In January this year, I did a post called “B2B Is Not Just The Big Guys” based on a post from Chris Brogan around B2B vs B2C.  The whole point I made in my comment on the post was that most people automatically think of huge enterprise companies when they hear “B2B” and that’s just not the case.  Granted, that’s where the big money is scored but when you look at large corporations as a percentage of all businesses out there, they are less then 1%.  That’s not a typo.

If you check out the US Office of Advocacy website, they define small firms as companies with 500 employees or less. 

Here’s some stats on small business in the US:

• In 2008, they represented 99.9 percent of the 29.6 million businesses
• Employ just over half of all private sector employees
• Pay 44 percent of total U.S. private payroll
• Have generated 64% of net new jobs over the past 15 years
• Create more than half of the nonfarm private gross domestic product (GDP)

Only 18,000 of the 29.6 million businesses were large businesses.

As you can see, the vast majority of B2B is comprised of small businesses and entrepreneurs that are out there looking for products and services to help their business and we believe a majority of those professionals are touched and reached via social media just as in B2C. They don’t have an RFP process or a long buying cycle and they want to know about the quality of the solution from other customers via ratings and reviews without going through the solution provider.  They also want to be educated but not led by the solution provider.

We’d love to hear from others that cater to small businesses and entrepreneurs in B2B. Please tell us what you think.

(Photo by tedreese via Flickr – Kids at Work 2007 091)

Catering to your audience is a writing necessity no matter when you sit down to compose written material. Anything from a letter to your grandparents, to inquiring about a job, means you need to step back and make sure you’ve formatted the writing for the receiver.

When pitching to the media we are told to “think like a journalist.” But, as non-journalists, what does that mean? There are several values media/journalists look for in a story. It’s the values that make a story good, worthwhile and intriguing. Here are eight of those values to consider:

1. Prominence – the people/person you discuss in your pitch to media need to be known to make it important. When neighbor Joe discusses Kanye West’s appearance at the Music Awards with impressive verbage nobody writes about it. But when President Obama does it…you get the idea.

2. Timeliness – if the story isn’t recent it isn’t news. TV in particular requires immediate reaction to stories. The media cares about a story that happened last month, or last week even, as much as they care about what you ate.  The only exception to timeliness is with important anniversary, something like September 11th.

3. Proximity – where was the event, and is the audience going to care? Whats the local impact? Not everything is going to be national news, and when pitching to local papers and stations you need to have a local swing to your story to make it interesting to the public.

4. Impact – how is the story going to effect the audience? Your story has to matter, if you wouldn’t walk away with a lasting impression from your story, chances are no one else will either. Think about how you want to effect the audience before writing, then use that angle.

5. Magnitude – sometimes stories have so much of an impact, everyone wants to know about them. Anytime you can have a story that big, you should obviously pitch it.

6. Conflict – nearly all stories are based off of some sort of conflict. Think of your pitch as a story board, define the problem and figure out how it is resolved, then share it. Every conflict makes a boring story more interesting.

7. Oddity – what makes your story unusual? The media gets a huge stack of press releases every day. What makes yours more interesting than the rest? What makes it different?

8. Emotional Impact – we’ve all heard the puppies, children and women antidote for advertising. Pitching stories is the same. Whenever you can swing kids, animals or senior citizens into your story, you’ve found your emotion.

(Photo procupine babies? nope, hedgehogs By Shade McVay)

We all know that the B2B buying and decision making process happens over weeks or months and not hours or days.  Historically, sales and marketing people always walked a fine line between contacting a prospect to help educate them and build the relationship and annoying them.  Almost all contact with the prospect was driven by the selling company with the goal of building share of mind and making the sale.  It was very one way, somewhat intrusive, and difficult for both sides.

Today, through the use of social media, solution providers now have the ability to build share of mind on the prospect’s terms without invading their space.  This has the largest impact when prospects are in the research phase.  How so?  Here’s an example.

If I’m a prospect currently in research mode and I visit a company’s site for the first time, chances are that I’m not going to engage a real-time chat or fill out a Contact Us form.  I’m just looking and I don’t want the pressure of dealing with a company when I’m still trying to learn what best fits my business’s needs.  However, after viewing the information on your products or services, I will check out the company blog.  If it has helpful content that can educate me along the way without being an in-your-face brochure, I’ll probably start to follow the blog.

The last thing I’ll do on your site is check out the About Us and Contact Us pages.  If you have any Twitter accounts, I’ll start to follow them.  Why?  Because if the company has a social media strategy in place, I’m betting I’ll learn more about your company, people, and your knowledge of your industry.  If you’re using Twitter without a social media strategy, I’ll probably learn things about your people I’d rather not know but I’ll still have more information then I did before to help me make my decision.  The nice part is that I’m learning about your company on my terms without giving my contact information to a process when I’m not ready to buy yet.  I’m getting to know you without feeling like I’m trapped in the middle of your booth at a convention with no way out.

Maybe I didn’t go to your site.  Maybe I’ve never even heard of your company but as I check out topics via search engines and social networks, your conversations and content come up.  Now I’m learning about you and starting to see you as a knowledge expert in the area before I’ve even seen your product or service!  Can you ask for a better situation?

The example can go on but the point is that using social media allows solution providers to build respect, share of mind with prospects, and be viewed as a thought leader.  All of this is done on the prospect’s terms and results in a more educated and efficient decision making process as well as a stronger relationship.

(Image from flickr, Beata Zita by ckaroli)

There is no excuse to not follow current events. Choose the platform of your choice – radio, TV, news sites, blogs – and take a ½ hour everyday to fill yourself in.

Knowing what media is talking about is crucial to your businesses pitches. You should never run the risk of sending out a story that will be pushed under the radar. For example, it’s probably less than wise to pitch something the day of a State of the Union Address, or a few days after.

But it is a good idea to pitch a money saving venture when there is talk about the poor economy. Learning to time your business with what the rest of the country, or world, is talking about is crucial to success. Look for themes in the news; know what’s coming up and plan when the right time for your story is based on when it will be a benefit.

It’s also important to keep track of which journalists are talking about what. When pitching an idea you need to hone in on the right journalist, the one that you already know has an interest in your business and story because they already write about it.

Start logging journalists and following the work of the one you want to write about your pitch. They’ll appreciate you knowing what they’ve been talking about when you contact them. Even better, now that almost all news sources have commenting and sharing abilities, you have the opportunity for journalist to appreciate you before they know you have a great story for them. Start promoting their stories by commenting, posting their articles on Twitter and linking to them in your blog.

Finally, it should go without saying that current events are conversations. You can’t talk to someone in media if you don’t know what they’ve been talking about. Nor can you successfully attend social events without humiliation. So in case you don’t already have your favorite news source in your reader, it’s time to add it.

(Photo Paparazzi by elbelgasturiano)

At last week’s Sales 2.0 conference, Gerhard Gschwandtner, (@gerhard20) the founder and CEO of Personal Selling Power, started off discussing seven trends that are driving the shift in the way buyers choose to buy.  The first trend was “Conversation Economy – buyers want to talk to each other, not necessarily you.”

As we’ve discussed before, this is no surprise as people have been sharing information with each other in our consumer lives for years.  With businesses and professionals now getting more involved in social networking, access to a solution provider’s other customers is becoming much easier in B2B.  The solution providers are no longer the gate keepers of this information. 

While prospects and customers definitely look to their solution providers for information and education, they will always want to hear from other customers on the actual experience and performance of the relationship.  And what they hear will have an impact on their future decisions. 

Companies that foster and help build these relationships in order to stay involved in the discussions on their brand and get candid feedback from customers will do well.  Those that believe building a wall between the company and customer interaction will find that they’re throwing money away in taking on an impossible task.  If there are major concerns within your company about customers and prospects talking openly about your brand, management’s time will be better spent addressing the things you’re worried they’ll talk about instead of trying to stop them from talking.

As Customer-to-Customer (C2C) and Customer-to-Prospect (C2P) interactions continue to grow, Sales, Marketing, and Product Management groups will be much better off accepting and nurturing these relationships then pretending they don’t exist.