There are many thoughts about the difference between B2C and B2B product management.
Often, they deal with small, theoretical differences.
Yes, one moves more slowly than the other, you need different pricing strategies, and so on.
Those are issues you can think of if you’ve ever built things in both areas.
But you need to have worked in both worlds and in different setups to see the really big one.
I’ve been there, and this is about my experiences with the most important part of product management: the users.
Spoiler alert: B2C is about people. B2B is about people and, more importantly, the process.
Have a look at B2C
If you are building a B2C product, you are almost always dealing with a very precise user (group).
You are building X for Y.
Calendar tool for young parents.
Dating app for love seeking 25-year-old.
…
There are some exceptions, such as when you build a new toy for kids.
There, the kid is the user, but it also depends on the parents, since they are a huge part of the decision process.
But in most cases, it is pretty clear with which users you need to talk.
This also makes the whole creation and optimization process very straightforward.
You simply talk to those people, observe them, develop ideas, test them, and so on.
What about B2B
Let’s start with the exception first.
You have businesses, which pretty much behave like a “normal” person.
This especially applies to small companies or even single freelancers.
The following is about medium-size to larger organizations.
There, you cannot rely on user feedback and data the same way you do with B2C.
This is because the user is usually not the decision maker, and the decision maker is sometimes even not the buyer.
Also, feedback is different. People sometimes try to look smarter, because they feel the need to prove themselves.
That’s a situation where you can basically trash all A/B tests, Net Promoter Scores, most user surveys and so on.
Story 1 of 3: building for large companies
At Placedise, we were building an AI SaaS product to optimize and measure branded content.
One core feature was the assessment of a measure’s quality.
Our target users (salespeople) needed a simple tool.
Furthermore, the underlying process and (in our case) KPI needed to be as simple as measuring the click on a hyperlink.
However, they did not make the decision to buy. This had been done by their managers.
Since we are a kind of a market research tool, those managers brought in their research department.
They needed clear proof about how it works and all details integrated in the product. Otherwise, well, they “could also write a random number on a piece of paper.”
The challenge was to build a tool that creates a simple number for the salespeople, but also provides strong details to research.
Most importantly, the latter group would not even really use the tool, but their evaluation of it was important to the manager of the salespeople in order to make the purchase decision.
This example demonstrates the importance of the whole process.
It is not enough to simply look at the user. He might be excited about the product, but if he does not have the power to make the decision, this would not be enough.
Mind the decision makers, and all involved departments and players.
Story 2 of 3: buying as a large company
I also worked some years at Springer Nature, one of the largest publishers in the world. I headed the digital product management and digitalization department in Munich.
You might assume the decision maker is always the person at the top. This can be true, but most often it is not that simple.
If you are best friends with the CEO and are able to get her so excited that she would trade in her own mother for your product, think of it as sold.
But let’s face it, this is quite rare.
In all other cases, if you are lucky enough to convince the person at the top, she will introduce you to the next management level.
And they will send it even further. In the end, it gets to a person who often has no time to care about your product, unless it benefits them directly.
And the benefit needs to include not requiring any additional effort.
- Your product saves the company money, but requires a 3-month setup? Out.
- Your product optimizes processes, but would require people to change their daily routines? Out.
This means you not only need to convince the decision maker, but also the actual users and people evaluating your solution.
And at least some of them usually do not want any trouble.
It is basically the same conclusion as in story 1, but from another perspective.
Story 3 of 3: optimization through feedback
When enhancing a product, you want to understand why people are not using it, where they struggle, or what is missing for them to become better.
Within B2C, you can read through reviews, simply ask people, or do some observation studies.
People will usually tell you the brutal truth, because they want a cool product.
With B2B, it’s different. People still want a cool product.
However, they also want to impress their bosses (or even shareholders) and not get fired.
Imagine a company that invested $2 million USD in a new software solution. Maybe people are not using it, because they do not understand how it works. If they would tell you about it, they would admit two things: that they are not using it and that they don’t understand it. Some bosses might fire someone who does not work with this investment or simply is too stupid for it.
So, people might tell you everything is fine, point to rather irrelevant small issues, or worse, blame your product (distracting from the underlying problems).
This means you need to be very careful with B2B user feedback. It might be biased — completely!
How to tackle B2B
First of all, you need to understand there is a huge difference!
B2C product managers tend to believe it is enough to build for the user.
B2B product managers know, of course, you build for the user, but you also need to include the corporate process.
This, in my eyes, makes it so important to have some corporate experience when building B2B products.
Large companies, especially, work differently from young tech startups.
And old-economy companies work differently from modern tech giants. If you did not work next to those people, you most probably missed something.
Some practical advice:
- Speak to the right people, which includes all roles and departments.
- Focus on jobs to be done for every player (user, decision maker, helper).
- Create a product that primarily pushes the career of those people. If you optimize shareholder value, this is great; but show how this benefits the user!
- Challenge your findings, and do not believe any of your surveys.
- When gathering feedback, be careful about it! In some cases, you can be quite confident about it; in others, you need to be creative to find the real answers.
- And always mind hidden user journeys!
What else?
Mind the small user base.
A small user base is another typical B2B issue.
This leads to a situation where you cannot have a test and come up with some statistically significant finding. Your N is simply too small.
You will need to base your decisions on maybe 5–10 individuals. This often leads to misleading observations.
Unfortunately, there is no easy way to get around this.
You should learn about conducting relevant studies with a small number of probands. If you know how to do in-depth interviews the right way, your findings will become more solid.
But no matter your experience and skills, have this in mind, and challenge your findings and ideas — always.
Don’t act too fast!
This is not about large corporations needing a long time to get to decisions!
This is about them not liking it!
They need years to adapt their processes to your system.
It kills them if you change it every 3 months.
This requires a completely different approach of stakeholder and user communication.
Especially as an agile startup, you want to iterate fast, adjust directions quickly, and even shut down non-promising projects sooner rather than later.
Not only do you need to accept longer decision cycles within B2B, you should prepare yourself that this mindset alone can lead to problems, as your potential customers might develop some kind of fear regarding your approach.
