A Guide to Understanding the B2B Buying Process
While corporate profits are on the rise, many companies are still slow to increase budgetary expenditures. With two economic downturns over the past decade, B2B buyers focus more than ever on what solutions are available to help them “do more with less”. Anyone involved in selling to corporate decision makers knows that it can be a frustrating and long process - one that many wish they could accelerate. However, with continued economic uncertainty on the horizon, it’s important to gain a clear understanding of your customers’ buying process and what you need to do to facilitate them to buy from you. In these uncertain economic times, many decision makers are adverse to change, requiring more and more economic justification for each proposal, thus making it hard for even high ROI projects to get approved. Companies now need to facilitate their customers’ buying process in order to differentiate themselves as the economically sound choice.
The B2B Buying Process
The buying process represents a set of steps your prospects need to go through in order to make a purchase. The steps may very based on the organization and type of purchase, but the typical process includes the following phases, especially Awareness, Evaluation, and Decision:
You can think of the buying process as a complex one that can be difficult, frustrating, and time- consuming for buyers. Thus, the more your company can do to facilitate a seamless and smooth transition between the stages of the buying process, the better.
The Role of Content in the Buying Process
The early stages of the buying process have changed such that many B2B buyers rely on online resources versus salespeople for information. This, however, results in buyers now suffering from information overload: they are being inundated with more marketing messages over even more channels than ever before, leading to information overload, confusion, and stalled decision-making cycles.
According to SiriusDecisions, the typical B2B buyer receives over 20 e-mail marketing messages a week, up 32% over the past 4 years. Moreover, this is but one of several traditional and on-line channels that are proactively relaying information to prospects on a daily basis. Bombarding your prospects with messages on “me-too” products and services not only confuses them, but also leaves paralyzed with indecision. Unsure about where they should invest their time, energy and most importantly money, your prospects make the safest choice: no decision. Meanwhile, a business problem is going unsolved. Better content targeting and personalization is required to end “carpet bombing” B2B marketing techniques. Instead, you need to create a dialogue with buyers that guides them through the decision making process. This is where tools like marketing automation can help greatly, providing the opportunity to provide personalized one-to-one advice.
While the phrase “content is king” has been beaten to death, there is still truth in it. The problem is that it’s not content for the sake of content. Instead, it needs to be content that is designed to educate and facilitate your customer’s next steps in their buying process. That is because prospects search for different information at each stage in their buying process.
Awareness
Your prospect may be experiencing a limitation, problem, or obstacle with their current situation but has not opted to address it by actively buying a solution. In the first phase of the buying process, decision makers need to be convinced that the status quo should/must change, and the buyer must convince not just themselves, but many other stakeholders on the customer’s buying team, that the change is both beneficial and needed.
At this critical stage, when the project vision is defined, most buyers are researching options on their own and creating requirements for their solution. It’s at this pivotal time when buyers define strong provider preferences. Forrester Research reports that 65% of vendors that create the buying vision during these early states get the deal. And this is all done before buyers even engage in conversation with the salespeople. For many companies, not establishing a strong presence during this stage represents a “failure to launch” – resulting in a slim chance of being considered for the final decision.
It’s important to introduce your prospects to industry trends that point to developing issues and the business value of adopting change. You need to create problem awareness that takes your prospects away from the status quo and creates a priority shift. Use social media and call to actions to guide prospects towards educational articles and webinars about problems and pain points to help them learn more about the scope of their problem and current situation. Additionally, expand on the industry trends with hard facts and statistical information they can use to shift consensus. Remember to focus on the business value of solving the problem and on hard data in a story format, not as stand-alone facts without context for the prospect’s current situation. Keep your focus on the problem-to-solution scenarios.
Evaluation
At this stage the prospect is committed to resolving the problem and focused on building a business case. They are looking for leading experts on the subject and the potential outcomes they can realistically plan to accomplish. Once a buyer has committed to change and prioritized the project, they start to research possible solutions and create a short-list of providers. During this phase, it is difficult for buyers to wade through the copious amounts of research and marketing materials to understand the various advantages and benefits that each solution approach might provide.
This is the time to put your expertise into play. At this point, prospects have a basic knowledge about possible solutions, and they’re committed to solving the problem. Discuss risks and how your expertise helps mitigate it proactively. Expand their thinking to illuminate the overlapping issues that may be offshoots of the project so they can plan to address them. In short, help them enlarge their thinking in strategic ways. Make sure you consider the needs of the project influencers, various stakeholders, and colleagues.
According to massage management experts, Corporate Visions, at this stage it’s important to:
- Find your unique point of view which can challenge prospect's assumptions and create more demand
- Create clear points of differentiation between you and your key competitors
- Convince your prospects they need to do something different and make a decision for you, right now
Decision
In the final stage of the buying process, your prospects buying team must reach consensus on a particular proposal. By the final decision, Forrester Research indicates that 35% of decisions involving vendor selection are made, making it more important to establish connection and engagement during the earlier phases. However, many deals are stalled by a failure to overcome objections and drive consensus during this phase, making it vital to effectively address this obstacles
This is the opportune time to highlight customer success stories and demonstrate how your customers have achieved successful project implementation and business value. Discuss industry developments that expose the costs of the problem, and work to confirm your buyer’s resolve to remedy the issue. Most importantly, make sure you focus on exposing the benefit your customers achieve by partnering with you to achieve problem resolution – expertise they won’t get if they buy the similar product down the street.
Bottom Line
The economic forecast is very clouded, making it difficult for companies to make significant investments and drive change. Buyers are looking for solution providers who can facilitate their personal buying process, help uncover and prioritize opportunities for improvement, recommend solution options and justify decisions. They are looking to do all this with less resources. Companies have a unique opportunity to help facilitate this buying process with content and engagement practices that help guide your prospects through their buying process. This will help shorten sales cycles and increase your win rates.
Want to learn more about how to build a lead generation engine that is built around how B2B buyers buy? Check out this free guide.
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