Business to Business CRM

In both B2B and B2C sales cycles, the idea is to guide potential customers through a series of messages and (tailored) content that starts with generating brand awareness and leads all being well to a sale. If this sale is followed up with comprehensive customer care, it can also lead to repeat customers and brand advocacy.

In order to be successful, excellence in customer service begins at the start of every new sales conversation. Because B2B transactions are larger in value compared to B2C, B2B organizations are looking to improve the B2B customer experience by focusing on customer-centric sales strategies. From B2B lead generation to understanding the buyer journey, a sales CRM system helps maintain a reliable business database, streamline activities and focus on customer relationships.

The specific challenge of the B2B environment is that a business is much more complex and multifaceted than an individual customer (who already typically has a complex intersection of needs). Companies are likely to have multiple considerations and requirements at each touchpoint, which can make it difficult to figure out what they need and where. This is where the CRM system comes in.

By compiling the information mentioned above, the CRM system enables marketing and sales team to track individual leads in detail and figure out exactly how and when to influence them to move to the next stage of the funnel and also to automate specific tasks.

Though CRMs are generally designed with the intention of helping businesses streamline their sales activities, not all CRMs make sense for all businesses. A B2C CRM is very different from a B2B one. The functionalities, features and use cases would differ on both the platforms and if you are planning on buying a CRM, you need to be able to differentiate between the two.

The reason the two CRMs are designed differently is simply that the customer acquisition process in both these industries is completely different. Let’s first see how they differ.

Business to business (B2B) companies, sell their products and services to other businesses and organizations instead of to an individual. Examples of B2B businesses are IT services, website services, corporate insurance companies and the like. These businesses are more contact-based and cater to a smaller audience.

Business to consumer (B2C) is the model where businesses sell directly to the end-user of their products or services. Examples of this business model would be restaurants, hospitality businesses, telecom industries, and more. Of late, this model most commonly refers to e-tailers, i.e businesses that sell their products to consumers online. They are more lead based and cater to a much wider audience.

A B2C CRM is built exclusively to handle the business requirements of customer facing businesses. The sales cycles are generally shorter, and the lead sources are numerous, which means that one person could be coming in through various sources. The CRM should be dynamic enough to identify where the sales are happening and which source gives the highest revenue. Since B2C CRMs need to handle large volumes of data, the internal search engine should be very efficient and the segmentation of data should also be well-structured.

B2C CRM also needs to be able to handle bulk email campaigns, as opposed to B2B where the email communication is usually on a personal level. Additionally, B2C buinsesses also need to attribute the lead source to find where the leads are coming from.

Most people think that all CRMs perform similar functions. But that is not the case.

Need of different CRMs

With different approaches to selling, the CRM that B2B and B2C businesses use would also differ. For a business that sells payroll management software, they have a smaller audience to target and fewer contacts to store. A CRM designed for such a business would have the ability to store fewer leads and their nurturing capabilities would also be designed keeping such businesses in mind.

Imagine a business that sells furniture online and actively promotes the products on various channels such as email, social media and through PPC ads. They would be getting an inpour of leads, and a B2B CRM with a limited storage capability cannot possibly handle such a large inflow. They would need a CRM that is designed to handle a large database of leads.

If buying a CRM, then you need to identify the type of CRM it is. There are some basic differences between a B2B and B2C CRM. Here is a complete list for your perusal.