There are broadly two kinds of businesses. B2C, businesses that sell to individual customers, and B2B, businesses that sell to other businesses. B2C and B2B are two very different kinds of businesses. They look different, talk different and walk different. So they have always promoted their products and services differently. B2C businesses have mostly a PUSH and PULL culture. B2B businesses typically have just a Selling culture, a PUSH culture.

B2C businessses have been branding their products and services for over a century. The have an established Branding culture. But until recently, most B2B businesses have thought of themselves very differently. B2B businesses have typically avoided the entire branding/marketing ethos in favor of selling. Most B2B businesses are still stuck in the outmoded selling culture. So they have been missing the critical PULL dynamic in their business building efforts.

The two biggest single differences between B2C businesses and B2B businesses are that the latter typically address a much smaller group of prospects and customers, and that their products or services are typically much more expensive. These differences impose significant differences in how the two kinds of businesses sell their wares.

Because the products or services of B2B businesses are typically more expensive, they involve a more rational and longer decision-making process. And because B2B are addressing far fewer prospects and customers, they use media in a much more focused way. These are very obvious differences between B2C and B2B businesses, and so the latter have mostly conducted the processes involved in generating awareness, interest, preference, purchase and satisfaction differently from most B2C businesses.

This has resulted in a great deal of waste in the business-building investments of B2B businesses. They mistakenly interpreted the key differences between B2C and B2B businesses to mean that the fundamentals of their businesses are different from those of B2C businesses. So they have been neglecting the crucial PULL dynamic in the business building process.

The fundamentals of business are the most important, and they are few. These are the factors that determine whether the business makes revenue or not. And these fundamentals are the same for both B2C and B2B businesses. They are all PULL dynamics. What are these PULL fundamentals? Just about half a dozen:

1. Focus your business building investments on your core target group, the core 20% your target group who are most likely to account for about 80% of your revenues.

2. Identify your core competition, i.e., those businesses that are currently patronized by your core target group.

3. Identify the most powerful pre-existing motivations in the core target group's minds and hearts that can be addressed by your product or service. Make this your strategic positioning.

4. Communicate your product/service's ability to fulfill this strategic motivation in a way that conveys greater value than they are getting from your competitors. Make this your strategic dramatization.

5. Ensure that all your communications convey the strategic motivation and competitive dramatization in a way that is seamlessly consistent, but in a way that is kept perpetually refreshed to maintain attention and interest.

6. Ensure that all the other experiences that the core target group might associate with your brand name, such as the clients' experiences of your product/service, the behavior of your people, both in person and over the telephone, and the appearance of the buildings and vehicles that bear your brand name or logo, are likewise seamlessly consistent with the strategic communications.

Of course, PUSH is important. But it is not enough. The above six fundamentals are all about generating PULL, i.e., generating a vacuum in the hearts and minds of customers that suck in your product or service. But most B2B businesses neglect these business fundamentals, even though they are common to all business, simply because they mistakenly assume their differences to B2C businesses to be fundamental, and Selling to be enough. As we have they are not. All businesses need both the PUSH and PULL dynamic. And they need PUSH and PULL culture to make sure they both happen as well as they can.

If you are responsible for ensuring the growth of a B2B business, you need to adopt these fundamentals immediately, if only because NOT to do so would sacrifice the PULL dynamic and inevitably weaken your business building program. You would merely be neglecting the most powerful dynamic available for building your business and fulfilling your responsibilities. You need not only Selling, but Branding as well.

Instead of staying in the PUSH culture that most B2B businesses are trapped in, you can focus on the fundamentals of your business, and evolve to the higher and more powerful PUSH & PULL culture.