Influencing In B2B Environment

By: Gaurav Batra In: B2B Last Updated: 2011-02-14

Influencing is a skill that is required to attract customers towards your goal. Excellent communication skills and person to person persuasion is required for influencing effectively. Influencing is therefore a gamut of personal skills that needs to be attuned to one another in order to obtain effective results.

Push And Pull Influencing behaviors can be of two types- pull or push. The pull or push behavior helps to determine which style may be used in the past and want to use more in the future. In a B2B environment there is room for both but in modern consultancy selling, the pull variety generates more success. Pull influencing entails motivating people with the effect of your forceful personality to pull people towards your viewpoint. In other words, imposing your will on the customer but at the same time satisfying their cause.

In case of push influencing, it involves the opposite. Here you use your skills to persuade and move the customer to the position of change which leads to the win-win relationship. Logical arguments and facts to persuade, bargaining and negotiating, bribes or rewards to coerce the customer are used in this type of influencing.

Styles Of Influencing In B2B Selling

Blend of both pull and push has to be used successfully to acquire the ultimate results
The salesman should be flexible in their approach to acquire maximum advantage
Personal power with the help of a pleasing personality should be effectively used to build a relationship of trust and rapport
The salesperson should motivate themselves to enter into the customer's shoes to ferret out his problems and issues
Ability to diagnose the customer's challenges and goals and what matters to them in their department or team or sector
Customer centric approach should be adopted
Finally the goals can be assertive to overcome their concern and provide a compelling vision or case.

Power Play Besides power also plays an important role in B2B marketing. Personal power or the magnetism of the personality can act effectively in influencing the customer in B2B marketing. Positional power or the power of rank in the organization can also dictate the hold over your customer. Besides, reward power and coercive power can also result in effectively persuading the customer in certain cases.

Influencing the customers in B2B Environment is an important task. Today, competition in the corporate world is stiff and entrepreneurs have to look after their own vested interests.