Most B2B marketers use marketing automation. Used well, the platforms can help advance buying. But it’s about more than just using the technology. It’s about consensus in B2B.
There’s Lots of Red Tape in Reaching Consensus in B2B
I work with a lot of companies where the sales team is convinced that losing deals is about price. We’ve all heard this argument, but we’ve also heard the repetitive push back that value overrules price considerations. Both marketing and sales are told to go prove the value.
And I agree with value playing an important role in B2B buying decisions – perhaps a critical role.
But what if we haven’t looked far enough?
When I think of red tape, what I think about immediately for a B2B complex sale is who’s involved and how will we help the buying committee reach consensus.
Consensus is hard to get. With the growing number of people (43% increase in stakeholders per IDC) involved in a B2B buying decision, 34% say it’s so, getting all of them to buy-in to a decision is requiring more effort.
But are B2B marketers tackling this? Or are they leaving it up to sales? It appears that neither are doing a stellar job as Sales Benchmark Index finds that 58% of typical pipelines are stalled or end up as no decision.
Here are a few reasons marketing needs to get the jump on consensus in B2B:
- 58% of buyers say they spend more time researching
- 53% rely more on peer recommendations
- 34% say purchases were initially unbudgeted
- 65% said the winning vendor’s content had a significant impact
- Non-executives view more content than executives
B2B marketers are very concerned about reaching decision makers. This is primarily because this is who salespeople want to speak with. But we need to start thinking about helping the buying committee reach consensus. For without it, we have no deal.
If your marketing content is focused on engaging the decision maker and/or economic buyer, what about the other 3 – 7 (or more) people who can argue against the decision and stop it cold? If you’re unclear about how to build buyer personas to engage this growing group, consider using buyer persona types to gain clarity.
What are we doing to convince them that making the decision is the best answer to their problem, issue or achieving their objective?
Context Drives Conversations for Buying Decisions
One-size-fits-all content won’t get this done. The context, care abouts, and decision criteria are different for every influencer involved. In order to promote consensus, marketers need to figure out what the “overlay” conversations are amongst the stakeholders and provide ideas and insights that can be used to aid in their discussions about solving the problem. The key here is that you want them to use your ideas.
By addressing the context of each of them, we can help them to understand the opportunity that exists for them, specifically, as well as how these all culminate to be the best way to solve the problem for the company as a whole.
Establishing value is of course important, but relevance will determine its impact and this means it needs to be “personalized” and based on context.
The shift required here is for marketers to think beyond trying to getting their salespeople into the conversation. By working to facilitate conversations among the stakeholders based on our ideas, we’ll find that getting invited into these conversations follows more easily.
What are you doing to ensure your content and nurturing programs are stimulating conversations among stakeholders that build consensus?
Leave a Reply