![]() In a survey of over 1,000 B2B buyers engaged in a complex purchase, respondents reported using digital channels - particularly the supplier’s own website - with nearly equal frequency as the supplier’s sales reps to gather the information necessary to complete a range of buying “jobs,” e.g., Problem Identification, Solution Exploration, Requirements Building, and Supplier Selection. Instead, today’s B2B buyers rely heavily on digital information to support progress across their entire buying journey. So, if three suppliers are competing for the same opportunity, one can assume customers divide that time roughly equally across all three, leaving any given sales team with a vanishingly small window of opportunity to interact directly with that customer - perhaps 5% or 6% of total buying time if they are lucky.įor many sales leaders, that dramatically small window of direct interaction represents the single biggest challenge their sales teams face today, an overall lack of access - and therefore lack of opportunity - to materially impact purchase deliberations and bend customer preference toward their company’s unique offering.Īs one head of sales put it, “We have very few ‘at bats’ to actually influence customer buying behavior.” Put another way, today’s typical B2B buying journey leaves supplier sales teams very little “surface area” for actual selling. Instead, much of their purchase activity comprised independent learning online (27%), independent learning offline (18%), and building consensus across a wide range of internal and partner stakeholders (22% and 11% respectively).Īs small as it is, however, that 17% of purchase activity allocated to supplier interaction (both virtual and in-person), represents all suppliers, not each supplier. The rise of digital B2B buyingįor years, however, B2B buying has dramatically evolved to a far more digitally dominant buying behavior, rendering much of that commercial model not only out of date, but nearly obsolete.Ĭonsider the following data from Gartner research: In a pre-pandemic survey of 750 B2B customer stakeholders involved in complex “solutions” purchase within their organization, customers reported spending only 17% of their total buying time interacting directly with supplier sales teams. And the decades-long pursuit of tighter “sales and marketing integration” has centered on progressing deals along that journey as “seamlessly” as possible, eliminating “friction” and aligning metrics, data, and sometimes even incentives and reporting structures to ensure the handoff from digital to human selling is as efficient as possible. Or, more accurately, first scaled digital engagement, followed by targeted seller interaction. In the middle is the “handoff,” where marketing passes the baton to sales, and online customer engagement gives way to in-person customer engagement.Įven in more advanced “account-based marketing approaches” those linear “physics” remain largely unchallenged. ![]() Marketing engages prospective buyers early in their purchase journey, qualifying their readiness and fit for sales rep engagement through digital “content nurturing.” Once those leads have been designated “marketing qualified,” individual sellers take over, pursuing those leads through in-person or virtual interactions. ![]() Most B2B sales and marketing teams typically function in a “serial,” or linear manner.
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