Job Searching is a Business to Business Sale, NOT a Consumer Sale; Part Two

Now let’s talk more about the buyer decision for a larger company, such as a Fortune 1000. If you want to work at a company under $50 million in revenue, the characteristics may resemble more of a consumer sale.

A consumer personally decides what they want to buy. If they make a mistake, the impact is usually limited and not a significant impact to them. Buying a house or a car are large purchases but can usually be resold with limited loss and personal impact.

Note well: A consumer decision rarely impacts others outside of their family.

A business buyer usually has specific needs or consolidates consumer spending into leveraged buys.

Business commodity spending, such as toilet paper or printer ribbons, are usually purchased in large quantities in a bid process. The vendor who has the needed product at the best price with the best servicing relationship usually wins.

However, most business purchases are for specific technologies, raw materials, consulting, and items that could significantly impact their business. To be competitive, they have rules designed to control what is purchased to attempt to only buy what is needed to drive their business forward – at the lowest cost. But that cost is rarely the price paid for the product. The impact of a business purchase is immense with hidden costs and risks.

Let’s take a simple example. Say the company is buying HP laptops. What is the risk of going out and buying a Dell laptop for yourself? First, the price is probably more than buying off a corporate contract. Second, the company has to pay someone to service the laptops. By now having two vendors, the costs for parts and service knowledge, has increased. Third, the IT software strategy may require interfaces and memory/disk requirements that your new Dell laptop does not have. Bad decision? You bet. You will probably get your hand slapped.

This example gets a lot worse depending upon what is purchased for the company. If the buyer makes a major mistake, the impact can be the entire company. I have see some companies go out of business for making naïve or poor decisions. Everyone can be impacted. Management take mistakes very seriously. A wrong decision or not following the rules could easily cost your job.

The business buyer decision impacts the business. Bad decisions result in slaps on the wrist to being fired.

This has a dramatic impact on how companies buy – and hire.