imagine that these business decision makers are going to be risk adverse.  They are not likely to be early adopters, but will take on new products and services that are well proven and will increase the overall health and security of their business.

The One Man Show segment has the typical autocratic style and attitudes we’ve all seen.  You can imagine that products and services positioned in such a way as to confirm the business manager’s or owner’s authority and judgment will be quite successful.

The Striving Puppy segment while mostly comprised of smaller businesses, we see the segment growing as more professional managers from large companies have a go at it on their own.  Capturing more self control in their life is a motivator that is very strong with the Balancer parent consumer segment.  Consequently, opportunity, optimism and efficiency are key motivators for this B-to-B segment.

People are people.  They may act differently in a business situation than in their personal life, but they still are driven by emotional needs above all else.  We all are.  Next month we’ll look at doctor segments.  Doctors are human too.

• Author: Paul Garrison, Founder @ Garrison Group. https://garrisonmarketinggroup.com/
• Published by: Diego San Román, Partner @ Factus Consult and Garrison Group.