B2B Business: You are selling to humans inside a company

Whatever product or service you are selling, eventually you sell it to a human being in the organization you are trying to do business with. Certainly, it’s not just one, it might be your direct lead and hers (or his) boss or an interdisciplinary team that decides on the deal.

Why is this important in digital transformation? In the business world we usually face processes, approvals, and lengthy discussion (we all have been there) prior to a decision. In our private life, it’s mainly you who decides. You might fight about the color of your new couch with your partner. But this is rather a quick decision pathway (hopefully 😉)

Now as we are exposed to so many hyper customer focused companies such as Amazon (Get what you want, whenever you want it) or Apple (No instructions. It just works) we expect the same experience in other areas of our life’s. For examples in your job or when it’s about your health. There are certain regulations and internal guidelines that makes providing these experiences a bit more difficult. Which is good if you think about your personal health data or not well formulated deals between companies.

There is a gap between your expectations shaped through your private experiences and the experience you might have in your job. There lies a big potential to start your transformation journey as an organization. In her book ‘Digital Transformation’ Lindsay Herbert writes about building bridges to close internal and external gap. As an organization, you need to identify these gaps and start building bridges to overcome these gaps and shift your company closer to meet the expectations of your customers and serve them better.

Now as you want to start, don’t start with building the Golden Gate Bridge. Identify the smaller gaps that you can bridge with less resources, risks, and expertise in building bridges. Imagine you building a bridge for two years just to learn the gap has been closed by a competitor, the leveraged learning by building multiple simpler bridges and took these to close a large gap with something, the Golden Gate Bridge would not compete with?

What are the gaps you have already identified? Let’s get started with the smallest and learn quickly. If you feel you are not equipped well, pull in an expert to help you. Hint: We could be one ✨