One of the most simple and useful articles I have read about marketing a service to fellow businesses is this article from entrepreneur magazine ‘Hit the sweet spot‘ by Kim. T. Gordon. An excerpt from the article reads

‘For many business owners, marketing to fellow entrepreneurs is job one. The challenge is, entrepreneurs are time-strapped multitaskers who are also relatively risk-averse–making them a difficult audience to reach and persuade. Sound familiar?’

This article explores a ‘common sense’ approach to marketing and designing a business to business product or solution.

What do businesses want? According to this article:

• Increased sales - does your solution provide that?
• Safe Choice - do you have a content rich campaign with customer feedback and cases?
• Maximum Convenience - is there a huge amount of work the buyer has to do? Is this included in the solution? If it needs 20 hours work on the clients side is their an alternative?
• Ways to save money - Can you add features? Bundle products together for a ’special price’?
• Do it yourself solutions - businesses love low cost self service solutions but if again time is an issue. Free customer support in the bundle is a great seller!
• Reliability and Performance - What guarantees or warranties does your company offer? If something goes wrong are you their to help?
• Vendors they trust - Special events and networking are great to build trust with a customer.

The finishing line of this article is ‘What matters most is that you create an opportunity to build positive relationships’ Probably the most important statement for businesses I have heard in a long time.