A sales manager liked the CRM demonstration and asked for a contract. The seller added the sale to the forecast. A week later, it emerged that nobody had discussed the budget, IT had not approved the integration, and the director was waiting for an explanation of the benefits. The manager really did want to use the system. The seller's mistake was treating one person's interest as a decision by the whole company.
B2B means selling to an organisation for its work; B2C means selling to a person for personal use. These labels describe a market but reveal little about the buying process. An owner might pay for a small business subscription immediately. Several family members might discuss a home purchase for months. A marketer needs to know who takes part in the purchase, what each of them risks and who can say “yes”. That decides what the advertising says, what to send after the demo and what the seller does next.
Map the roles in one purchase
In our example, the sales team wants to find conversation history without searching personal chats. The director wants to see which enquiries have gone unanswered. IT is responsible for compatibility with existing systems. Finance needs the full cost and payment arrangements. They are discussing the same CRM but considering different consequences of buying it.
A role need not match a job title. A head of sales may be both user and initiator while the owner approves the budget. In a small company, the owner may fill all these roles and talk to the supplier directly.
For a recent purchase, record who noticed the problem, who will use the solution, who assesses constraints and who authorises spending. Then establish what each person has approved. “It works for us” needs a follow-up: for whom, for which task, and what remains unresolved? This replaces guesses about “the decision-maker” with a map of people and responsibilities.
The same research approach works in B2C. When someone chooses a family holiday, the payer, organiser and future travellers may want different things. Dividing buyers into “rational companies” and “emotional people” gets in the way: employees also fear mistakes and want to make their work easier. Describe the differences between markets through the buying conditions you have established.
Help participants assess the proposal
A general landing page introduces the product. A purchase decision requires material that answers participants' questions. The seller might send a short explanation of a relevant workflow, arrange a demonstration with future users or bring a specialist into the integration discussion. Each piece of material has an intended reader and a question it resolves.
| Participant in the CRM purchase | Material that supports a decision |
|---|---|
| Users | A demonstration of finding conversation history and handling a new enquiry |
| Director | Pilot conditions and a way to assess the team's working results |
| IT | Integration details, constraints and access needed for assessment |
| Finance | Cost for the chosen period, one-off work and payment terms |
The information must agree across these materials. If an advertisement promises to transfer enquiries from a form, the technical description should explain how that works and where the limits apply. Resolve discrepancies before sending the commercial proposal: participants will need to approve the corrected scope of work.
A promise to save staff time needs a baseline measurement and observation during the pilot. Even if people find conversations faster, the financial outcome depends on how the freed time is used. With unchanged pay and workload, expenses may stay the same. A proposal benefits from a measurable working result rather than an ROI figure that has not been calculated.
Record what was agreed
Participants may revisit earlier questions. IT finds a constraint, the scope changes, and finance recalculates the budget. Gartner's buying model helps explain these returns to selection and approval tasks. You still need to establish the sequence for your particular deal with the customer.
“Demo completed” describes the seller's activity. “Users approved the workflow; IT is waiting for a description of data transfer” shows what changed on the buyer's side. Record who owns the next step and the agreed timing. If the customer cannot name a date yet, preserve that limitation in the forecast.
For a small purchase, the process may end immediately: your contact has authority, the amount is within their budget, and no further checks are needed. Unnecessary meetings add work for the buyer. For a large implementation, skipping an assessment may produce promises the delivery team cannot keep. The deal itself decides how many approvals it needs: the amount, the risk and who it affects.
Connect enquiries to companies and projects
Contacts, companies and opportunities serve different purposes. A contact holds communication with a person. A company groups the participants. An opportunity describes a separate purchase with a confirmed problem and an agreed commercial next step. The team defines the creation rule in advance and applies it consistently across channels.
Several people may discuss one project. A single company can also have independent purchases with different needs and decisions. Do not turn every employee into a deal or automatically combine all enquiries from one organisation. Count a person in a project only once the conversation has made clear which purchase they belong to.
Consider a separate campaign for a CRM supplier. All amounts and results in this calculation are illustrative. Advertising cost 600,000 ₸ and produced 30 enquiries from 10 companies. Conversations confirmed 2 independent projects, each with an agreed requirements review. The other companies are still exploring options and were not recorded as opportunities.
Cost per enquiry was 600,000 / 30 = 20,000 ₸. Cost per company was 600,000 / 10 = 60,000 ₸. Ad-only cost per qualified opportunity was 600,000 / 2 = 300,000 ₸. These values describe different outcomes of the same campaign. The last figure helps discuss the quality of incoming demand, but customer acquisition cost requires won deals and a defined set of acquisition expenses.
If both projects remain under discussion, campaign revenue is not yet available. To compare channels, retain the month in which each opportunity appeared and allow deals comparable time to complete the buying cycle. Label the share won among closed projects precisely: open projects are absent from that denominator. The share of all enquiries that paid answers a different question. The CRM retains connections between a person, a company and a separate purchase.
Exercise: prepare the next step after a demo
Choose a product from your own project and a recent purchase or current customer conversation. Describe the working problem, participants and confirmations already received. Then draft a short message to your contact: what remains unresolved, which material you propose, and who needs to discuss the result. Where information is missing, record the gap instead of inventing a role.
For the opening CRM example, the follow-up might read: “You said the workflow suits the department. How do you approve the budget and integration? We can send a data-transfer description for IT and a breakdown of the work for finance.” This message builds on the conversation and helps the buyer organise the assessment. If the manager has authority to buy the system, they can clarify that and remove an unnecessary step.
In the campaign calculation, strong interest from all 30 contacts does not change the number of confirmed projects. While only 2 opportunities meet the criteria, ad-only cost remains 300,000 ₸ per opportunity. New agreements update the stage and date; a signed contract is recorded separately as a won deal. The marketer can then explain what the budget has produced and what the forecast is still waiting for.
Video: comparing B2B and B2C
After watching, compare the general differences with your own purchase map. Authority, risk and the approval process help you choose the right material more precisely than the market label alone.