Key Differences: CRM for B2B vs B2C Businesses

The CRM system helps manage customer relationships in both B2C and B2B businesses. However, whether you target your services to businesses or individual customers affects the choice of key features and their utilization. In this short guide, I'll provide insights on what to consider when choosing CRM for your company, depending on whether you offer products and services to other businesses or individual consumers.

CRM – Is it useful in B2C?

There's no denying that CRM systems are primarily associated with B2B sales. Complex customer relationship management systems address B2B needs such as managing relationships with multiple stakeholders within a single target company or monitoring a long sales cycle. In B2B activities, there is often direct contact with a sales representative sooner or later. In this context, consistent data generated by both sales and marketing, accessible in one system, is particularly important.

Do you need such a complex system if you serve individual customers? Contrary to the initial impression, in many situations, it can be very helpful.

• If you sell high-value products that involve complex decision-making for consumers, such as real estate or cars, a CRM system can support this process. In industries like automotive or real estate, similar to the B2B world, a customer usually cannot do without a consultant. The purchase value is significant, and individual customer service becomes a necessity. Additionally, multiple people, such as family members, may be involved in the decision.
  
  
• If you operate on a subscription model, it's crucial to retain customers, encourage them to renew subscriptions, and engage in upselling. Therefore, you need tools that allow you to track customer behaviors and maintain their connection with the brand even after making a purchase.
  
  
• If you run a customer portal or reservation system, such as in a medical facility, travel agency, hotel, entertainment, or e-commerce, a CRM system will help you effectively manage customer data, ensure their security, and utilize data from various sources to customize offers and retain customers for repeat purchases.
  
  
• If you handle both B2B and B2C customers simultaneously, a single CRM system will help you segment the market and manage multiple sales channels using a common tool for all company departments.
  
  
• If you deal with a significant amount of data and need analysis and reporting tools to draw constructive conclusions, as well as marketing automation tools to scale personalized marketing actions – a CRM system also offers these features. This is the case for any organization operating on a larger scale, including B2C companies that can successfully leverage these CRM functions.

In summary, a CRM system can optimize your sales in both B2B and B2C activities, where maintaining existing customers, personalizing the buyer's experience, and efficiently utilizing digital channels are increasingly important.

CRM for B2B: Key Features

Which CRM features are particularly important for business customers? Must-have features offered by virtually all CRM systems include the ability to assign individual contacts to companies to effectively manage recipients within a single target organization. However, there are more tools to pay attention to.

Identification of Key Recipients

B2B purchasing committees, according to Gartner, usually consist of 6 to 10 people. Who is part of the committee, and who is the key decision-maker? CRM offers the ability to identify such contacts and link actions, such as assigning stages of the purchasing journey or allocating tasks to salespeople, depending on their behaviors.

Scoring

Identifying key contacts is also crucial in assessing sales opportunities. Scoring features allow assigning points to individual leads based on various parameters such as the position of interacting recipients, the type of interaction, or enterprise parameters. This helps improve the quality of lead qualification processes forwarded to the sales department.

Workflows and Notifications

The high value of B2B sales means that you cannot afford to lose sales opportunities. Workflow features, such as assigning tasks and notifications for salespeople, help in this regard. With a CRM system, you can turn the actions of sales representatives into efficient processes.

Sales Pipelines

In the case of B2B, the ability to create multiple purchase paths depending on market segments or sales models (e.g., direct and through partners) may be particularly important.

Buyer's Journey Tracking

B2B sales involve more decision-making stages than for individual customers, so tools to track, visualize, and analyze the buyer's journey are important in this context.

CPQ Tools (Configure, Price, Quote)

These tools are essential for complex products, such as in manufacturing or software purchasing. They allow efficiently configuring a product for a specific customer, pricing it, and preparing a sales quote.

CRM for B2C: Key Features

In the B2C world, a single purchase generates significantly less profit than in the case of B2B contracts. This necessitates mass actions and a focus on repeat purchases, determining key features of CRM systems to consider when choosing a valuable solution.

Handling a Large Number of Records

In B2C operations, you deal with a much larger number of potential customers. Therefore, it's important for the software to handle a sufficiently large number of records and offer tools to effectively manage them, such as segmentation tools.

Data Analysis

For large data sets, data analysis becomes crucial. Therefore, examine analysis and reporting features. Check whether they are user-friendly and easily customizable to your needs.

Marketing Automation

Reaching large audience groups while maintaining individual communication is a real challenge in modern marketing. Find out if your CRM offers marketing automation tools that help automate marketing actions intelligently.

Self-Service

B2C customers often prefer to make a purchase without any contact with your representative. From information about the offer to payment tools and FAQs about issues or automated customer service via a chatbot – it's essential to provide them with such an option. A well-chosen CRM will help customers serve themselves, increasing both their satisfaction and your team's time resources.

Choosing the Right CRM for Your Company

Regardless of whether you operate in B2B or B2C, a CRM system should be tailored to your business requirements. Sometimes, selling to individual customers may resemble business-oriented activities, e.g., in significant or renewable investments, such as in real estate or insurance. In other cases, B2B activities may resemble selling to individual customers, especially if your audience consists primarily of freelancers, professionals, or small businesses – where the purchasing decision for the company is often made by one person, similar to an individual customer.

Due to individual considerations, it's a good idea to seek the assistance of experts who can help choose specific software and configure a package tailored to your needs. If you'd like to learn about the possibilities in this regard with HubSpot, visit our website, schedule a demo, or talk to an advisor. We'll be happy to accompany you on your CRM journey!