Marketing Management, 16th Edition

Selling to Buying Centers

Successful business-to-business marketing requires that marketers determine not only the types of companies on which to focus their selling efforts but also whom to concentrate on within the buying centers in those organizations.

Once marketers identify the type of businesses on which to focus marketing efforts, they must then decide how best to sell to these businesses. Who are the major decision participants? What decisions do they influence, and how deeply? What evaluation criteria do they use? Consider the following example:

A company sells nonwoven disposable surgical gowns to hospitals. The hospital staff who participate in the buying decision include the vice president of purchasing, the operating-room administrator, ...