Every B2B buyer has at least four different audiences they need to please

Instead, every decision has to satisfy four parties at once: the organisation that needs the outcome, the colleagues who will work with the partner, the customers who will feel the result, and the stakeholders who will judge the call.

The partners that clients hate to lose are the ones who demonstrate their value to all four, yet most partners only ever sell to one of them.

The organisation wants the outcome

The purchasing organisation wants the problem solved, and that is the audience most pitches or RFQs are written for. In Quadrangle's 7 Sources world this is about Utility and Quality: does the partner meet the need, and will the organisation feel good about the choice once the work is done?

The purchasing organisation tends to have the most specific criteria, which is why it dominates tenders and evaluation forms. But partners who sell only to the organisation tend to sound alike, because they are answering the same written questions.

Colleagues want an easier working life

Colleagues judge a partner on what they are like to work with day to day. That brings in Ease, Experience and Engagement: how much internal effort the partner saves or creates, how each interaction feels, and whether the partner listens and involves the team or simply delivers at them.

This is the audience most likely to argue for keeping a partner when budgets are cut, and the one most likely to quietly lobby against a partner that makes their life more difficult. Their view might not feature in a procurement process. But it shapes renewals constantly.

Customers feel the result

The client's own customers never see the partner, but they feel the results of the work. Quality and Experience matter here in a different way: a partner that improves what the client's customers receive creates value that travels well beyond the contract.

Partners who can show how their work impacts their client's customers give the buyer a far stronger case to make internally than any list of technical capabilities.

Stakeholders judge the decision

Stakeholders, from the FD to the Board, judge whether the decision was a good one. Value for Money matters most to them, and it's often weighed up by people who will never actually use the service. Brand Fit, in a specific B2B sense, is also important: is this the right partner for an organisation like ours, and does choosing them reflect well on us, or on the person who contracted with them?

That last point is easy to miss. Every B2B buying decision has someone's name on it, and the buyer carries some of the partner's reputation into every meeting where the work is discussed.

Where the four parties pull against each other

These four can pull against each other more often than they agree. The cheapest option pleases Finance, but can frustrate the team. The safest reassures the Board, but can leave customers unmoved.

Most of us have seen it: the client who loved the proposal and thought the solution was head and shoulders the best, but the low cost alternative was too low to ignore, or the CEO wanted the category leader.

That tension is why the path to a B2B buying decision is not always straightforward, and why the provider who wins is often the one that made it easier to strike a balance on a range of (sometimes competing criteria) rather than the one that scored highest on any single metric.

What partners can do about it

Providers can start by understanding and mapping their value to different audiences, separately. Most will find they have a strong story for the organisation, a reasonable one for stakeholders, but very little to say about colleagues or customers.

They can also make the buyer's case for them. A buyer who has to defend a choice to four audiences might favour a partner that hands them the argument for each on a plate.

And they can ask clients directly where they are under most pressure at the moment, because the answer changes, and thus changes what the buyer will value.

Best of all, the partners who do this well are positioned to earn what we call intentional loyalty: being chosen again, on purpose, by people who could go elsewhere.

Want to know more?

This autumn Quadrangle has been running a B2B version of the 7 Sources of Customer Value, asking business buyers what they want from the partners they work with, how they rank them and how well those partners deliver. We will share the findings over the coming weeks, by sector where the numbers allow.

If you would like your sector's results first, get in touch.