11 real dilemmas and thoughts on To B operations

To B is a good business, but it is also true that it is difficult to do.

How difficult is it exactly? Since I’m in operations, I’m going to talk to you about the 11 real difficulties and thoughts I encountered in a To B company from the perspective of a To B operator with two years of experience.

01. The marketing strategy of To B companies is to get the channels

For large B companies, their promotional methods are actually very simple and crude. They just pay money to let authoritative media in the industry publish articles for publicity, or hold meetings themselves. Anyway, they give confidence to the channels and let the channels work hard to help them get customers.

On the other hand, bosses of To B companies that are smaller in size and have less resources would like to split the money in half, so they often make requests such as "0 budget for expanding brand influence/obtaining x number of sales leads", even though this seems unreasonable to employees.

It is unreasonable, but the work still needs to be done. After all, employees also need to make a living. So we came up with the strategy of making industry reports, creating benchmark cases, and publishing in-depth industry analysis articles . We used high-quality content to impress (using the brand's personal connections) authoritative media in the industry to help us publish press releases and news flashes.

02. It is easy for B2B sales to put career success first

Many To B companies lack linkage design in incentives between sales teams and customer success teams. This design flaw makes sales people only interested in attracting new customers, and they often make exaggerated descriptions and excessive promises. Even though we know that our product cannot currently implement a certain function that customers care about, it is still easy to pat our chest and say "we can do it".

This kind of sales behavior, which only aims at conversion, will cause great service pressure on the customer success team. In serious cases, it will lead to a decline in the company's service reputation (various real negative posts, and agents and merchants have come to the door, and finally the police were called in to maintain order), and a decrease in renewal rate.

Therefore, we often see sales teams and customer success teams "arguing" over the above issues in To B companies.

The customer success team puts customers first for the company's long-term sustainable development, but the funny thing is that when the dispute between the two parties reaches the boss, most of the time it ends with the sales team "winning" or the boss "playing Tai Chi". In the eyes of those short-sighted bosses, sales are what really bring profits to the company. As for the customer success team, let them hold back for now.

03. The team has not formed a unified demand management pool

It is said that "let the front-line personnel who hear the gunfire command the battle", but in To B companies, the front-line personnel include marketing, operations, sales, channels, investment promotion, etc., and they can all receive customer feedback on their needs. With so many different needs, which product and technology should solve first? This is a problem.

In my opinion, as long as we receive customer feedback, no matter which department receives it, it is best to organize it into operations to form a unified demand management pool.

This demand pool needs to list specific details, such as date, customer, region, demand description, functional module, suggested priority, follow-up person, progress status, etc., and then regularly connect with the product manager. When organizing the demand pool, what operations need to do is to merge similar items and filter out worthless items to efficiently promote the realization of high-priority demands.

04. The demand for B-side products and technologies is difficult to promote, and operations need to continuously pass on pressure

Earlier we mentioned that operations must communicate with product managers on a regular basis about customer needs, but in fact, it is difficult to advance demand for B-side products because products and technology will hold you back for various reasons.

What to do at a time like this? You have to be skillful. Generally speaking, when you encounter these types of problems, you can prioritize them to the highest level:

(1) Impact on customer usage . If the customer can't even use it, there's no need to discuss other details;

(2) The function of competing products to grab orders . A feature that can make customers switch to another product must be a good feature, or in other words, a good "paying" feature.

(3) Related to money . Functions that can help customers reduce costs and increase revenue, even if other functions are very poor, but functions that can save customers money or even make money, customers will basically pay for them.

Of course, if the above requirements cannot be met, then there must be certain problems with your products and technologies. At this time, you can’t care about not offending anyone and just give direct feedback to your boss for the decision.

05. A trusted B-end product should first be stable

Stability is of vital importance to B-side products, without a doubt. Because no matter how good a B-side product is, it can be fatal if it goes down.

For example, at the beginning of the year, a programmer in a certain alliance deleted the database, which shook the confidence of many merchants under its service at the time, because every second that the database could not be restored, the merchants continued to suffer losses. Merchants will begin to re-evaluate the security of this B-side product and even start looking for new alternatives.

Most B-end products directly involve money and organizational stability, which means that their users cannot have as high a tolerance as consumers of C-end products. You see, although the Weibo server crashes from time to time due to celebrity events, it is still the most lively social opinion platform at the moment. And Jike, although it has been blocked for a year, it can still quickly gather fans after announcing its return. These two things are almost impossible to happen to B-side products.

A mature To B company must have a strong technical team.

06. Once a customer is poached by a competitor, it is difficult to win them back

As we all know, it is not easy to attract new customers for B-side products because the decision-making chain of To B customers is very long and the decision-making cost is high.

For customers, high decision-making costs also mean high switching costs. Once your customers are poached by your competitors, it will be very difficult to get them back . Because when your customers make this decision, they believe that the benefits of switching to competing products are higher than the switching costs, and they are determined not to have any further dealings with you.

One of the funniest things I've seen before was that a certain company's customer had good initial turnover, but the customer success team didn't provide good service. Later, the customer switched to a competitor's product. The boss suddenly started to care about this customer and would flirt with him from time to time, hoping that he would come back. (os: Don’t think too much)

07. Don’t try to steal KA customers by pretending to be rich

To B companies must recognize the customer range that they can currently cover. When the standardized demands of the small and medium-sized customers you serve have not been fully met, don't try to snatch KA customers with the mentality of "establishing a brand case" for yourself.

KA customers often require customized requirements. If a To B company insists on taking on the task, it means that the team will need to allocate a large portion of its manpower to tackle the problem. This will undoubtedly be a lose-lose situation if the needs of existing customers are not met. Existing small and medium-sized customers may not renew their contracts due to the decline in service. If the KA customers they want to grab find that the other party is unable to fulfill their promise, their reputation in the industry will be affected.

Serve KA customers first, and then beat the small ones with the big ones, or serve small and medium-sized customers first, and then surround the cities from the countryside. The worst thing to do is to try to have the best of both worlds without laying a solid foundation. This is basically impossible.

08. Don’t easily shut down any product features

For C-end products, it is not uncommon for functions to be taken offline due to low frequency of use, but for B-end products, every function cannot be reduced.

In the design of B-side products, the principle of minority obeys the majority is basically not followed. Even if a function is used less frequently, as long as there are customers using it, this function should not be easily taken offline. We cannot proactively reduce our service to customers. Because every customer is important.

09. Don’t treat everyone as a competitor

The operation of To B companies relies heavily on resources, and cooperation is the basic norm. But I have encountered such a counter-example before:

At that time, a service account of a To B company had a demand for attracting new users, so the brand student found another To B company with a different main business to promote each other. As a result, their boss questioned the brand student after seeing the tweet, "Why are you promoting the competitor? How did you negotiate the cooperation?"

The brand colleagues also felt aggrieved, and later learned that a product that the company had previously failed to develop and had basically discontinued had some weak similarities with the other party's main product. This is where the term competing products comes from.

Another time, a certain company wanted to develop this To B company as an agent of the WeChat Enterprise SCRM system, but the deal failed, so the company decided to develop the WeChat Enterprise SCRM tool on its own. It is understood that this tool is still under development, but the friendly competitors with whom we initially discussed cooperation are already serving hundreds of KA merchants.

Competition and cooperation are the norm in the business world, but cooperation should be the main theme of ToB companies, with everyone complementing each other's strengths and taking what they need. Don't treat everyone as a competitor, and don't put yourself in a situation where you are isolated and helpless.

10. Do less things that only take without giving back.

To be honest, it is normal for startups to want to get resources for free, but if they treat "getting resources for free" as a common thing, then such startups will basically not go far.

For example, a To B company launched a new product. There was not much innovation and no successful cases yet, but their boss just wanted to promote the product, so he gave a dry functional manuscript to a certain media. Since the media had previously reported on cases with plenty of solid evidence, this "cooperation" naturally failed to come to fruition. It is understood that this kind of "freeloading" behavior is not the first time in this company.

I have always believed that the basis of a good business relationship should be equal exchange, with both parties getting what they need. For example, the To B company mentioned above provides this media with useful content, and in return, the media can package and promote the other party's products, and both parties are happy.

11. Operate and understand the business, including own business and customer business

To B operation is to establish and maintain a good relationship between corporate products/services and customers through a series of means. So they must understand the business, including their own business and their clients' business.

Only when you understand your own business can you know how to better "sell" (this is an action, not a job role) your own products/services, and only then can you know how to collaborate and fully mobilize organizational resources.

Only by understanding the client’s business can you know where the client’s pain points lie, and thus better help the client sort out their needs; only then can you know how to provide targeted solutions. The more you know about the customer's business and the deeper your understanding is, the finer the execution granularity of the entire solution can be.

In conclusion:

Compared with To C operations, which have accumulated a lot of methodologies and are easier to achieve results, To B operations are indeed more difficult. You have to constantly try and error for many things, and there is no guarantee of results. It is a typical delayed gratification job.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that the degree of attention paid to To B content operations varies among To B companies at different stages of development. For example, in many start-up To B companies, it is a position that is not given much attention; but in mature To B companies such as quasi-listed/listed To B companies, they will begin to increase their investment in brand and content, and continue to make their voices heard in the market.

Therefore, if you are interested in deepening your involvement in To B content operations, you must be cautious before choosing a company. A very important point is to understand the position of the brand and content in the entire company and the general plan for the next three years. Otherwise, it is easy to fall into the career dilemma of "continuously doing useless work".

Author: One Punch Man's younger brother

Source: Nomadic Journal

Related reading:

How to build a B2B marketing omni-channel system?

Build a ToB market operation system from 0 to 1!

ToB content operation: comprehensive review of production and channels

7 tips and analysis methods for ToB content operations!

4 misunderstandings of ToB operations and 3 ways to acquire customers!