The Traditional B2B Buyer’s Journey

Modern-day Business-to-Business (B2B) buyers are better-informed and more-capable than ever before. Thanks to the internet and online research, B2B buyers are no longer dependent on sellers to provide information or to help them evaluate products. In fact, 70% of the buyer’s journey is complete before a buyer even reaches out to a sales person [Forrester].

What does this mean for the seller? It means that the traditional B2B Buyer’s Journey – Awareness, Consideration, Decision – is no longer relevant and that a new B2B Buyer’s Journey needs to be embraced. The traditional B2B Buyer’s Journey had the right goal, which was engagement, but the approach was wrong. It was too simplistic and suggested that B2B buyers operated in a vacuum and were only going through one buying process at a time.

For example:

A leading apartment developer might see a Facebook ad for a local civil engineering firm and be prompted to contact the firm to ask some questions about an upcoming project.

Assuming the apartment developer had already been through the awareness stage (Facebook ad) and the consideration stage (phone call to get answers), the civil engineering firm would start trying to push the decision stage by having their sales team send emails to the apartment developers with project quotes and deadlines for taking advantage of their proposal.

However, what the civil firm doesn’t know is that the developer is still in the budget planning phases of the project and working with an internal team to consider their engineering needs, while also managing the buying process of professional services for other development projects. The buyer doesn’t want quotes, they want an informational resource to help them evaluate options.

Phone calls from an engineering sales team and aggressive emails to close a deal would be invasive and not considerate of the buyer’s stage, which may be fluctuating between awareness and consideration, as the buyer does more online research and asks the engineering firm more questions.

Like the apartment developer example above, most B2B buyers don’t act independently when it comes to making a purchasing decision. The traditional B2B Buyer’s Journey implied that a salesperson could work solely with one B2B buyer to complete the transaction. In reality, a buying team is usually involved in the process, and it’s not an easy one. A “decision” typically requires multiple stakeholders to have all of their questions answered and for purchases to be approved on different levels.

Even if the seller has a great product that matches the buyer’s needs, patience may be required as no amount of sales content can speed up a buying team’s process. In the meantime, the seller’s marketing team can champion initiatives to support the buyer: create valuable/informative content (FAQs library, how-to guides, etc.) and make it easily accessible, host a free Intro webinar, develop a detailed post-sale customer support policy, etc…anything to help the buying team feel confident in their choice of working with you or purchasing your product.

How can sellers better plan for the B2B buying transaction? The new, updated, B2B journey takes into account the buyer’s knowledge and the fact that they’re more in control of the process. Read the B2B Buyer’s Journey, Part 2 - where we’ll talk about a journey more fitting for today’s digital environment.