“Three facets of Seller and Buyer in Seller-Buyer Relationship: B2B domain” 1) Charting out the complexities in the seller-buyer relationship 2) Situations when a Buyer gets prejudiced and precipitates a crisis turning into a cold listener, owing to the personality conflicts between seller and buyer 3) Sustaining the seller-buyer relationship through understanding the cultural rings framework Author- Jasleen Kaur Gumber
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"Intricacies in Seller-Buyer Relationship: B2B domain”
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“Three facets of Seller and Buyer in Seller-Buyer Relationship: B2B domain” 1) Charting out the complexities in the seller-buyer relationship 2) Situations when a Buyer gets prejudiced and precipitates a crisis turning into a cold listener, owing to the personality conflicts between seller and buyer 3) Sustaining the seller-buyer relationship through understanding the cultural rings framework
1.2 First Attribute: Power Relations Action and Reaction followed by Concentration of Power in various Situations
Complexities also seem to amplify from the fact that a seller buyer relationship is never co-equal in
power at a given time, though the power concentration is dynamic. (Exhibit- A)
Exhibit- A
Action Reaction Concentration of Power 1. Seller tries to fix an
appointment with the buyer
Buyer holds the power to say Yes, No or propose some other time. This is the first step to Seller-Buyer relationship and one of the most critical one. Some sellers spend as much as a year in just being able to get one meeting appointment with the Buyer company.
Buyer
2. Seller tries to establish his product offering
Buyer holds the power to criticize/ accept the offering. Buyer mindset and perspective on the product of the seller is very important here. Prejudices and prejudgment hold an important position in the mentioned context. Buyers tend to meet Sellers for a lot of reasons other than their plans to actually buy from that particular seller. Reasons can be various like below- a) buyers seek knowledge on a particular domain, b)buyers want to understand pricing proposal of different sellers, c) implementation plan from various sellers help the buyers in framing his own project execution flow, d) internal dynamics of the organization sometimes force the decision maker to meet a seller but he comes with a prejudice to not get convinced, etc.
Buyer
3. Who defines the requirements?
This particular aspect is magnetic and shifts either ways. According to a lot of companies, it is the seller who makes the buyer organization conscious of the market trends thereby influencing the investments in his favorable direction. This can be attributed to all the Sales training,
negotiation skills imparted to the Sales force which tip the sales scales in seller’s favor. These are more commonplace in markets where product differentiation is minimal. Contraposition, assertive and authoritative buyers refuse to fall in the seller influence; remain discreet and independent in deciding all by them what they want.
4. Buyer is desperately looking out for a solution and contacts seller(s) for a pitch or a product demonstration
Supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental concepts of economics and it is the backbone of a market economy. Seller holds the power if the buyer shows excessive keenness or urgency in buying the service/ product. The scenario becomes demand driven instead of supply. Seller has sheer dominance in the relationship if the market is monopolistic or even temporarily monopolistic.
Seller
5. Buyer has implemented the solution and is facing problems in running the same
Transiently, power shifts to the Seller as he holds the power to deploy his best resources in getting things back to normal and resuming the work at buyer’s end. Particularly for technologies which are on the Operational Expenditure (Opex) model this is an acutely pivotal point. Buyer can’t shift to any other vendor in this case of crisis and has to cope with the current seller but these breakdowns in the product/ service make or break the seller’s future in that particular organization and even amongst the peer organization owing to word of mouth.
Buyer/Seller
6. Buyer is given a project he has little exposure to and he needs to get the industry and market view on same
Seller holds a great advantage in these cases as the buyer is open to taking suggestions from the Seller.
Jasleen Kaur is Master’s in English and currently pursuing her MBA from MDI, Gurgaon (Management Development Institute). She is alumnus to IIT, Delhi (Indian Institute of Technology) for a short term course in Sales and Marketing. She is presently working as a Marketing and Public Relations Professional at Canon India, with about 5 years of work experience. Jasleen is also serving as a Pro Bono consultant to two of the leading NGOs in India. She can be reached at [email protected] or [email protected]