Business Growth Accelerator
Business Growth Accelerator
184 | Stop Running your B2B Business using B2C Principles: The The Mindset Shift That Will Revolutionize Your Business with Oscar Torres, B2B Management Program Founder & Director at ESADE Business & Law School
❓ Are you struggling to find success in your B2B business despite following conventional wisdom?
🎙️ In this episode, we dive deep into the world of B2B marketing and sales with Oscar Torres, a renowned B2B expert, who shares his unique insights and strategies to revolutionize your B2B business.
🎯 Topics we discussed:
- 🔄 The critical mindset shift from B2C to B2B
- 📊 The importance of qualitative KPIs and the butterfly effect
- 💡 Creating a B2B culture to accelerate your organization
- 🚀 The three-step process to transform your B2B business: Realization, Organization, and Culture
- 🌟 The impact of embracing B2B-focused marketing and sales strategies
👤 About Oscar Torres:
Oscar is the B2B Management Program Founder & Director at ESADE Business & Law School, helping businesses to scale and achieve their full potential. With years of experience in management and consulting, Oscar has developed a unique approach to addressing the challenges faced by B2B companies. Connect with Oscar on LinkedIn to learn more and continue the conversation.
Don't miss this opportunity to learn from a true B2B expert and transform your business!
Hi, It's Isar the host of the Business Growth Accelerator Podcast
I am passionate about growing businesses and helping CEOs, business leaders, and entrepreneurs become more successful. I am also passionate about relationship building, community creation for businesses, and value creation through content.
I would love it if you connect with me on LinkedIn. Drop me a DM, and LMK you listened to the podcast, what you think and what topics you would like me to cover 🙏
Hello and welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator. This is Isar Meitis, your host. We have a very special topic and a very special guest today. And I've done B2B and B2C in my life, and I can tell you from my personal experience that there's dramatic differences between B2B and b2c. On one hand, B2C is almost always more advanced when it comes to sales and marketing tactics and strategies and systems to do it. But on the other hand, a lot of B2B companies, use cases and ideas and concepts from B2C as a way to define their B2B way of selling and growing a business. And in many cases, that actually hurts their growth because there's a misfit between how B2C and a B2B B business works. Our guest today is Oscar Torres, and Oscar is a global expert on building successful B2B culture that drives growth for B2B businesses. He helped more than 500 companies in 25 countries improve and grow their B2B business through his methods, which we're gonna discuss today. And he's also the professor and the founder of the B2B management program in the Esade university in Barcelona. So since this is a really important topic, and it can really help B2B businesses look at their business through a different lens they might be looking today, that can help them grow faster, and really excited to have him as a guest of the show today. Oscar, welcome to the Business Growth Accelerator.
Oscar Torres:Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.
Isar Meitis:Oscar, before we dive into the method that you're teaching and the frameworks that you're teaching, when did it hit you? You've done a lot of things in your career. When did it become obvious to you that, oh my God, we got this all wrong, and maybe we should develop a new system?
Oscar Torres:Okay. I think to give you a little bit of background, I'm an engineer. I was, I was working in different companies for 10, 12 years. I was two years expert in China. when I came back from China, I moved to the software business to an scale up. And it's funny because, whenever an engineer moves to business, we think about a business school, okay, I need to do something in a business school. And my surprise was that all conversations, they were about Apple Heineken and Danon. So there, at that time I was, I was quite young, right? I was in my thirties and I was thinking, it's me, right? But then five, 10 years later, I was, I start thinking, no, it's not me. it's, yes, they are not addressing the topic, right? And, and then I start thinking around, I, I start thinking, wherever they are teaching as in a business school, it's B2C doesn't fit in b2b. At that time, I was working for an scale up called, solid Words. And, my responsibility was to scale the business in, for a Spain and Portugal. And, I remember that when I joined my executive education program, I, they were talking to me about Cinzano. Cinzano, the drink. Yeah. And I was think. Where is the point how I connect Zao in a shelf on of a retailer to the software I have to sell to an engineering team, that they don't trust me. And this was the very beginning. So everything started by, by the fact that I was not happy. Yeah. With what I was listening from my, from from the, my professors at that time. In fact, 20 years later, if you take a look back, between 50 and 70% of companies in the world, they are B2B and 90, 9 0% of the cases studies that are used in a business school, they are b2c. So something is wrong, right?
Isar Meitis:Yeah. Totally. Okay, so let's really dive right. What are the key things that you see that are wrong? And then what is, we'll start diving into the right way to do this.
Oscar Torres:Yeah, I think there are like three things, right? But probably two are very connected. The first thing is it's mindset. We have a B2C mindset. You and I, we are consumers. We buy things on a daily basis for ourself, for our families. The problem is when it goes into a business school and they teach you as a consumer as well, because in my position, I wasn't a consumer, I was a manager in a B2B company, right? So there is a bunch of things that, from a mindset point of view, what a manager or a CEO is doing. It's just creating the conditions, building a company that with people processing data to achieve a certain goal, right? If you are the one building the system, the company, and you do it with a B2C mindset, you are probably going to build the wrong thing. And I have a very good example, which is, Kotler's marketing mix, right? Who I think everybody has listened this, the four Ps right? Product, price, place, promotion, right? I was, when I was a kid, I was listening that I was thinking it doesn't work. Who cares about the product? For me, what is really important is the. solution That we are able to bring to a specific problem, right? Who cares about the price? It's much more about the value. It's something can be very cheap or very expensive, depending on the value, right? Who cares about the place b2b? People we don't need a place? we just knock the door and we go to visit you. And who cares about the promotion? It's, nobody in b2b, no client is going to take the risk to work with you because you make a discount. They're going to work with you if they see a very crystal clear value and they are happy, to, to work with you. So I think that the first topic, it's, management mindset, which is something I've been working for the last, 10 years. And this is when I built this program at the Saturday, which is, we are running already the addition, we just closed last week, the addition 23rd. Wow. It was super, it was, it's crazy in six years, because some colleagues, they have 23 editions in 23 years. But we have done 23, we have done 23 editions in six years, which is crazy. And, 25 nationalities. We have had, people from China, from the states, from from all over Europe, from Latin America. And at the end of the day, it's always the same aha moment is, it's I'm a manager with a B2C mindset deal, managing a B2B company, and this hurts. It really has a penalty. Can you imagine for an startup, can you imagine if you're a startup guy, you put your money over the table, you invest your time, and you are focused on product, price, place promotion, but if you are b2b, you better focus on other things, right? And you don't have time to make many mistakes. I probably need, yeah, probably you need to go fast to the point. So I think first topic, it's, it's, for sure, the mindset of management, the mindset of C level people in B2B companies, which connects with, with the second topic that for me it's, the way they manage their companies, which is what I call the B2B management model. And for that, yeah, we probably would need 40 hours to describe that. But if I give you a teaser, it's, for me it's five elements, right? And, and I super describe that in several articles I have published at Forbes usa. And first topic is that B2C is much more about the product. when you go to Anapolis store, an Apple store, and you buy, your ne your next, gad. You have 15 minutes of people and four years of gadget. It's all about, it's all about the product. There is, so there is no people in B2C companies. You don't buy people, right? In b2b, so different in b2b. if you are selling or buying a CapEx, if you are selling or buying something, which is, it can affect to your reputation. You are not buying a product. You are buying a solution and you are double checking that this will not affect your repetition. So first concept for me at the management level is that, we are in the people business in b2b, and this is super hard from a management point of view because it makes life of manager's life complicated. But it's super powerful because people has no competion. If you, Isar works for me, and, people recognize the value of Isar, how you can compete with Isar. There is no, no more Isar in the world, right? That's a very important topic in b2b. Second topic, which is, very connected to the fact that I'm an engineer, I land in the business world, like 12 years after I start working, right? I work for Vallejo, which is an automotive company in Europe. And then I work for Coca-Cola. Then I work for a motorcycle, company based in Europe. Then another one in China. And then I moved to business in the software business, right? And one of the things that I was absolutely surprised is, Sellers making, trying to make me believe that selling is an art and whatever is artistic is not predictable. And it's not scalable. So the second topic that, I'm really trying to make those C level people attending to our program, is that you have to treat the relationship as a process. It's not about the sales process, it's about the relat. Sales process is super short. The relationship includes many other people than sellers, right? So treating the relationship as a process is going to be a very good, way. to work towards this better, predictable and scalable business thing, which is, for me, it was very important Third element in this management model. Before
Isar Meitis:you dive into that, yeah. Before you dive into that, I wanna add two things from my personal experience and a lot of it from my very recent personal experience. So I've been helping companies grow their businesses, leveraging this like talk shows and podcasts and building relationships. Two things that connect very well to what you said. One is our first core value of the company or our second core value of the company is relationships over transactions. And the idea behind it is exactly what you're saying at the end of the day, what makes you win both internally in your company as well as external is human relationships and nothing else. And this is gonna become even more extreme when we're now walking blindfolded into the air of AI generated stuff. Absolutely. The human connection, the human trust, the human relationship. Is gonna become an even stronger component of okay, that's the only thing I can believe, because all the other stuff can be made in seconds and represent anything in the universe and make it look very believable. So relationships over transaction is one thing that I heard you say. The other thing that is really important, and you said it and you also touched it in several different places, is at the end of the day, it's about providing continuous value that builds trust. Over time, not necessarily related to the thing that you're selling. So if you are focusing only on providing, oh, I can give you this information because it will help you make a decision to buy my thing. I may have lost you as a customer, but if I say, okay, what problems do you currently have? Do I have expertise or can I bring somebody else who has the expertise? But I'm the one that bringing it to help solve. I think it's a problem. I
Oscar Torres:become person. I think it's even worse. I think that the product you are selling is a must. So yeah. Great. you are a professor. You cannot be proud that you know how to teach. It's mandatory, right? Yes. That's a, it's a is like a stupid, right? Yeah. You are a professor or you are a joker. You don't have to be proud to be a joker. I think that this, the product in b2. It's like a checkpoint. Yeah. If you, if your solution doesn't fix, and this is what it really, it's funny because, when you listen some very passionate people, B2C marketing people that they are, they wake up in the morning and they have this, this incredible, thought around Kotler, right? Product, price, place, promotion. I did my own B mix, right? I create the B2B mix of Torres which is competing with the Kotler's one, which is, for me, the mix that really works In b2b, it's solution company and people. Solution company and people. It's really what really counts for the buyer because for me, decision makers are risk takers They are, they do risk management. They don't buy a product. The product is a must. they buy a solution which should fix the problem. They double check what is the company behind the solution. And the last point, which is the last mile, which is over 50% of the decision making process, it's people. And this brings, this is a nightmare for management When they listen that, itar, it's oh my God. So you mean that we have to have a great product that fix a great problem and we have, and this problem has to be back up by a great company, but what is really going to make a difference is our people. Yes. Yeah. And, at the management man level, this is a hot potato. Because then it's when we start talking with B2B culture, how your people behave. because sellers, they are outdoor. If you have a quality manager that behaves not good, you are going to see this guy or this lady, right? If you have operations not doing the right thing, you go to the shop floor and you see them not doing the right thing. But the problem with sellers, Is that they are out there. They are in teams and zooms alone talking to through the market. And you don't have a second chance for a good first impression. Yep. So how many times our teams are burning the account for five years and you even don't know that this happened as a.
Isar Meitis:So I wanna mention something that just popped in my head, and it's very relevant and it's like an opposite example of this, but it amplifies everything that you're saying. I used to run a large travel company and I had a call center and the people would call in to buy travel. And my best salesperson from a re pure result perspective, made more sales, more money than anybody else on the phone, was a guy that. As far as I thought in the beginning, an amazing salesperson, right? He had more deals done every single month consistently more than anybody else. And then we, you get to a point that you plateau with your sales and you have good traffic. You're like, okay, how do I go to the next level? Let's increase the conversion. Let's start checking the calls. And he would only take the easy calls, like people who are not eager to buy, he would let go. He had one of the worst conversions of anybody on the team. And then we are. Oh my God. I'm only rewarding people based on how much money they bring. He brings in more money. I give him more money. He's throwing away 70% of the cost that other people could have converted to sales. And he would go through 600 calls a week when the average person would go through 300, and then he would sell a little more, but not twice. And I'm like, this is not, so then we started changing the mindset and rewarding them on conversion and rewarding them on building long-term relationship and rewarding them on having, yeah. Return clients that return to them. People would call and ask for Lisa or John and then, okay, this is a longer term model that actually works better. But it goes back exactly to what you said. It's. Do you look at the right parameters to establish the right behaviors and reward those behaviors in a way that will build long-term growth versus immediate reward that might
Oscar Torres:look better? I think this is another big potato when we come into the B2C thing. so when I was talking about management model and I said, okay, first is people, second is process. Third is. We are super infected by B2C mindset, in terms of KPIs. And that in the venture capital world finance people that they never have seen a client and they try to, they ask to entrepreneurs the wrong data. And for sure, if you are giving me 10 million euro. And you are asking for something, probably I will try to invest some time to answer to you. Yeah. So at the end of the day, the data that we are using, it has to be B2B data. It really has to measure the things we wanna measure, considering that there is a very interesting metric, so I dunno if you ever think about, but a car is sold in 45 minutes in a dealer. Fleet, it's five months. Yeah. The data that really works for 40 minutes has nothing to do with the data that is needed to build, to do the governance of five months of relationship. Yeah. and we are super, affected in terms of mindset. by that, the way we built our processes, the way we measure the things they are too. lacking We measure things too late, so then doing it, when we have to do it.
Isar Meitis:I love this point. I'm a data freak and I definitely understand where you're coming from. So what do you measure and how do you measure it in a B2B world to have a better impact on long-term outcome?
Oscar Torres:I'm a fan of measuring the week. I used to have a boss telling to me, how do you measure the success of your week? And, it really depends on your, depending on who is listening, right? Because if you are selling 5 million Euro deal, perhaps the week is too much. But in average if I consider the 500 companies, it's over, it's more than 500 now. But if you consider the, those 500 companies that they were exposed to, my theories, which are quite pragmatic, the week works, the measuring the week, the execution on a weekly basis works because it has a first component of, communicating a sense of urgency. And, there is another, there is another principle, which is, you have many weeks in the year and you only have 10 months if you have an ugly month. If you have an ugly month, you already lost 10% of the year. If you have an ugly week, you still have time to recover. yeah. it's hard to, it's hard to recover. I think. I think great organizations, they have a, an incredible sense of urgency and they are very leading compared to lagging mindsets. Bad organizations, they are qbr R oriented, they always look to the past instead. okay, the Q1 is done, let's focus on q2.
Isar Meitis:So again, I'll, I. So I understand the timeframe, right? This is the frame. Okay? Look at every week, what do you actually measure during the week to have a leading indicator that you're doing the right thing to move towards the business goals. and I know it's will be different for every business, but I'm sure there's some guidelines
Oscar Torres:Yeah. But provide to companies. Yeah. But, let's take an example of social presence, right? everybody will tell you. Yes, Oscar. Yeah. You know how you know what to publish because, you were, you are an executive in a software company because you publish at Forbes. I don't know what to publish about. I dunno what I'm, what I have to talk about and then I'm saying, yeah, but let's start for, let's do one pause per week at least, and you will make 50 per. And in three years you have been, you have done 150, right? Yeah. So people don't have any kind of, pressure to start executing and, in some, in many cases, they apply this concept of, analysis paralysis by analysis. I dunno if it's a Spanish or it's, it fits in English as well, but No, totally fits in English. Yeah. It's paralysis by analysis is, yeah. You will not do it. Perfect. But, so leading activities, actions that it doesn't, they don't bring you to an incredible result. But you know that if you don't start doing them today, you will not make a difference in 6, 9, 12 months, later. How many connects per week? How many new name accounts per week? How many, how many pauses per week? How activity level. It's like forest game, right? Star running, and, and let's think about, of course in with something that makes sense. But, being proud of the week I think is super important in terms, and then being very intentional for sure. One of the things that I used to share with my colleagues, for me, the weeks start, the week starts on. I remember we, we have a house in the north of Barcelona by the Sea, and I remember it's 90 minutes from Barcelona. I preferably remember my, my, my wife telling to me, you are already disconnected, When we were driving back home and it was because I was planning my week. Yeah. So I cannot wait. I cannot lose three hours planning my week on Monday, right? yeah. I think it's this weekly approach, this sense of urgency. And this, going far away from perfect, but. And, on a weekly basis. Yeah. Sorry. I
Isar Meitis:wanna touch on two things that I absolutely love about what you said. One is that mindset of weekly sprints. So taking the concept of the way developers work in agile all around the world and applying it to everything in the business is extremely powerful. planning what you're gonna accomplish this week. On the key things that you, in whatever job has to do, and planning the week on your actual schedule calendar, because otherwise what happens is you got all these meetings in the way and you can't do the four things that you told yourself you have to complete this week because you're really busy doing other stuff. So I agree with you a hundred percent, having weekly planning. Spring style developer style that actually has blocks of time on your calendar for these things is a very powerful concept for actually achieving stuff that you want to achieve. Yeah.
Oscar Torres:and connected to that, think about the team, when your life cycle, when your, sales cycle is like 10, 12 months, six months, five months, succeeding on leading activities on the. It's a way to be proud of the week. So we, we need reward. and so the day that I commit with my management a boss on a weekly basis, I'm going to connect with this amount of people. I'm going to ask for this amount of referrals. I'm going to do this, and that. And I'm going to publish two posts and link again. And this is the way you, per you define the success of the week. You close your computer on Friday, 5:00 PM. And you have a perception of success. It's a leading success, but it's a very good beginning for a lagging great result.
Isar Meitis:So I wanna joke on something. people may think, that people may think that Oscar actually says what he does and he does probably on a other things. But it's, we're recording this on a Friday. It's 8:00 PM for him, and he is still in the office, and he is gonna be there for another hour and a half because he got another thing coming up after this recording. So I wish for you, you would leave the office at 5:00 PM on a Friday.
Oscar Torres:No, because this is fun. it's, this part is just fun. It's, yeah. Yeah.
Isar Meitis:but I wanna touch the, another thing that again, is behind the scenes connected, and I wanna provide another insight from my side. A lot of people are not taking these actions, like you said, put posts on LinkedIn. okay, how do I, going back to, how do I measure that? How do I know it's actually helping me in anything? Because it doesn't move any of the, what you call B2C KPIs, right? I don't see any outcome because I posted five weeks in a row and I didn't get any more sales. I'm like, okay, there are. Two difference of data points that are out there. Some are quantitative data that you can measure very easily, and some are qualitative data that in many cases these are the leading indicators that you're talking about. If I can build a good relationship with a person and I was able to have two dinners with him and he had a great time and he's a potential client, and there was no conversation about sales, but I built a great relationship, it moves zero. Qual quantitative KPIs. Yeah. But it's a great qualitative KPI or That's great what you're saying. Point, point of data to tell me what's happening in the future. Same thing with post LinkedIn. If you're putting post on LinkedIn and people are responding, people are connecting with it, people are sharing it with people from the industry. It means the value that you're providing or the information that you're providing is actually providing value to people. Yeah. Yeah. And which Amazing.
Oscar Torres:Which people leading indicator. Yeah. what kind, I remember having this joke with one of these guys talking about social, social selling, say, yeah. And I put this past, and I had 7,000 views. I say, okay. Yeah. I put, I, I published this past and I just have 70, but 35 our CEOs. yeah. I love quantitative data. Yeah. Albert Einstein used to say not everything that counts can be counted. yeah. Absolutely.
Isar Meitis:and you also said the other way around. yeah. Absolutely. And not everything that counted counts, right? It's both sides of that equation is
Oscar Torres:true. Absolutely right.
Isar Meitis:Okay, so let's go back to the framework. we had a great conversation here about, so if. You know what, let me ask you a really important question here, because I think what you're saying is very powerful and it's very eye-opening to probably a lot of people who are CEOs or in leadership positions in B2B companies. How do I make the transition? I think it's Super simple into our dna. What are the steps that you tell companies to do to move from this mindset, to this mindset, from this execution?
Oscar Torres:I remember one attendee to the program that the guy was from Phoenix. And after the program that we do in the study is very short. It's for top executives, right? Is Yes, 40 hours, five days. And lastly we introduced a debrief after the prayer, right? And I asked to the. Okay, what is your main takeaway? And the guy said that we are b2b. I never thought about that. No, but come on. It's true. So some companies, they never thought out of the product prize place promotion, and, I think that this is the first step. The first step is that top management realize that some of the process, the people, the data that they are managing, it's super perfect to sell an iPhone, but it doesn't work to sell professional services, software or, biotech. That's the first step. Second step is the organization. I was hired in this scale, up to scale the business. My natural reaction was how I'm going to scale something which is not predictable. So I start working on predictability and to really be predictable. My previous step was, okay, I need to improve the way we do business because the way we do business is impossible to be predictable. I need to do better business. So when you think about what I call BPS better, predictable, and scalable. You have to take a look to your organization. You make the business you deserve. Awesome as you have the people you deserve, as you have the sellers you deserve. If you don't like your business, your people, your sellers look to the mirror, right? It's probably you are the problem, right? So sec first concept is realizing. Oh, yes. I'm leading a B2B company and perhaps some of the e concepts I had in my mind are killing my life and I work too much too hard for the results I'm getting. Second point is it's my company perfectly organized to deliver a better predict and scalable business or not, and the answer is normally, We don't hire people thinking that we are b2b. We don't do marketing thinking that we are b2b. We are super proud about our product, which it makes us very arrogant. So I would say that the second topic is related to organization. It's super techy, right? Yeah. it's quite technic. which kind of processes are key? Like sales, like marketing, like people, a bunch of things, right? And then the second topic, with the first topic you will address, you will organize your company with the first, the third topic. I think it's the glue for the organization, which is something I call an year ago in an article in at Forbes, B2B culture. So is your company producing a culture that accelerates the organization or not? You have a wonderful crm. Who cares if your sellers are a bunch of idiots? Who cares about the crm? It start by this. Start by the culture. If they don't behave properly, To bring value and to inspire your clients to think out of the box. you can manage your data in an Excel, right? Once you are very sure how people behaves in the field, it's when you invest, when if you invest in technology, you will be able to accelerate. and then, Reflection was, I have a quote in this, in this, article, which is something like, strategy defines a why culture enable it. So we can define a very incredible why strategy. But if we don't, if we don't as a leaders, if we don't. Enable that with the right behavior and mindset. Who cares? it's paper, right? It's just written in the paper. And this is the, and this is super hard. It's it sounds like super complex, but it's super easy at the end of the day, if you talk to the c e O, and this is why I was focusing so much on the sea level community, and it's funny. I think, last week, CEO from a 1.27 billion, applied to my program and I was interviewing her and say, Hey, come on you do 1.7 billion and say, sure, yeah, I think we can do much more and we can work much less. Yeah. So that's about, that's it's about that. Yeah. And. And there is another concept, which is what I call the butterfly effect. If you are the last monkey in the company and you take this and you take the decision to behave in a different way, who cares. But if you are the CEO of the company and tomorrow morning you start doing different questions, It's a butterfly effect. the butterfly effect. yeah. Yeah. It's going to go down and my mindset as a leader becomes my behavior, which becomes the mindset of my team, which becomes their behavior, and so on. So it's super simple. I'm not saying it's not the, I, I'm teaching in Shanghai. I was teaching in Shanghai before Covid, and one is still in China. funny thing of teaching where they don't speak English like myself, I speak something in between. it's they, when they express something with short number of words in their mind, they're going to be super lean. And I remember doing this course there in Shanghai, and one of the students came to me and say, Hey, professor Torres, simple but difficult. Yeah. And I say yes, simple, but it's simple. Yeah. Because it's not rocket science. yeah. it's a, so it's solution company and people, Not rocket science, but difficult because we have the B2C in our dna, n as professionals, we have been double on the, all the, those ideas. 75 subjects in a, in an MBA about marketing, b2c, nothing about b. And this has an impact. If at the end of the day you are managing a company, Oscar, this
Isar Meitis:is. Really good stuff. It's very deep. It's a lot of stuff to think about, especially again, if you're an leadership position in a B2B company, you and I can go back and forth to this probably for a few more hours. but it's getting late in Barcelona. I know. Know, we have other stuff to do. if people wanna follow you, work with you, take your course, find you, what's, what are the best ways to.
Oscar Torres:Ah, Lincoln in just connect me and you make a comment. Hey, I was, listening to you in podcast and, happy to connect with them, right? You can take a look as well to the, edu slash b2b. We have a bunch of spicy videos there. I don't think that the, okay, they are spicy, let's say. Yeah. yeah. Awesome.
Isar Meitis:Very good. Thank you for doing this, such a late hour on a Friday evening and for taking your time and sharing your knowledge with me and the audience. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Oscar Torres:Thanks, Sue, you Thank you very much, ISAR. I hope it was valuable. Thank you.
