The B2B buying journey has changed. Winning sales and marketing organizations adapt their strategies accordingly.
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B2B Buying: How Top CSOs and CMOs Optimize the Journey
Create a B2B buying journey that drives more profitable purchase decisions
Our research reveals that 75% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience. But self-service digital purchases are far more likely to result in purchase regret. Sales and marketing must be able to identify the right mix of digital and human interaction to drive profitable purchase decisions. This eBook shares:
Why a hybrid approach is critical to client success
Where to leverage the best of both digital and human selling
How to adapt your strategy to close high-quality deals
Navigate successfully through the evolving B2B buying journey
Complex buying processes, organizational disruption and uncertainty can hinder buyers’ ability to realize value. Top sales and marketing teams navigate successfully by taking these critical actions.
- Underscore Buyer Value
- Tailor Sales Engagement
- Enable Confident Buying
Frame and affirm solution value across the digital buying journey
In an increasingly complex customer journey, marketing teams play a key role in helping to move buyers toward confidence and clarity. Successful organizations make the most of digital supplier interactions to create digital value through websites, owned social media, email and other channels.
Marketing organizations can frame value for buyers by integrating digital content aligned to buyer objectives. Digital interactions that frame value often include these types of elements:
Copy that is grounded in buyer needs, not product capabilities
Peer benchmarking and other data that piques buyers’ interest in third-party perspectives
Opportunities to dig deeper into educational content
- Simple, intuitive digital experiences native to the channel
Marketing organizations can help affirm value for buyers by offering online, interactive tools (e.g., cost calculators, product selection tools, product visualizers, ratings and reviews) that enable buyers to engage with the brand and validate the many decisions they must make across the broader buying journey. Value-affirming interactions should accomplish one or more of the following:
Signal that your brand fully understands buyer needs (e.g., by including menus, categories and criteria specific to their business).
Help buyers quantify the benefits of a product/service for their organization (e.g., including solution performance data and other details).
Help buyers feel confident and in control of the purchase decision (e.g., by providing a choice of tailored recommendations based on their input and criteria).
Help buyers advance to the next step in their purchase process with clear calls to action.
Shape a B2B buying journey that integrates human sellers and digital channels
Hybrid digital and human interactions are especially commercially productive. B2B buyers are 1.8 times more likely to complete a high-quality deal when they engage with supplier-provided digital tools in partnership with a sales rep rather than independently.
But B2B buying doesn’t play out in any kind of predictable, linear order. Instead, customers engage in what one might call “looping” across a typical B2B purchase, revisiting each of six buying jobs at least once. These jobs include:
Problem identification. “We need to do something.”
Solution exploration. “What’s out there to solve our problem?”
Requirements building. “What exactly do we need the purchase to do?”
Supplier selection. “Does this do what we want it to do?”
Validation. “We think we know the right answer, but we need to be sure.”
Consensus creation. “We need to get everyone on board.”
To further the complexity, buyers aren’t just looking at purchases to solve an immediate problem. Our research shows that 99% of B2B purchases are driven by organizational changes. This means buyers are most often motivated to solve longer-term, internal challenges that span multiple parts of the buyer organization. At various times, stakeholders are accessing your website, looking at social media, using an interactive tool or using some other digital channel.
When customers are seeking the information they need to get a job done, sales reps are not the only channel to customers, but simply one of many channels. Alignment across in-person and digital channels is crucial for supporting customers in the way they actually buy.
Successful sales organizations accommodate the growing number of buyers and their cross-functional representation in client organizations. This includes being able to navigate potential dysfunction that comes from numerous buying group members who may have different goals and needs as they do their own research.
To help customers address the challenges that come with making a purchase, successful CSOs focus on the following:
Ensure enablement focuses on getting sellers to tailor their customer engagement and better position their offerings by understanding the organization’s buying approach.
Align the sales process to support buyers and buying groups in completing the critical buying tasks necessary to making a high-quality purchasing decision.
Consider product familiarity when tailoring the high-tech B2B buyer journey
For technology buyers, increased digital preference varies based on the buyer’s level of familiarity with the product or service they’re considering.
We surveyed 148 respondents involved in technology purchase decisions and found that, when buyers were familiar with a product or service, 64% preferred a 100% digital buying experience. Their reasons for this preference were driven by speed, convenience and comfort with the product, given the familiarity, and a preference for online self-research. Less than one-quarter of these respondents indicated that they preferred a digital buying experience to avoid the pressure of sales representatives.
When tech buyers do want human interactions for familiar products, the prominent drivers are a desire to:
Ask questions
Understand future directions
Assess intangibles
Improve negotiation options
Lower product familiarity drives different results. In these situations, buyers wanted human assistance to:
Get a better understanding of potential use cases
Ask questions
Gain personalized guidance or advice
Build a relationship with a potential new vendor
Consult with an expert
In summary, tech buyer confidence is higher when these buyers have familiarity with products or services, leading them to want to execute more buying activities without assistance.
The importance of digital grows when there is an increased likelihood of familiarity for targeted customers. When that likelihood is high, the goal should be to enable all buying activities to be conducted digitally, from research to purchase.
As the likelihood of familiarity decreases, digital experiences are important, but product leaders should create easy-to-access opportunities to interact with your sales teams (including technical experts) at key points across the buyer journey.
The take-aways for high-tech product leaders?
Don’t totally eliminate the opportunity for human interactions at all points in the process. Even when there is a high likelihood of product familiarity, some buyers may be less confident and will be looking for help and clarification that can only come from human interactions. Offering guidance, assistance and helpful nudges — even nudges that drive additional reflection to help buying teams avoid mistakes — can keep buying moving along, reducing the likelihood of stalls and delays.
Further, make sure your digital engagement is designed to help buyers make good decisions confidently. You can do this by offering tools to gain clarity and consensus on goals and objectives for the purchase, guiding the completion of critical jobs, and planning the deployment so that buyers gain confidence on the path to value.
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FAQ on the B2B buying journey
What are the different stages of the B2B buying journey?
Today’s B2B buying journey follows a nonlinear purchasing path that more closely resembles a set of distinct buying jobs or sets of tasks that buyers must complete to finalize an actual purchase. These buying jobs generally fall within four categories — problem identification, solution exploration, requirements building and supplier selection — and take place through a combination of digital and human interactions. Most buyers revisit at least one buying job during their purchase journey.
What are some challenges of the B2B buying journey?
Environmental uncertainty — in all its forms — affects B2B buyers’ willingness to make significant purchases. Even when the willingness to purchase is there, organizational processes and multiple stakeholder concerns can add to the complexity of the buyer journey. CMOs and CSOs must work together to create low-effort buying experiences that build customer confidence, reflect changing buying preferences and simplify the B2B buying journey.
What are some best practices for the B2B buying journey?
B2B buying involves diverse buying teams working on multiple tasks concurrently or individually — without a consistent order or journey. To optimize customer engagement, successful organizations shift their focus from journeys to the collective buying tasks that buying teams need to complete. Rather than map a buyer journey, these organizations focus on cataloging buying jobs and the underlying tasks and activities to support job completion — and revamp traditional tracking metrics to apply a “jobs-to-be-completed” mindset to the buying process.