October 16, 2024

How do the concepts of Mental and Physical Availability play out in B2B?

As a B2B start up myself, I ponder such matters. I can fully see the easy relevance of these two tasks proposed in “How Brands Grow” in the consumer goods world. Your product has to be “familiar”  enough to trigger the purchase, and it has to be present in the store (online or physical) at the point you turn up as a shopper with the requisite need.

In the world of B2B, I think Mental Availability has some close parallels – few of us buy a service that we don’t have at least some reason to trust. Even if that trust has come from several interactions with a credible salesman, or a product demo, or a testimonial from someone whose opinion we value. 

But how does Physical Availability apply? After all in B2B, our services are always “there”, all but a click away.

Here’s where I think the model might alter in our sector. I don’t think the two concepts are as separate for us. 

To get on the shortlist, yes we have to be “familiar”, but we also have to be “present” for the buyer at their point of need. Hence we have to make regular contact with decision-makers in companies. To take key people to the tennis or out for dinner. To be dropping by for a coffee. In B2B we have to ensure our business is close at hand at the point the client need becomes one that they have to act on (however long that takes)

I remember a client telling me several years after the event “Roger I now remember you coming to see me and being impressed by your product, but by the time I reached the point I was in a position to take action, to be honest, I’d forgotten your name, so I went elsewhere”. Not the best feedback I ever had. But it made it very clear to me that to succeed in B2B you have to be there, consistently.

Hence I guess many of us invest in prospect databases and product regular content for our sector that should interest our ‘warm’ prospects. We attend expos even if just to reconnect with people we know. We remain visible and present. Great salespeople always did this. Marketers now have to emulate them.

I am no marketing professor but for B2B perhaps I can suggest a renaming of these two related tasks as  “Mental Availability” and “Contact Availability”, which inevitably have a huge overlap. First that your brand conjures up positive vibes (the brand task), and that you are simply at hand’ when finally it’s time to buy (the conversion task). In some situations if you are lucky you can do both in one go, certainly this has happened for us in the past, but more likely this is a drawn-out process.


Roger Jackson – founder and CEO of SenseCheck

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