Humanizing B2B

by Paul Cash, James Trezona

There’s a new truth in B2B marketing: if you want to move products, you need to move minds.

Most companies suffer from a delusion, and it’s this: that buyers always make decisions in a rational, logical, and economic way. The result is a slew of features-driven B2B marketing that few people really care about. In recent years B2B customers have evolved. The don’t just want to buy from businesses anymore, they want to buy into them.

The problem is too few B2B companies realize this. They continue with the same product-centric marketing that increases revenue by a percentage point here and there. It seems safe but it’s dangerously short-sighted, because it doesn’t deliver the transformational and long-term growth that makes businesses category leaders.

It’s even more important to address this issue at such a critical and delicate moment in the world economy. Marketing leaders require strategies that have an exponential, rather than an incremental, effect on brand, marketing and sales, and to implement them they need the new super-skills this book teaches.

This involves establishing a core purpose, shifting the focus from products to people, from features to feelings and from messaging to storytelling, acknowledging that neuro science has proved that people buy on emotion and justify with fact. In other words, it requires a completely different mindset to the one that’s prevalent right now, one that we call ‘Humanizing B2B’.

Genres: Business

152 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 2021

Reviews

[Alexander Krastev · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years I've been trying to convince my students and training attendees that LinkedIn is not and shouldn't be a sterile, boring and conservative place. Nothing B2B-related should be like that! Quite the opposite - valuable professionals usually are valuable and likeable people as well. The same is true for B2B brands - selling to other companies doesn't require acting as a robot, since all companies are made of people and we're all marketing and selling to other people.
While browsing on NetGalley for new #businessbooks, I found a title that caught me with the same messages and values - 'Humanizing B2B' by Paul Cash and James Trezona, founders of Rooster Punk, a B2B Storytelling agency. It will be available by the and of April and it is a must for every B2B marketer. Just a couple of the stuff I've highlighted on my e-reader:
- Paul and James have created five principles to show that humanized B2B marketing is hot as complicated as it might seem - it's about people, not products; you need a purpose that's actioned; emotion is at your marketing code; likeability is transformational; and storytelling is your vehicle.
- They have gathered useful models and tools for great storytelling (the Brand archetypes model, the five-stage Story framework model, etc.)

[Eben Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good writing sets the stage. Great writing motivates the reader to take part. Recommended to anyone in B2B Marketing, a brilliant guide for those who want to take part in riding the wave Paul Cash lays out.

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul Cash and James Trezona’s new book is titled Humanizing B2B, with the subtitle The New Truth in Marketing That Will Transform Your Brand and Your Sales. Like any good nonfiction book, falling within the leadership and business advice subcategories, the title follows the topical outline procedures of a position paper. In effect, it almost is something equivalent to a thesis statement on what Cash and Trezona’s book in its entirety entails. This is especially helpful given the somewhat intellectually exclusive nature of the read, specifically the subtle but profound changes in approach that will make or break a business’s customer base in 2022. Cash and Trezona are smart in that they never come across as preachy or overgeneralized. Everything they outline is presented unsparingly, with step-by-step breakdowns and detailed examples and scenarios. This makes what Humanizing B2B ultimately entails all the more compelling as an idea in and of itself. Specifically, that customer bases now want to invest their time in a company with respect to its long-term goals, priorities, and incentives, not just its immediate goods and services. “(The new truth) is that people don’t want to buy from you, they want to buy into you; they want to know what your company stands for, why it exists and what kind of people are behind it. They want to see its human face – in other words, its brand,” Cash and Trezona write. “There’s no middle ground here; you’re either in or you’re out. If your mindset is locked into the idea that people just want to buy your product, you’ll eventually die out. If it’s expansive enough to understand that they want to buy into your brand instead…If you’re not yet sure what your mindset is, ask yourself this: ‘When I think about pulling marketing levers, do I feel happy? Do I feel excited? Can I see the potential in it?’ If the answer is ‘no’ or even ‘maybe not’, you need to be brave and aim higher because there’s another, much more powerful lever called ‘brand’. If you pull that one well, adjusting the others alongside it will have a magnified effect. Think of it as a master lever; not only will it position you for long-term sales in its own right, but your lead generation will receive more traction, your product enhancements will gain more attention and your social media will attract more eyeballs.”

They elaborate: “Many CEOs roll their eyes at the word ‘brand’. It’s colouring-in, logos, pretty designs or, at best, corporate identity – all the old-fashioned things that brand used to represent…And yet it shouldn’t be so hard to see why brand works. We all have experience of paying more for something, or plumping quickly for it over other options, because of the way we feel about a business…We love the familiar, and this is why brands advertise; if we’ve seen a product on our TV screens or in our social media feeds often enough, we tend to assume it’s a good one to buy. We trust it. In the absence of an overwhelming reason to buy a competitor product, we drift towards the one we know. It has set up shop in our mental space and now it’s selling us its wares.”

[Simon Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

In their Golden Triangle model for effective B2b communications the language of emotion sits on top of the triangle above the language of product and customer. Emotions can be tapped in to through storytelling, something that authors Paul Cash and James Trezona are adept at.
They outline five principles for Humanizing B2b:
1.It’s about people not products
2. You need purpose that’s actioned
3.Emotion is your marketing core
4.Likeability is transformational
5. Storytelling is your vehicle
In this fun to read book Paul and James provide great tips and insight about how you build these five principles into your own marketing.
I’d highly recommend that you buy the book if you are a B2b marketer and be brave enough to centred your marketing around the emotional factors that are important to your customers.
In our recent book Standout Marketing my co-authors and I found that too many companies still focus on their products and themselves too much. In Cash and Trezona we have found B2b soulmates who offer brave B2b marketers a clear path for standing out through storytelling tuned in to customers emotions.

Dr Simon Kelly co-author Value-ology and Standout Marketing

[Darya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got a chance to read ARC of this book. The book described an approach in B2B marketing that is deadly required in today's business world. When marketing is featured driven it does not provide enough of emotional context for customers to make a purchasing decision. I agree that value must be communicated in the first place together with a human touch. At the end of the day people are making purchasing decision even in B2B space.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is easy to read, with many principles that can be easily applied to marketing strategies for a fresh way of thinking !

[Andrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

For over 20 years, I’ve been telling clients about the company I work for and the services it provides. Sometimes, these stories lead to sales and contracts. Often, they don’t. Whenever I had the opportunity and resources, I’d always add more facts, figures, and data to my pitch to make it more compelling. But… nothing really changed.
I decided it was time to take a different approach. I began looking for ways to improve my B2B marketing skills and compiled a list of a dozen high-quality, relevant books published in the past five years to help me understand the state-of-the-art in the field. Luckily, one of the books on my list was “Humanizing B2B: The New Truth in Marketing That Will Transform Your Brand and Your Sales” by Paul Cash & James Trezona.
Right off the bat, the book makes a bold statement: B2B clients crave emotional connections even more than B2C customers. They’re looking for emotions, mutual recognition and appreciation, empathy, and an understanding of their true values.
It’s challenging to break old habits and step away from the 20-year-old library of documents and templates I’ve relied on. But the book is clear: fewer facts, more stories.
In one of my recent meetings with a client, I shared a personal story about how difficult it was to deploy the first system similar to the one we’re currently offering. I talked about the pressure we faced from both vendors and the client. The reaction was immediate and authentic — the client’s department head shared a similar experience and said he understood my struggles.
That moment solidified a new understanding for me: people are the foundation of relationships. And people buy into stories just as much as they buy products.
Now, I realize my main goal is to improve my clients’ lives, work, and environment so they can create their own success stories.

This, I believe, is the way to talk about “Humanizing B2B: The New Truth in Marketing That Will Transform Your Brand and Your Sales” — in the spirit of the book’s own advice.

[Trường · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciate the message - but honestly, I can't stand the delivery.

What's most frustrating is that the authors don't seem to follow their own advice. They tell you to "speak human," yet keep throwing random stats and jargon at you. They preach being concise and helpful, yet keep repeating the same ideas again and again.

In the end, it just feels like another business book written to sell you a service rather than actually teach you something.

[Mustafa Özgergef · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a marketer, it was a breath of fresh air to know that professionals with the same mentality, who puts people and emotions first rather than short-term gains exist. The book is very well written and formulized, and backed up with important research findings. Highly recommended.

[Savannah Sterrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brilliantly articulates much of what I have felt and observed throughout my career as a B2B brand designer/copywriter, regarding what works and what doesn’t when it comes to creating marketing people care about.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Humanizing. What a good idea! After centuries of machines doing business, maybe it is time to get some humans in.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an enjoyable and thought provoking listen (audible version). The summary at the end of each chapter as well as in the final section were particularly beneficial