3 Keys to Winning Over a Business to Business Buyer

Shama Hyder is CEO of Zen Media, a leading marketing and digital PR firm, a best-selling author, and an internationally renowned keynote speaker.

The B2B buying space is currently undergoing some dramatic changes. I

should know, we work with many B2B companies at Zen Media, and they all

report that their selling process has changed considerably in the last decade

alone.

B2B companies must reevaluate their sales and marketing processes to ensure they’re meeting the needs of today’s buyers.

Shorter sales cycles. Fewer contacts with sales reps. Stronger gatekeepers.

Greater demand for data and evidence, with lower importance placed solely on

singular relationships.

And these are just a few of the more significant transformations that are

occurring. What this means is that B2B companies must reevaluate their sales

and marketing processes to ensure they’re meeting the needs of today’s buyers,

which are starkly different than yesterday’s.

Here are just a few ways B2B companies can win over today’s challenging,

exacting B2B buyer.

1. Be ready to work with a more diverse buying group.

Whereas B2B buying has almost always involved a group of people, the size

and diversity of that group has been increasing—according to the Harvard

Business Journal, the average number of people involved in a B2B purchase

decision has gone up from 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today. In addition, those

involved are coming from a broadening group of backgrounds, job functions

and roles.

This means that while you may be very well-equipped to engage with a CTO,

you may find yourself working with more people from the marketing

department or people who work in less-senior positions. These members of the

buying group will have different questions and different priorities—and those

priorities will carry just as much weight as the CTO’s.

To prepare, it’s a good idea to do as much homework on each member of the

buying group as possible.

In addition to names and job titles, use social media and Google searches to

learn what you can about each person’s place in the organization and their

professional interests. That way, you can be more prepared to address

everyone’s concerns, rather than only those of the leader or most senior

person.

2.Selectively curate the information you offer to buyers at different

points, to avoid overwhelming them.

Every B2B sales and marketing team knows that today’s buyers have access to

an unprecedented amount of information. With a little research, a buyer can

find reviews of your product or service, social media posts from your company

that stretch years back, social media mentions of you from other agencies...and

that’s just the start.

But while you’d think that this much information would be empowering to the

buyer, it’s actually quite overwhelming, according to the research we

conducted on the modern, connected consumer.

Having so much knowledge literally at a buyer’s fingertips can induce second guessing,

indecisiveness, and even guilt, as they wonder whether they’re

making not just the right choice, but the best possible choice. Research cited in

the Harvard Business Journal backs this up, as researchers found that second guessing

occurred in 40 percent of completed B2B purchases.

The solution, then, is to carefully and selectively curate the information you

bring to the buyer. This way, even if they’re daunted by the sheer volume of

information gleaned from their initial research—which is overwhelmingly

conducted online, starting with a generic search query, according to Google—

you as their sales sherpa will be able to cut through the noise and provide them

with information that will help them move forward along their purchase

journey.

Examples of the kind of information you could offer, in addition to basic things

like product or service descriptions and pricing, include video assets, one or

two reports specific to your client’s needs or industry, and testimonials from

other clients in the industry.

Remember that your client’s information needs will change based on where

they are in the sales cycle, and they’ll also likely revisit various points in that

3.Personalize your approach to the individual buyer and members

of the buying group as much as possible.

If you consider the level of personalization that you expect nowadays when

you’re making an online purchase, engaging with a social media platform, or

browsing Netflix, you can see why receiving generic emails and information

would annoy your average B2B buyer.

After all, B2B buyers are also spending their off-work hours watching Netflix,

shopping online, and scrolling through Facebook. And while offering this kind

of granular, intensely detailed customization may be beyond your company’s

abilities, it’s always possible to improve the way you tailor information to your

particular client—and to each member of the purchasing group.

If you’ve done your homework as mentioned earlier, you’ll have a head start on

this process. The important thing is to ensure that the purchase group is

receiving content that will actually help them make the decision. Is your

content merely prompting more questions, or effectively answering them? Is it

providing value, or is it simply restating the same information they already

have in a new way?

The B2B buying process is undergoing huge changes, but they can be

understood in relation to the larger changes occurring across the B2C space.

Agencies that are able to adapt their sales process to these changes, appealing

to a more diverse buying group with a greater demand for customization, are

the ones that will rise to the top.