Business-to-business customers, or B2B clients, are part of any business’ structure. For the most part, they come in the form of partner businesses and client businesses. For companies that focus primarily on B2B clients, it’s important to understand the different types of clients and how to handle them.
If we consider the individual – B2C – typc customers we discussed a few weeks ago…
…a few things jump to out.
Firstly, at the base of them all, there are a lot of similarities between B2B clients and B2C customers. Clients (as opposed to customers) almost follow these exactly typings:
The Regular Client
This is the business equivalent of that one guy who always comes in to a cafe at 2:45pm to get a coffee and wait for his kids to finish school. Regular clients are the ones who will keep coming back because your company is familiar; they have a good relationship with the company, its team, and they understand how it works. These are the sort of businesses who might look for quotations elsewhere but at the end of the day will likely return to their current vendor, simply because it’s easier and comfortable.
The Hands-Off Client
A simple client, with simple, unchanging needs. They know what they’re looking for and whether your company has it or not is not entirely within the realm of your control. Usually, these clients will only contact you when they are really ready for a quotation. They’ll have researched your materials, possibly talked to other businesses who you’ve referenced in testimonials online; they know what you’ve done and what your company is capable of. Unlike with a B2C customer, the Hands-Off Client is a harder sell. Yes, they’re at your door because they’re serious, but they’re looking for the best value and you can be sure they’ve got five other businesses on the line.
The Unpleasable Client
In the B2B world, an unpleasable client is incredibly hard work – as with the unpleasable customer, they’re impossible to work with, never happy with what you put out. This makes them a pain in the you know what. More than that, however, is that clients like these are going to do one of two things: either they’ll jump ship many times until they find a business that is able to meet their expectations within their realm of tolerance, or they’ll stick with your company and complain about everything. They’ll still pay you, however, and in a very Machiavellian sort of way, that’s really all that matters.
The Window Shopper
Delivered three versions of a quotation? Taken a client out to lunch, dinner, and drinks several times? Still no decision? You may have a window shopper on your hand. Like the B2C window shopper, a Window Shopper client is not unreachable, they might not be ready yet. For the most part, businesses tend not to waste as much time as individuals when it comes to dawdling around in front of offers so that tends to work in our favour.
The Unicorn
The daydream, the castle in the sky. A business that will work with you perpetually, never complains, is super flexible, willing to make everything work despite setbacks and the occasional messup. Wouldn’t it be nice if these unicorns really existed?
There we have it. 5 Customer Types in a Business World. These are stereotypes, obviously, the world is far more complicated than a simple list of who’s, why’s, and hows.
What does your perfect customer look like? What sort of customer would walk into your business and make your day? This is the sort of customer that we all dream of, the impossibly easy customer who not only spends plenty of money, but is easy to help out. The unicorn customer. The ideal customer, the one we are all looking for.
Who is the unicorn customer?
In marketing, we use buyer and customer personas to represent the would-be targets of marketing campaigns. These are people that the department is charged with winning over. They are carefully researched and constructed to portray not the ideal customer, but the realistic ones.
Unicorn customers, like unicorn anythings really, are the ideal. They’re the customers who are easy to service, make plenty of purchases, and come back regularly. They’re advocates for the brand and products, and are more than loyal. They’re the customers we all want, the ones you can always count on.
If you worked in the automotive industry, for example, your ideal customer might be the one who has no finance issues and wants a brand new car every year, upgrading their old one consistently.
Unfortunately, unicorns are rare – or nonexistent, depending on your point of view. They’re castles in the sky that we look for because what’s life without a little bit of magic?
Why discuss them then?
Unicorns might be mythical creatures, but customers certainly aren’t. What’s wrong with daydreaming? Nothing. In fact, knowing who your ideal customer is will help you develop strategies to create them.
Creating the Unicorn Customer
Before you start thinking about kidnapping your favourite regulars and stitching unicorn horns into their foreheads let’s pause for a minute – that’s not what I mean, and I’m pretty sure it’s not legal.
Knowing what a business’ ideal customer looks like means that strategies can be implemented to strive towards them. We’ve established that a unicorn customer is an ideal, a idyllic thing that doesn’t necessarily exist, but it should always be worked towards. Treating customers as though they are your ideal customer will make them feel as special as unicorns really are.
In other words, don’t think of a unicorn customer as an actual customer – think of them as a standard. A Unicorn Standard, as it were.
The Unicorn Standard
Over the course of the articles in this series, we’ve discovered some very basic truths. At the end of the day, they all come down to this: The Unicorn Standard. All of the types of customers we’ve discussed have things in common, and this concept covers all those things. In essence, there’s one fundamental rule: the customer is right. More than that, the customer is to be treated with full honours.
By making it clear to customer service staff that all customers should be treated as though they are the ideal customer, will generate a powerful surge in any customer service department. It’s about treating your customers the way they should be treated, not dependent on who they are or what kind of customer they prove to be: treat them right, and they’ll do right by you.
