Month: July 2006

Us poor B2B marketers…the top three things buyers look for in a product aren’t under our direct control…price, service, quality. We can add sizzle to these, but ultimately, the buyer will discern the truth.

So what is our #1 marketing tool? Amazingly it is something we’ve only had for ten years…our websites. Results of a user survey by ThomasNet were summed this way:

“Of course, competitive pricing, good customer service and high quality are a given, but the next single most important thing buyers mentioned is a detailed, user-friendly Web site. “

The article has lots of other handy tidbits from the survey:

Comments by users like this:
“Provide enough information within their Web site for me to make an educated decision-? comparative product details, listed prices, and list of distributors that I can purchase from if they don’t sell direct.”

This factual gem:
36% of the time users will seek out new suppliers for a new purchase.

Look at the top two of ’10 Things Buyers Look For In a New Supplier’
1. Easy-to-navigate Web sites with accurate, detailed product and pricing information
2. Companies that are easy to find and have a strong Web presence

This shouldn’t really be news to us B2B marketers…but after ten years, we may have grown complacent about our websites. From the details of this survey, I say our target audience has become even more discerning and faster to pass on poor (to them) websites. We can’t become complacent!

Read more: It’s Not Who You Know. It’s Who Knows You

Do have customers that you wish you didn’t? Ones that flip-flop what they need halfway thru the project. Or worse, at the end. The revenue seems hardly worth the effort.

We had one recent client who said that we were complying with their safety rules for the equipment we were building. Until suddenly we weren’t complying. “This needs to be resolved now”, etc. Ugh!

Well Sean De’Sousa of Psychotactics.com made this suggestion in his recent newsletter titled How To Get Rid of Cancer Clients: The Riot Act:

“‘Ms. Client, we have a clause, called the Riot Act. We’ll do everything in our power to do all of the above. And you in turn should do all in your power to help us do our job. The moment you run into issues with us, you have the right to fire us. The moment we run into issues with you, we have the right to fire you. Is that fair?’

Watch for the client’s eyes to pop.
Watch as her jaw drops.
Watch as the pencil tumbles in slow motion to the floor.”

Sean may have more flexibility to fire a services client than we can, because we are building something physical as a one-time project. But his point should be valid: the terms of the relationship need to be more explicit than seems necessary at the beginning.

Quotations, fine print, and unseen ‘policies’ are often used as CYA tools after the fact. But is there a step in your business process that outlines what you will and won’t do?

I think it could be as easy as the salesperson highlighting lines in the quote prior to taking the order. I’ve felt better when salespeople I am buying from warn me about what will or won’t happen ‘back at the office’. At least I know where I stand.

But fear of losing a sale may cause them to keep their mouth shut. Then you are stuck with the ‘cancer client’. That’s why adding the ‘riot act’ as an explicit step makes sense. Maybe its smarter to have it come after the order, and from the ‘home office’, to squelch whatever the salesperson may have implied or promised, and to establish a tone of control. (Just don’t sound evil when you do it, as I think that’s a real risk.)

YAD? Oh that’s my acronym for “Yet Another Directory”. I don’t comment on everyone I see, unless there is something to talk about.

Today’s YAD is OpenFos.com (named Focus On Sourcing), which I found in my monthly review of referring websites. It was hard to miss, as it was ranked right after Google! A closer look at my stats showed four different directory listings for our company with similar traffic numbers each.

I suspect the high referrals from their site is due to the screen-shot they show on the listing pages. One listing record is interesting because it identifies US Government ‘Contract Listings” that we have recently won.

Googling openfos, I started finding sites like Office Supply Leads which offers a (paid) subscription to searches of government bids for certain commodities. Apparently, that is where this company is focused for revenue.

As far as a directory, OpenFos has a long way to go. For the category of three-gas incubators, they list a number of unrelated ‘suppliers’ like “Affordable Treasures”.

Once again my acronym proves true: Yadda, yadda, yadda. (Well, assuming all those hits are junk, anyway.)