Tips for building B2B user portraits!

Let me share an approach to B2B user profiling . Most of the information circulating on the Internet is related to B2C, which makes students working in B2B companies very confused: "Teacher, it is the RFM model, but our customers don’t place an order for a long time, and an order is worth millions, so how can the RFM method be used?" Yes, with this kind of confusion, I have a preliminary understanding of the pain points of B2B business. Let’s start with a poem so that everyone can experience the frustrations of B2B.

The larger the company, the longer the process; the larger the purchase, the more interests are involved; and the more technical purchases, the greater the room for maneuver. The various tricks are as follows:

In B2C, e-commerce companies will give out gifts and coupons to entice customers to buy something worth just a few dozen dollars. In B2B, in order to entice customers to place orders worth millions or tens of millions, the methods used are even more varied and unscrupulous.

There are so many open and covert struggles that it is enough to write a book called "Purchasing Director" or "Bidding Strategy". That’s why there are all kinds of complaints at the beginning. I also joked with my colleagues who were working on B2C enterprise projects: the precision marketing and personalized recommendations of B2C business are at most replacing carpet bombing with firepower coverage. Finally, if you want to impress users, often "a thousand lines of code are not as good as a coupon", as long as you give some discounts, users will come. B2B precision marketing relies on salespeople with unique skills and abilities. They can accurately detect three inches below the leader’s crotch.

O(╯□╰)o

The reason for this is determined by the characteristics of B2B business itself. (As shown below)

The examples given in the answers are all about procurement for custom software development, and the process can be particularly complicated. The general commodity procurement process is slightly shorter, but the complexity is far greater than that of ordinary B2C business. Corporate procurement must follow procedures, and procedures have various rules.

If users buy things on JD.com instead of on Taobao, they may come back if Taobao gives them a coupon. But once Party B loses contact with Party A or is even put on the procurement blacklist, it will forever lose millions of dollars in business every year. It is so cruel. Losing an old customer is worse than developing 10 new customers, and this is even more true in the B2B field.

Therefore, B2B companies will need to create user portraits more often: on the one hand, to establish clear user connections and take back control of customers from front-line sales. Second, in order to clearly understand customer characteristics, identify user needs, and provide timely follow-up services. Like B2C user portraits, B2B user portraits can also be divided into dimensions such as user name, basic characteristics, consumption behavior, and interactive behavior, but the content to be examined is completely different (as shown in the figure below).

Simply looking at the dimension of user portrait, there are many similarities, but there are two essential differences: individual VS organization, personal needs VS business results.

Some students may think: the required fields have been listed, and the following is the same as B2C user portrait, collecting data - labeling - doing association analysis - making recommendation algorithm, let’s go. Is that right? Totally wrong! For B2B user portraits, listing the required fields is only the first step in a long journey; the real challenge begins here.

First level: Sales force management

Unlike B2C, companies that do B2C user profiling are either super platforms like Taobao and WeChat, or companies with a certain scale that can communicate directly with customers (JD.com, Ele.me, Didi). After the user logs in to the platform, all operations are completed on the platform. But B2B companies are different. Users’ operations do not rely solely on the platform, but require manual work such as sales, business, and channels.

Although some large parties (such as banks and operators) will build supplier information platforms, the information collected through the platform is just general information such as corporate qualifications. Few people provide core fields related to the business (such as operating conditions). As for a large number of small and medium-sized enterprises, it is even more difficult to expect others to provide them on their own initiative.

This creates a huge gap : no salesperson doing B2B business will willingly hand over all customer information . Yes, including Mr. Chen himself, everyone regards the trust of customers as private property. If sales do not cooperate, the functional departments far away at the headquarters will not even know who the real customer is.

There are too many ways to pass off fake products as genuine (for example, a customer’s purchasing department has 5 people in a group, and the salesperson only leaves the contact information of the most basic employee to the company, and keeps the contact information of the supervisor who really drives the process for himself), so the success of user portraits is based on channel control. The channels cannot be controlled, and the data collected are just...haha. Subsequent analysis is like building a high-rise building in the mud.

When it comes to channel control, discipline comes first. In addition to discipline, we can use tools to cultivate sales habits and solidify sales behaviors. For example, use a mobile sales assistant instead of a PC one; use corporate WeChat instead of personal WeChat, and use an electronic address book instead of personal visit records; for example, link invoice reimbursement (an absolute necessity!) with visit records, and no reimbursement can be made without visit records; for example, when expert resources are needed, the usage objectives, questions to be answered, etc. must be entered.

This allows everyone to easily open corporate WeChat to make reimbursements, enter customer information, and contact customers, which reduces the paper work that sales people hate the most and improves efficiency. It is possible to do this. It may not work for old and cunning salesmen, but it is enough to change the habits of new salesmen, so that the data can be gradually improved.

It can also be done through cross-checking. For example, for software product labeling, pre-sales personnel need to participate in solution design, development personnel need to make demos, and customer service personnel need to follow up on user satisfaction. These non-sales functions are much better than sales in terms of the authenticity of feedback data. We can take advantage of the opportunities of these functional participation to verify the information provided by sales and enrich customer data. Of course, we also need to develop convenient service tools for these corresponding departments to record data.

Second level: User behavior analysis

The sales process in B2B business is long, but once the sale is completed, the customer may not have demand this year. Therefore, there is no so-called RFM (or there is only M, no R, F, the larger the enterprise procurement, the more so). Therefore, the focus of sales behavior analysis is on pre-sales, and attention should be paid to the progress of each labeling (as shown in the figure below).

The core of B2C applications is response, like the zombie mode, where you practice your shooting skills facing a bunch of zombies. The application of B2B is like playing chicken, the survival circle is constantly shrinking (there is an obvious window period for transaction time) and the initial position is not fixed (it is not known from which node the demand is received), so continuous follow-up is required! follow up! follow up!

B2B user behavior is created jointly by us and our customers. This is different from the passive model of B2C business, where you just push an ad and then wait for customers to click on it. In B2B business, after the customer issues a purchase request, our sales staff needs to follow up in a timely manner. Therefore, the focus of data analysis lies in how many times we have followed up and to what extent the customer has progressed.

Process-based analysis will be much richer than simply waiting for the bidding to end with a result: success/failure. It is also better than asking the salesperson to fill in the reason for losing the bid. Or the customer is stupid enough to return to the site to be accurate. (So ​​in the final analysis, the first step must be done well, and do your best to let sales keep visit records and communication records).

B2B users will also have opportunities for upselling, which is even more rigid and direct than that for B2C users. For example, if I am in a good mood today, I may go to Taobao to buy some Zhou Hei Ya, but I may not want to eat it tomorrow. However, as the company's operating income grows from 10 billion to 20 billion, the number of servers, system functions, and licenses required will inevitably increase. This estimation is actually easier than B2C, as you just need to pay attention to the user's business situation and changes in department structure.

B2B users also have cross-selling opportunities, but it is completely different from B2C. B2C cross-selling is based on a person’s shopping habits. For example, if I buy Zhou Hei Ya, I will probably also need beer. But for B2B business, it is very likely that different departments are responsible for different needs. The company remains the same, but the demand side has changed. This is actually a new problem.

Although the second party all hopes that the first party will use my CRM, then my BI, and then my ERP. But Party A may not necessarily think so. Sometimes the second party can handle the people under them, but the big boss wants to balance the relationship with suppliers and does not want one company to dominate the market. Sometimes you can deal with the big boss, but the people under him are selfish and won’t let you pass.

Therefore, B2B cross-selling is more likely to succeed if different user roles are basically treated as different projects. (So ​​in the final analysis, the first step must be done well, understand the customer's organizational structure, and find the real point of effort).

Level 3: User Classification

When classifying B2C users, we often use K-means clustering to perform exploratory analysis and find classification criteria among massive users. The idea behind B2B is completely different. Customers need us to provide services, but essentially they want to run their business better, and business has its own direction.

For example, if we can become the leader in the industry, it will definitely lead to many other companies following suit. For example, some small and medium-sized individual customers may be in danger of losing their jobs at any time.

Therefore, when it comes to user classification, we pay more attention to our strategic direction and make some classifications with strong business guidance based on our profit goals and customer profitability (as shown in the figure below). After all, business is done, not calculated. Only with a clear direction can we do business better.

B2C often faces the daily needs of the general public, such as food, clothing, and travel; B2B faces only one corporate demand: operating results. Therefore, paying attention to the user's operating results and formulating our operating strategies are the starting point for designing user classification.

The basic concept of user portrait is as described above. Although the process is similar:

• Designing User Fields
• Collect user data
• Describing user behavior
• Categorize users

However, different business models directly lead to differences in project practices, implementation priorities, and implementation methods. Just like B2C user portraits, we emphasize tracking sales points. The core of B2B is sales management, which is based on the collection of business process data. Only when the data is handled properly can there be subsequent analysis. Otherwise, it would be like a good cook without rice.

So back to the question at the beginning, that classmate asked me why I had the most core sales data of the company but couldn’t analyze anything? I asked eight people in a row:

1. Do you collect data on the client’s industry, operating conditions, industry ranking, and development speed?
2. Is there any pre-classification of customers, such as which ones are the focus of development and which ones are cash cows?
3. Is there a clear record of the customer role (not the company name)?
4. Is there a record of the original sales lead source, arrival time, and reliability?
5. Is there a record of the number and time of sales follow-up?
6. Is there a progress record of the customer procurement process?
7. Is there any record of communication with customers?
8. Are there any cross-records from pre-sales and customer service?

The poor student answered eight questions blankly: "I don't know"... Although he was doing business analysis for this traditional enterprise, he only had pitiful sales records on hand. There is nothing except XX company name + order amount + order time. No wonder he couldn't figure it out.

For example, analyzing sales data in a B2C business is like watching a game and seeing a goal being scored in the middle of the game. You can speculate on subsequent goals based on the performance of both teams at the time of the goal. But in B2B business, sales data is like a game that has gone to penalty shootouts, and you only saw the last team’s penalty kick. Yes, although you saw the penalty kick, the game was over, and you only saw the last scene. What to analyze...

But I comforted him: many B2B companies are used to doing traditional business, they don’t have good processes and system support, and their management capabilities can’t keep up. This is indeed the case, but it doesn’t prevent us from thinking in a more comprehensive and optimized direction. As for those successful companies, without exception, they have put a lot of effort into sales process management.

In this regard, analysis is really of limited help, and everyone just needs to do their best. Due to limited space, many details are omitted. I will share them in detail one by one when I have the chance.

Author: Down-to-earth Teacher Chen

Source: Down-to-earth Academy

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