5 Essential Do’s and Don’ts for emerging B2B Companies

The emergence of B2B portals and their success from the mid 2000’s has led many aspirers to pursue the same. However, the ratio of success has fallen drastically for new and emerging B2B portals. Let me put some light on the glaring facts and reasons for this trend.

The Period back in mid 2000’s like from 2005-2008, was when, people had just started to hear about these Online Marketplaces and thus, Companies looking to cash in through establishing Business to Business Marketplaces did not have much to fight due to lack of competition then. Success then, for them, meant only being able to put up a market competitive website with basic trading features and having an effective Sales approach. However, 7-8 years later today, the B2B market for new entrants is like a goat trying to make a place between lions. In other terms, it is not a cake walk for new aspirers and they will have to earn their repute the hard way.

I will suggest the following list of DO’s for emerging companies looking for a successful campaign:

1. Before entering the market, make a comprehensive study on the current giants in the B2B market like alibaba and globalsources. Identifying their customer base and regions focused, to be able to understand the trends of these specific regions for customer attraction.

2. Make a list of all the basic and advanced services these giants are offering to their customers and make an analysis on how much time and the amount of resources these giants had to invest to be able to provide these services. This will help emerging companies in identifying areas where it can invest their time and cost and earn the highest ROI and cutting away with options that require huge time investment and cost, and as time is money, with competition increasing ever so fast, these new companies can’t afford to take too much longer to launch its services.

3. While setting the targets for the initial few months, like the first quarter or first year, be modest and set a realistic target or even conservative sometimes so as not to build up very high expectations for the stakeholders of the company. If all goes well, you might well end up achieving the set targets or even over achieve while in the worst case scenario you will have a lesser burden for explanation.

4. Establish an offline sales team in the specific region which is being targeted. Although for b2b companies this might seem a bit too odd, since majority of its sales occurs through the online sales mode, however, this step is really essential in breaking the competition barriers by physical meeting with customers.

5. When running email marketing campaigns try to bring something new to the fort. Customers like to hear something that they feel themselves, and when you do that, you tend to touch their hearts and even win them.

Five list of DON’Ts, that you emerging companies need adhere to are:

1. Keep away from trying to price your service plans on the lines of the market competitors. You are a new flavor for the customers and they won’t risk there bucks with you exactly in the same magnitude as they do with established powerhouses of B2B industry like Alibaba.

2. Avoid hiring a lot of people in the first few months and try to get yourself one multitasked resource which can get you the work of two resources rather than hiring two separate resources, since cost will always play a major role in the first few months. Hiring is always a crucial aspect in a new setup and some companies try to get it overdone in an attempt to achieve their milestones.

3. Try not to repeat the same old slogans with your services like ‘Get HIGH Business from us’ since customers will be now well versed with these tag lines and will just treat your emails as Junk if you do so.

4. Do not target leads in a bulk to in order to increase chances of conversion since identifying the right potential leads is the way to success. Getting yourself 10-15 good quality customers will increase the chances of conversion rather than trying to focus on quantity which might take up both time and effort and may not even provide the desired results.

5. Last but not the least, do not over commit to customers, since in a service industry like b2b, you need to provide service for a good 12 months or so for any basic premium plan and any lacking in service delivery will just put your company in hot water, since customers word of mouth in the internet circles will do your goodwill loads of damage, which a new company can ill afford.

People would argue that Many other points hereThe above 10 points clearly lay out the Go-To Strategy for potential new companies that intend to enter the fiercely competitive B2B market.