Assuming that you’ve successfully identified your most valuable prospects and addressed their most important issues, your next step must be to align your sales and marketing activities around facilitating your prospect’s buying process – and in order to do that, you’ll need to know how and why they choose to buy. McKinsey recently wrote about the changing nature of B2C buying - and our research suggests that similar forces are at play in B2B.
Whilst every sales opportunity clearly has its own unique nuances, research has proved that the typical B2B buying process evolves through through a remarkably consistent sequence of events. This is particularly true when the prospect is looking for solutions to previously unidentified business problems - rather than repeating a similar previous purchase.
The B2B Buying Process
At first, the status quo prevails. But then something happens – the trigger event – that causes the prospect to recognise the issue and explore the consequences. Next, they start to research their options, and depending on what they find may decide to engage with vendors.
But before the exercise can proceed any further, someone in authority within the prospect has to agree that if an economically feasible solution can be found, they will allocate the money and resources required to implement it. This is a critical moment. Without money, authority and need, the buying journey can go no further.
Requirements are then defined, decision criteria agreed and the prospect starts to formally evaluate alternatives. After receiving and reviewing proposals, a preferred vendor may be selected – but this recommendation still needs to be formally approved before an order can be placed.
The Nature of the Buying Journey
The actual buying journey for any individual opportunity, although it is likely to pass through each of the above stages, is rarely a simple linear progression. At any point along the way, the prospect is free to decide to move forward to the next stage, to stay where they are, revisit a previous stage or to abandon the journey, temporarily or permanently.
The prospect's needs and expectations evolve significantly from stage to stage - so it is essential that marketing and sales activities and tactics are aligned with the prospect's changing priorities.
It is, therefore, particularly important that the vendor is able to diagnose exactly where each prospect is along their buying journey, using observable evidence of buyer activity or behaviour - and they can reliably anticipate the prospect's needs at each stage.
Start With The End in Mind
Without buying process alignment, the scope for misdirected or wasted marketing and sales effort is tremendous. A recent study suggested that on average over 80% of sales collateral has no meaningful impact on the buying process. Many marketing campaigns are similarly ineffective.
On the other hand, a modest investment in mapping your prospects' typical buying processes and anticipating their needs will pay dividends when it comes to maximising the returns on marketing and sales investments. In fact, we would suggest that if you can't clearly define the purpose that a particular activity serves in facilitating your prospect's buying process (and measure its' impact), you shouldn't be doing it.
Recommendations
- Research the typical prospect decision making process in each of your key target markets
- Anticipate your prospect's most likely needs and concerns at each stage of their buying process
- Document the evidence that will indicate what stage your prospect has reached in their process
- Use the buying process to establish a common language between marketing and sales
- Be clear about the role each marketing campaign and sales tool plays in facilitating the buying process
- Align the key stages in your CRM system to the key stages in your prospects' buying process
Could we help you to facilitate your prospects' buying process? We would be happy to arrange a brief exploratory conversation - see below for how to get in touch.
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