Entrepreneurship. Rhonda Abrams

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       Are you a B2C or B2B?

       One key component of your company’s business model—the basic structure of how you will make money—is whether you will sell “B2B” or “B2C.”

      ■ B2C (BUSINESS TO CONSUMER): You sell a product or service directly to the consumer or end user.

      ■ B2B (BUSINESS TO BUSINESS): You sell a product or service to another business, either for the company’s own use or for that company to resell to customers.

       In your marketing, you will want to emphasize different features, depending on whether yours is a B2C or a B2B business. With a B2C business, you’ll focus entirely on the personal benefits the end user will get from purchasing the product or service. With a B2C business, you’ll also have to emphasize the broader benefits the company will reap, especially when it resells your products or services to others. The focus will include how you meet a business need, such as through increased efficiency or improved profits.

End user vs. actual customer

      If you were asked to say precisely who your customers, or potential customers, are, how would you answer? You might say that your customers are all the people who purchase and use your product or service—but you’d be wrong. You must carefully distinguish between your customer and the consumer or end user of your product or service. You may sell directly to your end users. Or you may sell to an intermediary—and that intermediary may well have other intermediaries.

      Let’s continue with the energy bar example. Who’s your customer? Is it a coach purchasing the energy bars for an entire team? They’ll want to know not only whether it will improve performance but how much bulk purchases will cost. Or is it the end user (the consumer) of your product—the college athlete—who will actually eat it and get the burst of energy needed to score that winning goal? They’ll be interested in the taste, as well as how it makes them feel.

      Or is your customer the snack foods buyer at the grocery store? This person’s concerns are down to earth: how much money you’ll spend on advertising, how quickly you’ll replenish inventory, and whether you’ll pay the store a stocking fee to obtain shelf space.

      Recreational athletes and other consumers won’t have a chance to buy or eat your energy bars if you don’t meet the supermarket buyers’ needs first. On top of that, if you don’t have your own sales and distribution force to sell to snack shops and supermarkets, it’s likely you’ll first have to find a distributor and convince them to carry your product.

      The coach. The athlete. The store buyer. The distributor. You have to satisfy a lot of customers with each energy bar. You’ll give yourself a competitive edge by thinking of each of these customers—and planning for their needs and motivation.

      Being responsive to the details that are important to distributors, retailers, sales representatives, and others helps you plan your marketing materials, operations, packaging—and even the nature of the product itself. If sales reps in your industry must purchase their samples, for instance, you can set yourself apart by supplying free samples. If retailers can fit more square packages on a shelf than round packages, you’ll be more competitive by choosing a square package.

      Even if you think you’ll market directly to consumers on the Internet, you’ll discover that there are still many entities between you and your customer in cyberspace. In the case of the energy bars, your intermediary might be the online grocery store, a health food site, a sporting goods store, a gym, or a search engine that will help customers find you. So you’ll still have more than simply athletes to please.