What is B2B (Business-to-Business)?

B2B (business-to-business) describes companies that sell products or services to other organizations rather than to individual consumers, where the buyer is a company and the decision is usually made by several people inside it.

At a glance

• The opposite is B2C, selling to individual consumers.
• B2B markets are often grouped into four buyer types: producers, resellers, governments and institutions such as hospitals and universities.
• The buyer is an organization, but people with different roles weigh in: the user, the budget holder, procurement and often security.
• Companies are described by firmographics (industry, size, location) where consumers are described by demographics.

How B2B buying works

A B2B purchase usually starts with a problem inside a company: a process that’s too slow, a cost that’s too high, or a new requirement. Someone researches options, a group forms around the decision, and the purchase goes through budget approval, a contract and often a security review.

That’s why B2B sales teams sell to accounts, not individuals. They work out who’s involved, what each person needs to see, and what the company’s process is for signing.

What buyers say they want

Gartner’s survey of 646 B2B buyers, run in August and September 2025 and published in March 2026, found that 67% prefer a buying experience without a sales rep, and 45% used AI during a recent purchase. The same research found that buyers who felt confident in their decision were twice as likely to report a high-quality deal.

For a seller, that changes the job. More of the research happens before anyone talks to a rep, so the rep’s value is in helping the buying group understand what the product does for each of their roles.

A B2B example

Example (illustrative): a trucking company with 80 trucks buys a fuel card program. The owner cares about price per gallon, the head of operations about driver controls and fraud limits, and the bookkeeper about how statements reach the accounting system. One sale, three sets of questions.

Common B2B mistakes

• Selling to one contact. A deal held by one person stalls when that person goes quiet. Reach the other people in the decision early.
• Borrowing consumer tactics wholesale. Discount codes and urgency timers don’t move a purchase that needs a budget line and a signature.
• Treating every company as a fit. B2B markets are smaller and more varied than consumer ones, so the account list decides more than the ad budget does.
• Assuming B2B means outbound. Many B2B companies grow through self-serve signups, partners or inbound, and most combine several.

How B2B shows up in a revenue system

Every partner we work with sells to other businesses, so the work is built around accounts: the list, the people on each account, the qualification rules and the CRM stages. Our sales pods run that work inside partners’ own tools and report the numbers every week.

Terms that sit next to B2B

B2B targeting starts with an ICP and the buyer personas inside it. Because several people decide, reps practice multi-threading, and the time from first touch to signature is measured as the sales cycle. Larger B2B deals often run as account-based marketing.