“Three facets of Seller and Buyer in Seller-Buyer Relationship: B2B domain” 1) Charting out the complexities in the seller-buyer relationship 2) Situations when a Buyer gets prejudiced and precipitates a crisis turning into a cold listener, owing to the personality conflicts between seller and buyer 3) Sustaining the seller-buyer relationship through understanding the cultural rings framework

Author- Jasleen Kaur Gumber

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1.1 Three attributes of Seller and Buyer Relationship

Seller- An individual or entity that exchanges any type of goods or service in return for payment to an

existing or potential customer. It is also called an agency or vendor in a lot of business cases.

Buyer- A party which acquires or agrees to acquire ownership, benefit or usage of products or services in

exchange for money or any other consideration under a contract of sale is called a Buyer. It is also referred

to as a Purchaser or a customer.

Seller and Buyers operate in the same market and are mutually inclusive. They are the drivers of the

economics of the market, state or the country. Their key characteristic is building demand and

accommodating supply.

Fundamental attributes of seller-buyer relationship are-

Power Relations,

Personality Interactions; and

Cultural Rings

At any moment in the seller-buyer relationship, there is one driver and the other doer. This can be

explained by the below set of independent situations. These are typical examples of different stances of

equation between both and thereby power shifting from one to another.

Seller and Buyer relationship is subject to mismatched behavioral consequences that may arise owing to

the difference of seller and buyer’s background, lifestyle, culture and geographies (Exhibit- B).

Therefore, increasingly organizations are putting diverse mix in their sales team and training them for

conducting themselves with cross-cultural communities. Some of the looming trends are like below:

Three attributes of Seller-Buyer Relationship

Power Relations

Personality Interactions

Cultural Rings

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1. Companies are hiring account managers dedicated to the nationality of the account company.

E.g. - U.S. companies are contracting/ recruiting Japanese Account managers for their Japanese

accounts. That leaves no communication or cultural gap. In fact what it does is, package a U.S.

company’s product in a local language to give it the native geographical touch. Having alike

nationality account managers reinforces Glocalization (Globalization + Localization).

2. Companies are striving hard to understand each other’s culture thru having dedicated classroom

sessions. Long inductions and orientations do reduce cross cultural clumsiness.

3. Business schools are imparting international cultural studies as mandatory electives. They are

also coming on strong with International Exchange programmes to give cultural diversity

exposure.

4. Adopting the other culture knowledge across contact points is helping create comfort zones.

Wishing and greeting in the native language of your client can certainly go from bottom to top.

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1.2 First Attribute: Power Relations Action and Reaction followed by Concentration of Power in various Situations

Complexities also seem to amplify from the fact that a seller buyer relationship is never co-equal in

power at a given time, though the power concentration is dynamic. (Exhibit- A)

Exhibit- A

Action Reaction Concentration of Power 1. Seller tries to fix an

appointment with the buyer

Buyer holds the power to say Yes, No or propose some other time. This is the first step to Seller-Buyer relationship and one of the most critical one. Some sellers spend as much as a year in just being able to get one meeting appointment with the Buyer company.

Buyer

2. Seller tries to establish his product offering

Buyer holds the power to criticize/ accept the offering. Buyer mindset and perspective on the product of the seller is very important here. Prejudices and prejudgment hold an important position in the mentioned context. Buyers tend to meet Sellers for a lot of reasons other than their plans to actually buy from that particular seller. Reasons can be various like below- a) buyers seek knowledge on a particular domain, b)buyers want to understand pricing proposal of different sellers, c) implementation plan from various sellers help the buyers in framing his own project execution flow, d) internal dynamics of the organization sometimes force the decision maker to meet a seller but he comes with a prejudice to not get convinced, etc.

Buyer

3. Who defines the requirements?

This particular aspect is magnetic and shifts either ways. According to a lot of companies, it is the seller who makes the buyer organization conscious of the market trends thereby influencing the investments in his favorable direction. This can be attributed to all the Sales training,

Buyer/ Seller

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negotiation skills imparted to the Sales force which tip the sales scales in seller’s favor. These are more commonplace in markets where product differentiation is minimal. Contraposition, assertive and authoritative buyers refuse to fall in the seller influence; remain discreet and independent in deciding all by them what they want.

4. Buyer is desperately looking out for a solution and contacts seller(s) for a pitch or a product demonstration

Supply and demand is perhaps one of the most fundamental concepts of economics and it is the backbone of a market economy. Seller holds the power if the buyer shows excessive keenness or urgency in buying the service/ product. The scenario becomes demand driven instead of supply. Seller has sheer dominance in the relationship if the market is monopolistic or even temporarily monopolistic.

Seller

5. Buyer has implemented the solution and is facing problems in running the same

Transiently, power shifts to the Seller as he holds the power to deploy his best resources in getting things back to normal and resuming the work at buyer’s end. Particularly for technologies which are on the Operational Expenditure (Opex) model this is an acutely pivotal point. Buyer can’t shift to any other vendor in this case of crisis and has to cope with the current seller but these breakdowns in the product/ service make or break the seller’s future in that particular organization and even amongst the peer organization owing to word of mouth.

Buyer/Seller

6. Buyer is given a project he has little exposure to and he needs to get the industry and market view on same

Seller holds a great advantage in these cases as the buyer is open to taking suggestions from the Seller.

Seller

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1.3 Second Attribute- Personality Interactions Personality variations in Seller Buyer community and their permutations

Seller Personalities Buyer Personalities

Proud Patrons

Seeking internal

information/ relationship

Number obsessed

Hierarchy jumpers

Serious Investor

Seeking audience

Fulfillment of

knowledge

No relationship

Conflicting relationship

Harmonious relationship

The above matrix explores the wider personality traits of both the communities and their interaction.

No personality trait can be classified positive or negative but their resultant does indicate if the

relationship will sustain in the long term or not. All the red boxes indicate no establishment of a

relationship.

The matrix doesn’t answer if the business transaction will happen or not, since in the professional

scenario a lot of external variables act and only the personality traits of two individuals don’t carve out

business relation. Personalities do of course carve out their own rapport, which one can clearly

ascertain from the mapping done.

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Below are the definitions of the personality traits:

Buyer Traits-

1 Serious Investor: These are serious professionals and thoughtful buyers interested in solely the

product they want to purchase. For them, rapport with the sales person is not top on priority.

They get impressed by sound knowledge of the seller about his product. It is characteristic of

middle and higher management.

2 Seeking Audience: These buyers are usually very engaging with the seller community. They like

to keep in touch almost all the while regardless of the purchase time. These are usually

characteristic of lower and middle management.

3 Fulfillment of Knowledge: This category is ever seeking knowledge on the particular domain

and their call for an appointment can be quiet misleading. Either they are in the final stages of

buying and are considering a market check before the purchase conclusion or they are preparing

themselves for some upcoming project.

Seller Traits-

1 Proud Patrons- This community of sellers feels honored to be associated with their product or

service and pitch the same with huge confidence. They identify with the product and are largely

the most successful ones in establishing breakthrough deals.

2 Seeking internal information/ relationship- This is the traditional seller community which

understands that the key to sale is relationship. They thrive on extracting too much information

from the buyer and can even disappoint the serious investor category with big and loud talks.

With serious investor category, they need t be careful to not barging in the exclusive space of the

buyer. Putting the ring theory here, seller should be careful of which ring he should stop at.

3 Number obsessed- Principally, this is the most detested category of sellers. Thanks to the

mature and sophisticated markets we operate in, they have already been groomed or removed.

But still with sellers-, who fail to conceal their pressure of achieving numbers, forget controlling

themselves from showing their behavior for number and target obsession create an unfavorable

rapport with the buyer.

4 Hierarchy Jumpers- Sometimes sellers feel the potential in the account and also realize that

road block is his existing contact point and this is when the seller decides to escalate. This is one

of the most critical point for sellers have seen results flowing in and also opportunities losing

out. Sellers need to be, in perpetuum, more careful before taking the decision and owning this

personality trait.

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1.4 Third Attribute- Cultural Rings Three Ring Model in Seller-Buyer Identity

There are three rings around each individual which fall in a particular order. For a seller to talk to buyer

without any bias or preconceived notion he needs to cross the rings and take the discussion of business

transaction right from the Loci where all the rings seem to emerge. (Exhibit- B)

Organizational Behavior: Inner Ring- It constitutes the individual and organizational culture the

seller/ buyer is living day in and day out. It includes the business language he uses, his

perspective on business transactions, behavior towards his colleagues, attitude towards his

friends at work, his presentation style, etc. This ring is the most personal outlook towards a

business profession for he is sure to be in his most original form with people he meets daily.

There is no requirement for a seller/ buyer to understand his counterpart more closely than this.

Socio-Professional Conduct: Middle Ring- This ring extends to his ethics and convention while

in a business meeting with outsiders which means people seller/buyer doesn’t meet very

frequently. It encompasses how he comes across to vendors, business professionals outside his

quotidian routine, how he conducts himself in conferences, seminars, exhibitions, etc

Executive Stature: Outer Ring- This ring is important from the perspective of the

accomplishment a buyer/ seller has reached in his professional career. This is directly in

correspondence with the prestige he has in the market. For E.g. - It is primarily the reason why

sellers involve their organization’s CEO when they realize the buyer organization is also

involving a senior management.

Exhibit- B

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About the author

Jasleen Kaur is Master’s in English and currently pursuing her MBA from MDI, Gurgaon (Management Development Institute). She is alumnus to IIT, Delhi (Indian Institute of Technology) for a short term course in Sales and Marketing. She is presently working as a Marketing and Public Relations Professional at Canon India, with about 5 years of work experience. Jasleen is also serving as a Pro Bono consultant to two of the leading NGOs in India. She can be reached at iamjasleenkaur@gmail.com or jasleen.kaur@canon.co.in