Types of B2B Buyers
The four types of buyers in B2B markets are:
- Producers or companies that purchase goods and services that they transform into other products. Includes manufacturers as well as service providers. Producers generally buy raw materials or components that that they then turn into other products. Producers include manufacturers as well as service providers. GM needs steel and hundreds of thousands of other products to produce cars. A dentist needs drugs like Novocain, oral tools and X-ray equipment.
- Resellers or companies that sell goods and services produced by other firms without materially changing them. Includes wholesalers, brokers and retailers. Walmart and Target fall into this category of buyer. Resellers are companies that sell goods and services produced by other firms without materially changing them. They include wholesalers, brokers, and retailers. A B2B seller that gets a reseller to buy its products can see a significant sales increase. Example, B2B seller who gets Walmart to carry its product in all Walmart Stores.
- The government is the biggest purchaser of goods in the U.S. The federal government purchases everything imaginable from companies. It contracts for all kinds of services also. B2G markets, or when companies sell to local, state, and federal governments, represents a major selling opportunity even for smaller sellers. At the federal level B2B sellers can visit the General Services Administration Web site. The GSA helps 200-plus federal agencies buy a wide variety of products purchased routinely. B2B sellers can also visit the web sites of the agencies they want to buy their products if the products are not routine purchases. State web sites provide information about selling to state governments. Selling to the federal government involves the following steps:
- Registering with the Central Contractor Registry at www.unitedstatesbusinessregistration.us
- Consulting the General Services Administration (GSA) web site at www.gsa.gov to view the kinds of products the GSA helps agencies routinely buy.
- Aggressively market product to the agencies most likely to purchase it.
- Institutions include nonprofit organizations such as the American Red Cross, churches, hospitals, charitable organizations, private colleges, civic clubs and so on.
B2B sellers must look to the web sites of individual institutions for their buying policies and procedures.
