The buying processes for B2B and B2C customers feature different steps. The first steps in the B2B buying process are need recognition, product specification, and the RFP process. It is important to understand that, in B2B sales, products are sold to entire businesses, while the decision of buying them is made my certain appointed decision makers; to make it more convenient, the decision makers describe their needs, and the responsibility of the seller is to address these descriptions and properly explain to the decision makers why they should buy the product (soap and body lotion).
The buying process for B2C customers is less critical because it does not feature performance assessment. First, it is needed to generate and qualify leads; then, goals should be set as part of the preapproach stage, sales should be presented, and reservations should be overcome. The next step—closing the sale—may be the most stressful, which is why detailed instructions for it should be designed. Finally, quality dimensions should be assessed as part of the follow-up process.
Lake (2017) stresses that businesses strive for optimizing their buying processes and pay a lot of attention to efficiency, which is why selling products to B2B customers should be based on logic, while selling products to B2C customers should be based on emotions. Therefore, selling soap and body lotion to B2C customers should involve advertising with visuals that will emotionally appeal to customers, while selling the products to B2B customers should involve providing accurate technical data on why the soap and the body lotion are high-quality and should be purchased.
Social networking services can help in the sales process; however, different platforms may be chosen for B2C and B2B customers. The former should be contacted on websites on which they are likely to share personal experiences; these websites include Facebook and Twitter and provide more opportunities for building emotional appeal. B2B customers, on the other hand, should be contacted in the professional context, and such services as LinkedIn may be considered as channels of communicating and developing relationships with B2B customers.
Reference
Lake, L. (2017). Understanding the differences between B2B and B2C marketing. Web.