Zhanar runs sales at an Almaty service that prepares analytics reports for retail chains, the same one as in marketing P&L. She liked the new CRM in the demo and asked for a contract. The CRM seller put the deal in his forecast. A week later it turned out that nobody had discussed the budget, Bekzat, the service's developer, had not looked at the integration, and Talgat, the owner, was waiting to hear what the company would get for the money. Zhanar really did want to work in the system. The seller's mistake was elsewhere: he took one person's wish for the whole company's decision.
B2B is selling to an organisation for its work; B2C is selling to a person for their own needs. The labels describe a market, but they say little about how a purchase happens. An owner often pays for a small work subscription on the spot. A family can spend months choosing a flat on Krisha, with several people deciding. What a marketer needs to know is who takes part in the purchase, what each of them risks and who can say "yes". That decides what the ads say, what you send after the demo and what the seller does next.
Example of one CRM purchase
Sales
Find conversation history without searching personal chats
Owner
See enquiries left unanswered
Developer
Compatibility with existing systems
Finance
Full cost and payment arrangements
Roles can overlap: in a small company the owner may fill them.
Map the roles in one purchase
Here is who takes part in the service's CRM purchase. Zhanar and her managers want to see the conversation with a retail chain in the customer record instead of digging through their personal WhatsApp. Talgat wants to see which leads went unanswered. Bekzat is responsible for getting the website form and the work number into the CRM without breaking anything. Meruert, the accountant, needs the full cost and the payment terms. All four are discussing the same system, and each is afraid of a different mistake.
A role and a job title do not always match. Zhanar is both user and initiator here, but Talgat approves the budget. In a smaller company the owner may hold every role and talk to the supplier himself.
For a recent purchase, write down who noticed the problem, who will use the solution, who checks the constraints and who signs off the spending. Then find out what each of them has already approved. "It works for us" needs a follow-up: works for whom, for which task, and what is still open? Instead of guessing at "the decision-maker", you end up with a map of people and what each of them is responsible for.
The same approach works in B2C. A family is choosing between Burabay and Turkey: the father pays, the mother looks for options and the children have their own conditions. Splitting buyers into "rational companies" and "emotional people" gets in the way. Bekzat is also afraid of getting it wrong and also wants less work. Describe the difference between markets through the buying conditions you have actually found out.
Help the participants reach agreement
A general landing page introduces the product. For a company to commit to a purchase, each participant needs an answer to their own question. The CRM seller can send Zhanar a short walkthrough of her workflow, demo the system to her managers and bring his own specialist to a call with Bekzat. Every piece of material has a reader and a question it answers.
| Participant in the CRM purchase | Material that helps them decide |
|---|---|
| Users: Zhanar and the managers | A demo of finding history and handling a new lead |
| Director: Talgat | Pilot terms and a way to judge the team's results |
| IT: Bekzat | A description of the integration, its limits and the access needed to check it |
| Finance: Meruert | Cost for the chosen period, one-off work and payment terms |
The facts must agree across all of these. If the ad promises that leads from the form go into the CRM on their own, the description for Bekzat has to explain how that works and where it stops working. If you find a mismatch, fix it before the commercial proposal. Otherwise Meruert approves one quote and the implementation turns out to be a different scope.
A promise that "your managers will save time" needs evidence: measure how long things take now and watch the pilot. Even if Zhanar finds conversations faster, money appears only if the freed hours go somewhere: new customers, faster replies to existing ones, a hire you no longer need. With the same salaries and the same workload, the service's costs stay where they were. So name a working result in the proposal that can be checked, and do not draw an ROI nobody has calculated.
Record what was agreed
People come back to questions they have already discussed. Bekzat finds a limitation, the scope changes, Meruert recalculates the budget. Gartner's buying model shows these loops back to selection and approval. You still have to find out the order of steps in your own deal from the customer.
"Demo done" describes the seller's work. "Zhanar approved the workflow, Bekzat is waiting for the data transfer description" shows what changed on the buyer's side. Next to it you need the person who owns the next step and the date you agreed on. If the customer is not ready to name a date, write that down: it limits the forecast.
A small purchase can end with the first conversation: your contact has the authority, the amount fits their budget and there is nothing to check. Extra meetings only wear the buyer out. In a large implementation, a skipped check can turn into promises the team cannot keep. The deal itself decides how many approvals it needs: the amount, the risk and who it affects.
Connect enquiries to companies and projects
A contact, a company and an opportunity are three different records in a CRM. A contact holds the conversation with one person. A company groups its employees. An opportunity describes one purchase with a confirmed problem and an agreed commercial step. The team sets the rule for creating one in advance and applies it the same way to every channel.
Several people can discuss one project: Zhanar and Bekzat each wrote to the CRM supplier on their own, but the service is making one purchase. A large company can be the opposite case, with independent purchases, different problems and different people deciding. So do not turn every employee into a deal, and do not automatically merge every enquiry from one organisation. A person joins a project once the conversation makes clear which purchase they belong to.
Now let us look at the CRM supplier's campaign as a whole. The numbers are made up. It spent 600,000 ₸ on ads and got 30 enquiries from 10 companies, Talgat's service among them. After the conversations, 2 independent projects were confirmed, each with an agreed requirements review. The other companies are still choosing, and no opportunities were created for them.
Cost per enquiry is 600,000 / 30 = 20,000 ₸. Cost per company is 600,000 / 10 = 60,000 ₸. A qualified opportunity cost 600,000 / 2 = 300,000 ₸ in ads. These are three different results of the same campaign. The last figure helps you discuss the quality of incoming demand, while customer acquisition cost needs won deals and every expense spent on winning them.
While both projects are still under discussion, it is too early to count campaign revenue. To compare channels, keep the month each opportunity appeared and give deals the same amount of time to go through the buying cycle. Label the win rate among closed projects exactly that way: open projects are not in that denominator. The share of all enquiries that paid answers a different question. The CRM holds the link between a person, a company and a purchase, and it is worth creating that link from the first enquiry.
Exercise: prepare the next step after a demo
Take a product from your own project and a recent purchase or a current conversation with a customer. Describe the working problem, the participants and what they have already confirmed. Then write your contact a short message: which question is still open, what material you offer and who needs to discuss the result. If you know nothing about someone, mark the gap and do not invent a role.
The CRM seller from the start of the lesson could have written to Zhanar like this: "You said the workflow suits your team. How do you approve the budget and the integration? We can send Bekzat a description of the data exchange and the accounting team a breakdown of the work." The message builds on a conversation that already happened and helps the buyer organise the check themselves. And if Zhanar could have bought the system on her own, she would have said so, and the extra step would have gone away.
Interest from all 30 contacts does not change the number of confirmed projects. While 2 opportunities meet the criteria, each costs 300,000 ₸ in ads. After new agreements you update the stage and the date, and a signed contract is recorded as a won deal. With records like these, the marketer can explain to the client what the budget has already produced and what the forecast is still waiting for.
Video: comparing B2B and B2C
After watching, compare the general differences with your own purchase map. Authority, risk and the order of approvals will point you to the right material more precisely than the market label.