What does every company buy?

company.jpgTrick question!

Companies don’t buy anything! Companies don’t browse the web, companies don’t call to praise or complain, companies don’t use your product, companies don’t refer you to other companies, companies don’t buy anything! PEOPLE do these things. Those people may work for companies or organizations, but they’re still human beings with all the human emotions and human wants. Indeed their “job” may involve “purchasing,” and they may be rewarded for making sound purchases, and their purchasing criteria may be heavily influenced by factors directly related to business, but keeping the human emotion out of the decision is impossible because, well, we’re all human.

A frequently discussed marketing topic is whether to categorize purchase types or markets by either “consumer” or “business” or “business to business.” A better idea is to remember that regardless of which categorization you’re tempted to give your organization, the truth is that there’s ultimately a customer, a person who’s buying from you. And the best thing you can do is to get to know as much about the person who is buying from you as you possibly can and to learn as much about their ultimate customer or consumer as you can. Do this and you’ll run circles around your competitors who are short-sighted enough to believe they’re selling to a “business!”

Ignore conventional wisdom. If everybody else is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by doing it in exactly the opposite direction.” – Sam Walton

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