Hello, welcome to the section "What is B2B Marketing". Part 1. These are the topics. We will talk about the different aspects of B2B marketing, including the concepts of purchasing center, the sales center, the need for total marketing and the purchasing process of companies. Let's start. What is B2B marketing? It means marketing business to business. Here I show you what looks like a network of very complicated relationships, but it represents the basis of what B2B marketing is. I want to accentuate the complexity of B2B marketing. I people have a misconception of B2B marketing as something simple, especially when compared to B2C marketing. But as we can see here, B2B creates a complex network of relationships. We can think that the image represents a single department and the numbers we see represent other departments, either the seller or the buyer. You may notice that they are exactly the same, it serves as an argument that in essence our buyers are a reflection of us. Therefore, we have all these departments and we know how they think. This is something we can refer to when we think about how to deal with your marketing department, your engineering department, your production department and more. The most important thing to remember is that we do marketing for other companies, companies that are like ours. Well, I mentioned about the purchasing center and its goal, because it's the center where different departments make decisions about purchases. And even though I have indicated their roles here, normally you can not identify them by roles, rather, by their positions or by departments. The fact of having different departments implies that they may have different purchasing criteria. And how is it possible to have different positions involved, some being vice-presidents, others being low ranking leaders? The position they have influences the decision making process. Okay, one of the interesting roles that you may have seen in the list of purchasing center members is the goalkeeper, and I do not mean the goalkeeper in football. The goalkeeper does not refer to a physical goalkeeper, but it refers to the concept of controlling the inflow of decisions, the inflow of information, the inflow of, in some cases, people. Therefore, although their positions may be low, their power can be much greater. Here in Asia, as we still have hierarchical concepts in our culture, like Confucianism, sometimes it is difficult to know who has the true power of decision, and if he or she is involved. That's why, the goalkeeper can seen in charge like those who have the power of decision. This is something that you should always keep in mind, that from behind there can be someone much younger or that someone can be a woman, who may have power because of their family, even if they are not present, and they are the ones you really want to influence. Let's see, what does all this mean? Let's see the main key, is that even if there already exists a purchasing center, you should also form one. It's like in sports, if the opposing team has five people, let's say it's basketball, and you are the only person on your team. Well, you are at a disadvantage, not only in numbers, but also in ability and that's why you also need help. Following the same logic, if you need financial information, you need help from the financial department. If you need engineering information, you need help from the engineering department. Let's see this example. We have this industry that is growing, which we call Controlled Electronic Units, which are integrated electronic systems inside a car, that provide functionalities. Some of the important brands are Bosch and Continental, and the Asia-Pacific market is getting very big, because consumers here want these features in many of their cars. And in Europe laws have been passed that affect that car companies, such as laws to integrate ECU for security. ECUs not only affect safety, but they are also used in electric cars, in the power train. They can be related to how ecological the car is, they can also be used in the entertainment system and in the navigation system. In short, cars are becoming much more electronic, For this reason the sellers of ECU must integrate their ECUs not only with the hardware, but as in some cases the cars have more than 100 ECUs, integration is becoming a big, big problem. For this reason, a horizontal integration with the ECUs is needed. And this is where a salesperson who is more oriented towards sales than towards engineering and although he may have some knowledge of engineering, he may only know about one of the ECUs. And this is where trying to market, trying to sell an ECU by oneself can be very difficult for only a sales team and that's why you should have more than one sales center approach.
