Professional salespeople , B2B salespeople, see brutal transformations taking place around them at a dizzying pace . It is not a time of change, but a change of time. It is therefore necessary to jump on the bandwagon as soon as possible and prepare strategies and teams for this transformation in purchasing behavior.
You can't sell the same way now as you did 20 years ago. In fact, you can't follow a formula from two or three years ago, because the behaviors, expectations, and relationships between customers and salespeople have changed . And they do so every day.
Here are four changes that have already happened in B2B marketing that you may have overlooked.
1. Millennials are (very) skeptical of salespeople
B2B buyers are generally skeptical of salespeople’s messages and tactics and rely bosnia and herzegovina phone number list on data-backed evidence above all else. This trend is even more pronounced with younger buyers . Millennials are increasingly joining professional decision-making teams and, as a result, have more influence on purchasing decisions.
And this audience, raised in an age of information abundance and highly educated, cannot be tricked. They know what information they are looking for and where to find it . They are very comfortable doing their own research online and are wary of salespeople.
They may not have reached the top of the decision-making chain yet, but time is on their side. B2B sales teams must prepare to address millennial concerns and take this group into account to build consensus.
2. Customers have access to more (and higher quality) information than ever before
Professional buyers have access not only to more information, but also to more reliable and high-quality data . This is not a completely new situation, but it still presents a challenge, as it delays direct interaction with suppliers . In five minutes on Google, you can find out enough about a company that comes to sell. In another 50, you can find out about its customers, products and markets. And by asking your LinkedIn network for references, you can find out if the people selling are reliable and deliver what they promise.
While this may seem to empower customers, it actually overwhelms and burdens them. Professional buyers analyze and evaluate a pile of information that looks high-quality, prioritize relevant sources, and make sense of data from different sources. This leads customers to spend a lot of time in their buying cycle sorting through and discarding information , according to a Gartner study.
To further complicate matters, professional B2B sellers are constantly competing to deliver consistent information across multiple channels. That’s why it’s important to offer valuable information across all channels and with consistent metrics . The buying process is difficult, but information consistency matters: those who provide consistent information are more likely to be chosen by buyers.
3. Purchasing teams are (very) diverse
Years ago, purchasing decisions were made on an individual basis and it was enough to win over the big fish. However, things are very different now. Purchasing committees and teams are the norm . No manager or business owner dares to make a purchasing decision worth thousands of euros without professional support.
Shopping today is complicated by the complexity of solutions to each problem, not to mention global financial instability and security issues.
B2B buyers secure their decisions by adding different types of professionals from their teams to buying groups , regardless of their roles, teams, and locations. Each stakeholder brings to the table different concerns, priorities, and individual opinions, making the buying process extremely eventful as they struggle to reach consensus on the solution that works for everyone. They have to negotiate. And that’s never easy.
4. The B2B purchasing process stops, accelerates and loops
The buyer's journey is anything but a straight line from start to finish . The customer's buying journey was once illustrated as a linear process where prospects progressed step by step to become customers. This business school model is now outdated.
Gartner research has shown that almost all B2B purchasing tasks tend to cluster into six distinct jobs that buyers must perform in order to successfully complete an actual purchase. These six jobs do not unfold in a linear, predictable fashion. Customers engage in what we might call a loop in a typical B2B purchase, going through each of those six purchasing jobs at least once each.
For this reason, it is extremely important to accompany customers in an automated way throughout their process with tools capable of detecting what they are doing at any given moment, whether they are looking for more information or whether they are lost . If this 'chasing the customer until they close' is left only in the hands of a professional and their talent and old-school methods, it is likely that many sales will never be closed.
