B2B marketing is an integral part of Marketing these days. Selling – the personal interaction between buyer and seller – is a key part of the overall marketing process. In many B2B businesses it is the final link. In other words whatever other marketing activity has been undertaken, from sending a brochure or mailing to running a major advertising campaign, and however much interest it has generated, selling must convert that interest – building on what has been done in publicity and service and turning it into action to buy. Sometimes the sales process consists of a single event – you talk to the customer and, all being well, they buy. On other occasions the nature of B2B products and the customers’ attitude to it mean that a whole series of events must take place. These range from a simple enquiry to a series of meetings and maybe more besides (sending a written proposal or making a presentation, for instance). All of this is important and whatever is done it must be done well; however, the focus here is primarily on the face-to-face interaction between salespeople and customers. The sales task is to communicate clearly and persuasively, and very often to differentiate an offering from that of competition. It is a fragile process, meaning that results can be changed – for good or ill – by small changes in approach. This may even go down to the use of one word rather than another, certainly to one description or another. Markets may be competitive, customers demanding and fickle, and selling success will not “just happen” because you have a good product or the “gift of the gab”. You must outsmart competition to outsell them. But of one thing you can be sure: Selling success can be made more certain if you understand the way the process works and deploy the right techniques in the right way. The archetypal “born salesman” is rare indeed. Good salespeople, however, are much more common. And the best of them have a secret. They understand the process of buying and selling. They adopt a conscious approach in the light of that understanding, and they deploy an approach that utilises well-chosen techniques that are in turn well matched to each individual customer or prospect with which they are dealing. The overall prevailing standard of salesmanship is by no means all good, and there is much that is bad or at least unthinking and poorly focused on customers. Many salespeople muddle through thinking that all that is necessary is a personable approach-if people like me they will buy from me – they say. They make sales (provided the product is good) but they will never sell as much as they could. What does all this mean? It means that those who tackle this area and get it right have a considerable opportunity to maximise sales results and thus positively influence the growth and profitability of the business. Selling is the most personal area of marketing. It is what you do that can guarantee success, what you say and how you say it. The intention here is to provide guidelines and approaches that will enable you to sharpen your sales skills and maximise the results they produce. Nothing here is intellectually taxing. Selling – good selling – is to a large extent common sense. It does, however, involve some complexity. In a sales meeting that lasts even half an hour (and some last much longer) there is a great deal happening and many things to remember and get right.
There are four overriding factors that are important to note. These are as follows:
A. Persuasive communication – selling (professional selling) – has a complex job to do: it must inform, persuade and differentiate. While nothing about selling is itself intellectually taxing, and much of what makes it work is common sense, it needs careful orchestrating and any complexity is created by the fact that many aspects of the process need deploying accurately and in parallel
B. Selling is inherently fragile. By this I mean that it is sensitive to small change: something done a little differently can make the difference between agreement and rejection. Details matter: even a poor choice of a few key words of description can affect the outcome.
C. Selling must be acceptable to the client. There is a fear among some that too strong (“pushy”) an approach is incompatible with projecting a professional image, and indeed it could be so. Well considered sales approaches, however, can help create, retain, and even enhance, the professional relationship that you are at pains to work within
D. Selling must be deployed in a tailored manner. There are certainly principles to be borne in mind, but there is no one right way to sell. We can all spend a lifetime learning to adapt better and better to changing conditions and, not least, client demands and expectations. What is necessary is to sell in the best way – whatever that is – every time, meeting by meeting, client by client approaches must be well matched to the circumstances.
Whatever you sell, and often in B2B selling products and services are regarded as high cost, clients want to be sure they are dealing with the right firm and the right people. And they will define doing so as working with the one with whom there is the greatest certainty of achieving what they want.
Put yourself in the clients’ shoes for a moment. How do they know a product will work for them? In many ways the answer, if they have not used you or your organisation before (and to a degree if they have), is simple. They judge you in part from the way you do what you do first: sell.
Of course, you and your colleagues are good with people, you are professionally competent and, what is more, you are nice people to do business with. Surely if you create the right relationship their business will follow? Well, perhaps. However, is it just possible that the other organisations being checked out have some pleasant and efficient people too? They want you to be knowledgeable, efficient, and reliable; they may want you to have expert knowledge of particular things; they certainly want to feel you understand them, their business and their situation and to act with that understanding in mind as you match them with appropriate products.
A further point is worth adding to this explanation of why selling is so important. And that is productivity. Sales productivity, that is. The opportunity cost of everything you do, other than doing is considerable. If things are being done inadequately, two meetings where one should have sufficed, or if the success rate of new clients in relationship to the number of prospects with whom you are in discussion is too low, then it becomes a disproportionately expensive process. The time taken for selling must be kept as low as possible to maximise profitability.
Selling is:
1. A sequential and staged process. Occasionally one meeting may lead directly to business; more often several different interactions are necessary, building up the case and finally converting the interest generated into commitment.
2. A cumulative process. In other words, each stage has to go right, the prospect can lose interest or drop out at any stage and at every stage they may well be making comparisons with how a competing firm goes through the process. Literally, if one stage is judged inadequate by the prospect, there may well be no chance to move on to the next stage at all.
3. The stages clearly involve different methods of communication, all of which must be handled with equal effectiveness. What is done must be equally persuasive, no matter whether it involves a simple one-to-one meeting, a telephone call, written communication (letters or longer, more complex proposals and so on), or a formal “stand-up” presentation. Each method presents its own challenges, may demand somewhat different skills and none must be a weak link in the chain of communication resulting in definite business.
To a degree this means that selling is a complex process. Remember none of the things that must be done are intellectually taxing, indeed much sale technique is based on common sense, but it must be carefully orchestrated to create the best approach. Habits and reflexes must be built up and some aspects can only be refined through experience. It is certain that many people can be effective in selling, provided the task is approached thoroughly, systematically, and creatively.
Once you have understood how B2B marketing works, it will easier for you to profit from the major online B2B Marketplaces
Consider these facts:
1. Worldwide B2B marketplace sales could reach an estimated $3.6 trillion by 2024, up from an estimated $680 billion in 2018, according to research firm iBe.
2. Amazon Business is set to top $31 billion in revenue and $52 billion in gross merchandise volume by 2023, including sales by third-party sellers on the marketplace, says a prominent ecommerce analyst with RBC Capital Markets.
3. A September 2019 survey of more than 100 buyers on digital buyer expectations by Digital Commerce 360 B2B reveals that almost half of B2B buyers complete more than 25% of their purchases on marketplaces and nearly 4 in 10 buyers complete more than 10% of their B2B buying on Amazon Business.
4. 55% of B2B buyers also expect their Amazon Business volume to trend up in the coming year, according to the survey.
5. Amazon Business isn’t the only marketplace looking to generate more business among U.S. buyers and sellers. EBay sees business buyers and sellers as an “important customer segment,” and Alibaba sees a big opportunity in B2B marketplaces by helping small and mid-sized U.S. companies buy and sell products and services both domestically and overseas.
6. Five years ago, there were far fewer B2B marketplaces in vertical industries such as apparel, automotive and healthcare. But today, there are more than 70 B2B marketplaces in more than 13 diverse industries, according to research compiled by Digital Commerce 360 B2B.

The growing demand for B2B marketing has brought the services it provided to online for the convenience of the customers. Among the 5 major industries that drive the US economy, Technology is one of them. The tech sector is a huge component of the U.S. economy, according to Cyberstates 2018, an annual analysis of the nation’s industry published by CompTIA. Employment among computer and IT is projected to grow 13 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than the average for all occupations. Demand for additional workers is stemming from cloud computing, the collection, and storage of big data and information security. The impact of the tech industry has affected nearly every state, and, according to Cyberstates 2018, the industry is ranked in the top five economic contributors in 22 states and in the top 10 of 42 states. Technology plays a role in almost all other sectors, such as health care, advanced manufacturing, transportation, education, and energy. The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, autonomous vehicles, and augmented and virtual reality are all changing society and industries.
The major players in USA are as follows:
1. ThomasNet: ThomasNet is world’s largest Industrial B2B Marketplace that connects industrial buyers and American manufacturers globally through state-of-the-art online b2b platform. The history of ThomasNet is consist of 12 decades of success, as it was initially started-off as industrial directory with the name “Thomas Register of American Manufacturers” in the year 1898 by Harvey Mark Thomas. It was industrial products directory which was covering over 650,000 American manufacturers, suppliers and distributors categorized in 67,000 industrial products categories.
2. TradeWheel: TradeWheel is a massive online trading platform that is skillfully bringing you a wide range of exporters and manufactures belonging to diverse backgrounds from across the globe. TradeWheel is said to be the unifying trading portal, which is formulated with the aim to deliver a trouble-free platform for all the buyers, manufacturers, and businesspersons to connect and proceed with their business operations instantaneously. TradeWheel has garnered noticeable popularity since its inception and have morphed into a secure and suitable trading interface which allows business operations to be conducted globally.
3. ImportandExport.com: Importandexports is an online Business Directory where manufacturers, wholesalers, suppliers, exporters connect with global Buyers and importers. As a premier B2B Trade Portal where (SMEs) Small & Medium Enterprises along with esteemed corporate groups can gather online to intensify their businesses. Importandexports is a B2B Marketplace for USA where the international traders can meet up, swap over their product specific details & provoke trade/sales leads.
4. eWorldTrade: eWorldTrade is a new online B2B site that has been growing fast and is creating a new and improved way for the buyers and sellers to reach each other. eWorldTrade is a subsidiary of Reckon Media LLC from United States, experienced in digital media and technological service providing. Headquarters of this B2B site is in the Dallas, Texas and it is running all its major operations from Karachi, Pakistan. It has now become a part of CPEC to make better trade relations between Pakistan and China. The main aim that this site is to help the Chinese suppliers, dealers and manufacturers reach their potential audience. This online global B2B platform is said to be one of the fastest growing online marketplaces where thousands of sellers, dealers, suppliers, manufacturers, and vendors are registering every day and meeting their potential clients from around the world. Thousands of manufacturers from different cities and countries are registering themselves on the website every day, and it can be seen that this platform will be great competitors to all other B2B platforms. eWorldTrade.com offers everyone a chance to become a reseller of different products and services. It has proved to be beneficial for small businesses and manufacturers in China who are willing to globalize their businesses.
5. GlobalSpec: A leading industry-specific search engine (engineering), GlobalSpec is a great resource for industrial parts, specifications, and related services. A US B2B Engineering website. GlobalSpec is another catalogue that mainly works very well for the North American and Asian B2B market. The high percentage of the electronic sector stands out here. It is a payment catalogue that has an advanced statistics system with which the customer can create a list of potential customers since the system itself detects visits and debug. It is a particular directory and has the advantage that all its users have to be registered before using it. So GlobalSpec.com makes a difference to other more general directories. It also has another significant advantage as it can offer additional information regarding visits. In the world of Marketing, Business to business is known as a way of working with companies directly ("business to business"), as it encompasses the commercial operations that the firms perform between them and without depending on the final customer. That is, in this type of marketing strategy companies target other companies rather than a consumer.
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