Business-to-business research is imperative for a company in terms of management as a practical study which newfocus can conduct through qualitative and quantitative techniques to ensure a better understanding of the company, that company’s position in the market place as well as recommendations and implementations into improving position in the market. newfocus can provide research into best methods into implementation of new growth business strategies including appeal and uptake strategies; as well as in-depth interviews with current and potential businesses to explore expectations, experiences and gaps in service, just to name a few.
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Business-to-business Buyer Behaviour
At newfocus we conduct extensive insightful business research that assists your company in understanding the behaviours behind a business buyer. To build a position within a business-to-business buyer context a company must go through the stages of exposure, attention and interpretation.
Motivations and emotional responses
The decisions need to be structured in in a way that is different to purchase consumer decisions as an organisational decision will be less emotional. However because humans are making decisions the emotional side of managerial decision making cannot be underestimated. A purchase decisions normally focus around improving performance through efficiency and effectiveness or lowing costs; the first step to make is creating a rational organisational benefit and then appeal to the emotions of the individuals making the strategic decisions. newfocus can offer study into personal motive, physiological needs of decision makers and influences so that a communication strategy can be created to entice buyers into a result of action.
Experiences, Perceptions & Learning
Positive experiences with vendors are rewarding and will tend to influence repeat business. Business decisions are influenced by their experience and perceptions. Learning can be cognitive and information can be processed based on information acquired and learned without the benefit of experience, instead through networking or word-of-mouth. For example below are some of our experiences:
“Utmost professionalism and recommend newfocus as a research agency to anyone”
I write … from a personal point of view to express my appreciation for the professionalism of your organisation.
Given my experiences, I would have no hesitation in recommending newfocus to anyone seeking the services of a research agency.
Adrian Johnston, Marketing Officer, Army Department of Defence
“Clear presentation with strong analysis and insight”
newfocus is very enthusiastic and responsive. Their initial presentation was well received and provided a good
overview for me to build on with next steps. I appreciate the personal commitment to our project. The final report
presented well and contained a strong level of analysis and insight. It has been a pleasure working with them.
Australian Unity Andrew Walton, General Manager, Corporate Development
“Could work with our budget and kept to a really tight schedule”
Provide customised service and extremely professional. We’ve developed a very sound relationship over time with excellent communication. There is nothing we don’t like! newfocus were able to meet our budget requirements on one particular research task which was very important. They were also able to deliver the project in a very tight schedule.
Christine Booth, Marketing and Events Coordinator, Delfin Lend Lease
“Really understood our business and their research design was spot-on”
newfocus was recommended for an initial project by our ad agency. This experience was extremely positive so I didn’t hesitate in contacting newfocus again. They demonstrated understanding of our business, providing the ability to design the research methodology to explore our objectives.
Caroline Deans, Marketing Coordinator, RAA
As a business learns it develops its organisational style and implements new policies and guidelines based on learned experience that aids decision making. Because of its importance it is a high involvement process.
Stakeholder engagement
Stakeholder engagement is essential in providing opportunities to align business practices with the needs of society and their expectations. Stakeholder engagement has a focus around corporate social responsibility that can help drive long term shareholder value. The level of engagement a stakeholder will have, stakeholder expectations are to be understood, which are determinant on the level of power (influence on strategy) and interest (imposition of expectations on strategy) a stakeholder has in the organisation.
The below four groupings can be will have different levels of stakeholder engagement in external stakeholders. Dependent on their relationship they can influence the success or failure of strategy:
Commercial Stakeholders – suppliers, competitors, distributors, shareholders
Political Stakeholders – policy creators, regulators, government agencies
Community Stakeholders – These are those who are affected by a company. No direct relationship but may take action against the company if there is an issue with services or products provided.
Technological Stakeholders – standards agencies and owners of competitive technologies
newfocus can provide insight into the level of stakeholder engagement an organisation possess and key stakeholders that specific company should focus on through the process of stakeholder mapping.
The following issues can be understood or resolved through the process of stakeholder mapping:
- Determine purpose and strategy in which are the stakeholder expectations that should be considered.
- Revealing whether levels of interest and power of stakeholders reflect the corporate governance structure of the company’s operations.
- Determining whether repositioning a stakeholder is desirable so lessening or heighten the influence of a key player
- Maintaining the level of interest and/or power of some key stakeholders
It is important to understand how the competence to meet the diverse expectations of stakeholders can enable the success of some strategies whilst limiting the ability of your business to succeed with other strategies.
Client satisfaction
Reporting client satisfaction is important as it reveals the effectiveness of service. Client satisfaction is highly important and can be a strong indicator on where a company sits in terms of meeting or surpassing customer needs and driving loyalty, advocacy and future business.
Business customers are generally more pragmatic, with more practical factors influencing their levels of satisfaction. Items like price, service delivery and relationship management can be paramount to satisfaction, therefore requiring a more tailored approach measuring satisfaction as opposed to the general public.
Considering this, its highly important market research measuring satisfaction amongst your business customers provides strategic context. newfocus provide a range of strategic metrics with a view to provide:
- A reliable measure of business clients’ satisfaction with service delivery, problem resolutions and service overall.
- A useable metric business management can use to manage and improve business processes.
- Assessment of loyalty and inclination to purchase products, renew services, remain with a provider.
- Analysis of your current customer base in terms of their advocacy – i.e. inclination to recommend an organisation/agency in their network as well as more detailed assessment of profiles (promoters, passively satisfied and detractor) benchmarked against newfocus’ Best Practice Score – a comprehensive database segmented by industry and year.
Brand
Brands are extremely important in business-to-business markets. Some of the world’s strongest brands for instance are industrial brands like Intel, IBM, and Siemens for example. Brands communicate the reliability and credibility of the supplying business and provide a good indication of the quality that can be expected of that company’s products or service offerings. These considerations are very important to business customers as they can be judged upon the performance of the products or services they select.
Business-to-business advertising:
This is a great way to communicate information in the form of imagery to buyers. Media like television are a less effective method of attracting or reaching an organisational customer, print advertisements, direct mail and personal presentations are the way to go. Business-to-business advertising is longer and more detailed.