Unlike B2C, B2B clients involve multiple persons and influence the purchase decision. If your marketing plan is only focused on the person you’re communicating with, you might not win the deal in most cases.
And these clients already know what features your product offers. So, the feature-focused marketing approach doesn’t work now.
When your thinking and marketing approach are aligned with B2B clients’ behavior and influencing factors, that’s when it will click. This article will let you know exactly these factors to reshape your pitching.
What is a B2B Client?
A B2B client is a business or organization that is willing to buy products or services from another business. For example – when a wholesaler buys from a manufacturer, or a retailer buys from a wholesaler.
You are selling to a business that has its own goals and complex needs. This requires a completely different approach from selling to an individual consumer. Your agency’s strategy must reflect this reality.
B2B clients have a larger budget than B2C. When you’re selling to an organization, there will be multiple decision-makers and stakeholders.
Understanding this helps you target the real source of money. You can focus your marketing on the organization’s problems, not just one person’s interests.
Difference Between B2B and B2C Clients
B2C and B2B clients have a few similarities, but there are differences. The most obvious difference we all understand is that it’s a direct single customer or consumer vs a business or company.
In terms of budget, sales cycle, people involved, and goal type, here’s a table for easy demonstration –
| Factors | B2B Clients | B2C Clients |
| Target Market | Organizations and companies. | Individual consumers. |
| Key Driving Things | ROI, logic, productivity, expertise. | Price, desire, emotion, status, and entertainment. |
| Decision Making | A complex process involving multiple stakeholders and departments | Process involving an individual or a small family unit. |
| Sales Cycle | Months or even years. | Within a few minutes or days. |
| Marketing Stages | Lead generation and nurturing, establishing credibility and authority. | Brand awareness, customer acquisition. |
| Brand Identify | Built on trust, expertise, and reliability. | Built on brand image, messaging, and reputation. |
Common B2B Client Behaviors and Traits
You must know common B2B clients behaviors for a successful sales pitch or even for product engineering.
ROI-Focused
A B2B client’s primary question is always, “What’s the return?” They need to justify every dollar spent to their own leadership.
Your job isn’t just selling services. Make sure you come with a clear business case. Use their own language, talk about increasing revenue, cutting operational costs, or improving market share.
Risk-Averse
A bad purchase for them can lead to wasted budgets and serious career damage. You overcome this fear by providing concrete proof, like detailed case studies and client testimonials. The more trust you can build, the more chances will be there for the B2B client to make a purchase.
Educated and Informed
B2B clients are expert researchers. They will know your competitors and the market before you ever get on a call with them. Your goal is to offer insights they can’t find on their own.
Rather than a sales pitch, make it a consultation session. Offer unique insights about their specific industry or challenge to position your agency as an expert partner unlike anyone in the market.
Perceived by Generational Thinking
As B2B clients engage multiple individuals, there will be people of various ages and generations.
Typically, Boomers care mostly about stability, quality, and trustworthiness. You might have to go to a face-to-face meeting with printed materials.
With Gen X, your pitch has to be focused on user experience, quality, integration, customer support, etc.
When you pitch Millennials, you’d better focus on flexibility, personalized experiences, and user convenience. This group highly depends on online resources before buying anything.
How to Find B2B Clients: 5 Quickest Ways
Alright, if you’re looking for where to find more B2B clients, here’s a straightforward plan based on what works right now.
Define and Target Right Clients
Instead of trying to target everyone, build a detailed profile of your absolute best customer according to their industry, size, and the problems you solve for them. Then, use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find more companies that fit that exact profile.
Strong Online Presence with Content
Your potential clients are already on Google, researching solutions. Aim to appear in the answer they find. Do this by creating genuinely helpful content like blog posts and case studies, and make sure your website is optimized to actually show up in search results.
Social Media for Human Interaction
Get active on LinkedIn and in other online communities where your ideal clients spend their time. Join conversations, answer questions, and share your expertise freely. B2b prospects are more likely to convert when they experience human interaction.
Outreach Leads
Once you have someone’s attention, you need to stay on their radar. Use targeted email campaigns and host webinars to consistently provide value. This is how you guide them through the long B2B sales cycle and build the trust required to make a sale.
Leverage Trust and Referrals
The fastest way to a new client is often through a recommendation. Encourage referrals from your happiest customers and consider partnering with respected experts or influencers in your industry. A warm introduction from a trusted source is incredibly powerful.
Further Read: How to Find B2B Clients (11 Proven Ways)
How to Approach B2B Clients
Attracting B2B clients isn’t about flashy ads or clever gimmicks. It’s about proving your expertise and building trust long before they are ready to buy. Your marketing must be generous with value.
Stop Selling, Start Teaching
Your ideal clients are searching for answers online to their problems right now. Your goal is to be the one who provides those answers through your content.
Create detailed guides, webinars, or articles to solve issues they are facing. According to Gartner research findings, your online materials should help buyers resolve their problems.
This shows you’re an expert and builds trust, so when they are ready to hire an agency, you will be on their shortlist.
Target Companies, Not Crowds
Stop wasting your budget trying to talk to everyone. Instead, make a shortlist of the exact companies you want to work with.
This approach lets you create marketing that speaks directly to a company’s unique needs. It’s a far more effective way to get the attention of high-value clients.
Use LinkedIn to Build Authority
Decision-makers in B2B live and breathe on LinkedIn. They use it to find solutions, vet potential partners, and learn from experts in their field.
Share your best insights and advice on the platform consistently. This positions your agency’s leaders as the go-to experts and builds relationships before you ever send a proposal.
Let Your Results Do the Talking
B2B clients are risk-averse. The most powerful marketing you have is the success of your current clients.
Turn your biggest wins into detailed case studies and video testimonials. This social proof is more convincing than any sales pitch you could ever make.
Things B2B Clients Value
Whenever you approach b2b clients, make sure your strategies are aligned with the following factors they value the most –
Being Heard
Your B2B clients need absolute certainty that you grasp their company’s challenges, goals, and market position.
You can demonstrate this through active listening in your discovery calls. This helps you write to the point proposals and prove you are a partner from day one.
Expertise That Solves Problems
Clients expect you to know their industry, their customers, and their challenges inside and out. This is non-negotiable. When you speak their language, you stop sounding like a salesperson. This allows you to build real trust and command higher prices for your work.
Flawless Execution and Reliability
Your B2B clients expect you to deliver on time, every time. There is simply no excuse for being late or unreliable. Doing what you say you will do is the best way to prove your value. It’s how you build a great reputation and keep clients for the long haul.
A Clear and Undeniable ROI
Ultimately, clients only care about the results. They must justify your agency’s cost to their own boss. You need to give them the numbers to do it.
You make your agency essential by providing simple, clear reports. Show them exactly how your work is making them money or saving them money.
Proactive communication
B2B clients expect you to proactively inform them of progress, results, and any potential roadblocks. When you communicate regularly, it builds immense trust.
An ideal b2b customer service example would be – communicating with the client once they invite people from their end to use your SaaS product, or when they use any of your major features.
Ask them how the experience was, and are there any concerns they are facing while using it?
Getting Fast Support
When a client has a problem, they expect you to solve it immediately. Delays will affect their operations, customer relationships, and even revenue.
Your response in a critical moment is a massive opportunity. Solving their problems quickly proves your real worth and is how you keep clients for years.
Tips to Improve B2B Customer Engagement
Data tells you how your engagement is with B2B clients. If it’s good, then nothing to worry about. But, if that’s not what you expect, here are some practical tips on how you can improve –
- Track Visitors Time: Use any website tracking software to check how much time clients spent on each page. If there are more short visits, you need to work on the content.
- Target Right Leads for Email Outreach: If you get very few replies from cold outreach emails, you’re probably targeting the wrong B2B clients. Refine your leads and try again.
- Manage Social Media: Clients do check your activities on social platforms specially on Linkedin and X, YouTube as well for some cases. Keep an eye on social media content as well.
- Focus on Client Retention: If you don’t see old clients purchasing again, you probably need to work on client retention stuff.
Be sure to check your metrics every following month to stay ahead for customer engagement.
How Not to Waste Time on Wrong B2B Clients
Your agency cannot afford to waste time and resources on the wrong clients. The only way to find more great clients is to build a clear, data-driven profile based on the best ones you already have.
Ideal B2B Customer Profile
This is not a fictional “buyer persona” based on assumptions. An Ideal Client Profile is a factual blueprint built from the data of your most successful and profitable clients.
To build it, you must analyze your best accounts. Document their industry, their company size, the specific business results you helped them achieve, and the budget they had.
This data creates a precise picture of the exact type of client you should be targeting.
How B2B Client Profiles Help Your Agency
This profile becomes the north star for all of your marketing. It tells your team exactly what content to write and what messages to use to attract more of these perfect-fit clients. Your lead generation will become far more effective and efficient.
It also gives you the power to qualify new business with confidence. You will know exactly which prospects to pursue and which ones to turn away politely. This stops you from wasting months on bad-fit clients who will never be profitable or happy.
Luckily there are tools that help you both organize leads as per their status and let you know which clients are the most profitable ones. Agency Handy’s lead management tool and client portal can help you with that.
Common Challenges with B2B Clients
Working with B2B clients can be incredibly rewarding, but it also presents its challenges. Once you’re aware of those challenges, you can prepare for the worst and come up with useful strategies to counter them.
The Long Sales Cycle
B2B decisions can take months, sometimes even longer. You can use this time to your advantage.
Use a simple CRM tool to track every interaction with your potential B2B prospects, and set follow-up reminders. You can nurture leads over time and convert many of them with the right strategy aligned with their problems.
Multiple Decision-Makers
Your job is not over when your main contact says “yes.” Their approval is only the beginning. They now have to sell your services to their boss, the finance department, and other internal teams.
You must arm this person to fight for you after you’ve left the room. Give them a simple presentation, a one-page summary of the ROI, and a relevant case study. This makes it easy for them to justify the decision and get the final approval.
High Customization Demands
Serious B2B customers don’t fit into a standard, pre-packaged solution. This opens the door of opportunity. This is a fundamental shift in mindset that separates successful agencies from the rest.
You must offer flexible and customizable service packages. This is the only way to make them understand that you are listening to their specific challenges.
Conclusion
The key to getting B2B clients is to make custom marketing strategies for companies aligned with their problems and requirements. You don’t have to act like a salesperson. Simplifying your approach as a consultant will attract more clients over time.
FAQs
What is b2b and b2c?
B2B is business to business and B2C is business to consumer business model. In b2b, one business sells to another business. In b2c, businesses sell to consumers.
What are SaaS b2b clients?
SaaS b2b clients are organizations that purchase software from software manufacturers. Let’s say your organization needs a client portal software to manage clients, you will have to look for SaaS companies that sell client portal software.
Where can I find b2b clients?
Depending on what industry you target, b2b clients are mostly found in social media platforms like X, Linkedin, blogs, YouTube, industry specific groups, forums, etc. Observe what problems b2b clients are discussing on those platforms, and make content providing solutions to attract clients.
What are the main four types of b2b clients?
Producers, resellers, governments, and institutions are the main four types of B2B clients you will come across. Targeting each type requires specific marketing strategies and planning.
