A Wake-Up Call for B2B Brands

A Gallup survey found that 71% of your B2B customers are thinking of taking their business elsewhere. Four actions can head off the threat.

Amy Radin

February 10, 2016

Gallup has just released the Guide to Customer Centricity: Analytics and Advice for B2B Leaders. The study reports that 71% of B2B clients are ready and willing to take their business elsewhere – not even one-third are fully engaged in their relationships with suppliers. If you are operating in the B2B world – and you likely are, as either a supplier or client – do you find this statistic surprising? This finding should be a wake-up call for B2B brands to figure out what is going on with their clients. Do you know anyone in the business world who will say they are opposed to client-centricity? Putting clients at the center of a business remains an aspiration for many companies. Why is a strategy of such potential value so difficult to execute? What must happen to create mutually beneficial relationships between businesses and clients? Companies have to get out of their own way and provide the value that clients expect. B2B or B2C, people handing over their money to you because they believe you are meeting their needs demand personalized engagement. They will choose the right moment to go elsewhere if you fail to deliver. Here are some areas that can make a difference:

Sales force compensation systems rewarding new client deals, with little incentive past contract signing and getting the client set up, can be updated to reward surfacing and delivering on continuing needs.
A linear approach to winning, welcoming and engaging clients can be reinvented to treat clients like people and break old habits of putting them through a gauntlet of internal systems and silos.
An outside/in understanding of client needs and wants can replace product pushing. Even traditional client needs assessments may not capture evolving needs – these methods tend to play back answers biased by the products driving today’s P&L.

There is no magic to this. Client-centricity requires change and a new mindset. It’s hard work. Where can you begin? Follow these four action steps to identify the priorities for your business:

Go out and talk to clients. The value of conversations where clients do most of the talking and you do most of the listening can be far higher than quantitative research.
Segment your client base. This is not just about bucketing clients by size, sector, potential value to you or historical purchase relationship. It’s about the clients’ journeys, including their attitudes and behavior, how they go about achieving their vision of success, and where you fit in.
Reimagine your clients’ experience of doing business with you. How does your brand enhance the clients’ journey -- it’s not about making them fit in to your mechanisms for running your business. It’s about reflecting their preferences back to them in every interaction they have with you.
Figure out what this means for your employee experience and expectations. Everything from sales incentives, to marketing communications, to servicing policies to channel capabilities – should contribute to the experience your brand will create so your clients see you as enabling their vision for their business. Hire people who are not only business-focused but people-focused.

The very term “B2B” fails to acknowledge the reality that every brand, irrespective of whether its audience includes individuals or enterprises, must prove itself to the people who will be its users, buyers or payers. Behind every B2B relationship are P2Ps – People-to-People. This post also appears in Amy’s regular column on Huffington Post.

Amy Radin

Amy Radin is a transformation strategist, a scholar-practitioner at Columbia University and an executive adviser.

She partners with senior executives to navigate complex organizational transformations, bringing fresh perspectives shaped by decades of experience across regulated industries and emerging technology landscapes. As a strategic adviser, keynote speaker and workshop facilitator, she helps leaders translate ambitious visions into tangible results that align with evolving stakeholder expectations.

At Columbia University's School of Professional Studies, Radin serves as a scholar-practitioner, where she designed and teaches strategic advocacy in the MS Technology Management program. This role exemplifies her commitment to bridging academic insights with practical business applications, particularly crucial as organizations navigate the complexities of Industry 5.0.

Her approach challenges traditional change management paradigms, introducing frameworks that embrace the realities of today's business environment – from AI and advanced analytics to shifting workforce dynamics. Her methodology, refined through extensive corporate leadership experience, enables executives to build the capabilities needed to drive sustainable transformation in highly regulated environments.

As a member of the Fast Company Executive Board and author of the award-winning book, "The Change Maker's Playbook: How to Seek, Seed and Scale Innovation in Any Company," Radin regularly shares insights that help leaders reimagine their approach to organizational change. Her thought leadership draws from both her scholarly work and hands-on experience implementing transformative initiatives in complex business environments.

Previously, she held senior roles at American Express, served as chief digital officer and one of the corporate world’s first chief innovation officers at Citi and was chief marketing officer at AXA (now Equitable) in the U.S.

Radin holds degrees from Wesleyan University and the Wharton School.

To explore collaboration opportunities or learn more about her work, visit her website or connect with her on LinkedIn.