Today's sales-purchase dichotomy has shifted weight from reps’ struggles to sell to the customers’ struggles to buy with 77% of B2B buyers having found their last purchase complex or difficult. Gartner’s New B2B Buying Journey report proposes six approaches customers must satisfy in order to facilitate the journey:
-Problem Identification
-Solution Exploration
-Requirements Building
-Supplier Selection
-Validation
-Consensus creation
The B2B buying journey is not a linear process and is calling for a more engaging and learning experience as a strategy to educate customers. According to Gartner, customers who received valuable information from suppliers that advanced their buying process were 2.8 times more likely to experience a significant level of ease in purchasing and were 3 times more likely to make a bigger purchase with fewer regrets. Delivering information and knowledge to customers efficiently will improve customer experience, simplify their journey, and eventually drive sales.
Today it is more critical than ever for organisations to build an efficient customer education function that will incorporate all six buying approaches and build trusted long-term relationships between buyers and sellers with increased ROI on all sides.
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