Tag: Buyer’s Journey

Buying is Broken — Here’s What We Can Do

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Buying is Broken — Here’s What We Can Do

Nothing like a live audience to keep you on your toes! Third-time guest Brent Adamson, Distinguished Vice President, Gartner, joins Drew for a live conversation in front of an elite collection of B2B CMOs to chat about smarketing—and no, that’s not a typo. Brent dives into why sales and marketing—“smarketing”— must work together and fully align to connect with customers.

Beyond that, Brent explains why buying is broken, the pitfalls of working with a large buyer committee, and why companies need to make customers reevaluate themselves rather than products. Don’t miss that and more on this week’s Renegade Thinkers Unite!

You’ll enjoy this episode, so be sure to listen!

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What You’ll Learn

Smarketing: sales and marketing collaboration

Marketing has long been coupled with the digital while sales has been dominantly in person. In this mindset, marketing is early on in the process of working with a customer while sales is later. However, Brent suggests that this linear view on sales and marketing does not have to be, and in fact, may not even be the best. He introduces the term – smarketing: the combination of sales and marketing. He suggests a workaround on the functional divide of sales and marketing. When looking at how buying happens, you are looking for information needed by the client, so the solution is to put this information together for clients and deliver them through multiple channels with sales and marketing supporting this.

Why buying is broken, and how to put B2B sales back together!

For B2B sales, there used to be approximately 5.4 people involved in the buying process. Over the past number of years, this number of people involved has jumped up to 9-10. The more people involved, the more difficult buying has become. There are more opinions and prerogatives, so this slows the process of B2B sales down. Brent shares that in studies done, it is not optimal to personalized message for each of these 10 stakeholders. Instead, to market to all of these buying persons, you must find a common denominator. Creating content around this common ground can help buyers reach a decision. Be sure to listen to hear Brent share an example of this!

Commercial insight tools

Brent further explains 3 commercial insight tools that can be used to help motivate buyers:

  1. Connector: A connector is a set of information or tools to identify who needs to be involved
  2. Advisor: An advisor is a buying guide or a set of steps to be followed
  3. Diagnostic: A diagnostic is a framework that is created for a segment of customers that allows them to diagnose their performance to help identify where they are on a continuum of performance (where they are and where they want to be!)

Timeline

  • [2:13] What is new with Brent Adamson
  • [3:34] Prepping for a recession as a CFO or CMO
  • [8:16] Smarketing! Sales and marketing working together
  • [12:04] Buying is broken – why and how to help as a marketer
  • [22:55] A good example of commercial insight
  • [28:00] Audience questions: Connie O’Brien and Denise Broady
  • [40:56] Commercial insight tools: connector, advisor, and diagnostic

Connect With Brent Adamson:

  • Brent Adamson’s Bio on Gartner’s Conference Website
  • Connect with Brent Adamson on LinkedIn
  • Follow Brent Adamson on Twitter

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

You Need to Blow Up Your Approach to B2B Marketing

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Brent Adamson has a bone to pick with marketers: the way many of them define their industry is miles off the mark. In fact, Brent may want to abandon the term ‘marketing’ altogether, because too often the notion of separate marketing and sales departments breeds a lack of coordination. If your marketing and sales teams are not in perfect lockstep, you can count on your business suffering. If you disagree, maybe he can sway you in part 2 of his interview.

In today’s conclusion to the interview, Brent and Drew get at to the heart of how a marketing team needs to operate to be successful, and it involves a lot more than handing leads off to sales like a relay-race baton. Brent will talk the listener through seven tools that can help make speed up the process of connecting a customer with a product. Then, Drew and Brent talk through the buyer enablement journey, and why breaking down walls between sales and marketing will enable the teams make it as easy as possible for the customer to buy. In the end, that’s goal number one.

This episode is chock full of wisdom to help you shed some outdated notions of marketing and sales, click here to listen!

What You’ll Learn

Marketing and sales collaboration is the wave of the future – here’s why

Brent wants every marketer to understand that the role of every B2B business is to make buying easier for the customer. This is achieved through a high level of marketing and sales collaboration. Gone are the days where marketers can simply hand off a prospect to the sales department and hope for the best. If a company knits together the two departments, they will have a competitive advantage over every other business in the industry.

Where do buyers look for information validation?

During the purchase journey, a buyer is always seeking for validation on the information they receive. After speaking with a sales representative, there are 3 main places where they will look for validation:

  1. The company’s website
  2. SEO organic searches
  3. A third-party analyst/thought leader

That’s why it’s so important for companies to be unified in the way they deliver information and lay out why their solution is the best available. If a buyer receives mixed information, they’re less like to choose your solution.

The 7 main tools that enhance buyer enablement

A B2B company with linked marketing and sales departments can work together to create tools that help a customer make easier buying decisions. There are 7 main categories of tools that can be explored.

  1. Calculators
  2. Simulators
  3. Recommenders
  4. Benchmarks
  5. Connectors
  6. Advisors
  7. Diagnostics

These tools ultimately allow the customer to choose the best solution to their problem. Brent explains that there is a “huge commercial benefit” to providing tools that make a customer’s life easier, and companies can see increased loyalty from customers after they use these tools.

Timeline

  • [1:40] Marketing has a new role – make it easier for the customer to buy
  • [4:24] Buyer enablement takes the form of these 7 tools
  • [10:14] You can’t fit these ideas into legacy structures for companies and brands
  • [14:20] This is the #1 place customers look for information validation
  • [23:34] Why you should be excited about the upcoming Gartner conference

Connect With Brent:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew

Putting the B2B Buyer First and Understanding Their Purchase Journey, Part 1

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A customer’s purchase journey is never an easy process to document and collect data on. Thankfully, Brent Adamson is interviewed on this episode of Renegade Thinkers Unite. As Principal Executive Advisor at Gartner (formerly CEB), Brent works to help B2B companies explain to customers why their solution is the best available.

Throughout part 1 of this conversation, Brent and Drew discuss why putting the customer first should be at the heart of any B2B organization. They also explain the 6 non-linear steps in any purchase journey, and Brent shares his #1 tip for any B2B supplier.

Click here to learn what you need to know about B2B marketing.

What You’ll Learn

Putting the buyer first is the #1 step to create a better purchase journey

B2B companies should be focusing on understanding how buying happens. Learning how your ideal customer views the buying process will give you direction when bridging the gap between marketing and sales departments. Brent explains that unfortunately, few brands in the B2B space are doing this well. To learn how to put the buyer first and reorganize your brand’s purchase journey model, be sure to listen.

The 6 main steps in any B2B purchase journey – they’re not linear!

Contrary to what many professionals believe, a purchase journey within B2B industries isn’t linear. And closing a deal isn’t about progression, it’s about completion. Brent outlines the 6 main steps that must be completed before any buying decision is made.

  1. Problem identification
  2. Solution exploration
  3. Requirements building
  4. Supplier selection
  5. Consensus creation (always happening)
  6. Validation of information (always happening)

These steps are far from being linear, especially when multiple decision-makers are involved. Of all the B2B buyers surveyed by Brent and his team at Gartner, 90% reported having to revisit one of the top 4 steps multiple times throughout their purchase journey.

Marketers should be doing THIS, before anything else, to help buyers choose their solution

Given these 6 steps, what is the ideal job of a B2B marketer? Brent believes it’s simple: marketers need to make buying easier. The first step in doing so is ensuring that problem-solving information is available through multiple channels. The answers given to a buyer over the phone from a sales rep should be consistent with information available online and via social media.

Actively solving a customer’s problems, before they even recognize a problem, is the key to making B2B buying easier. By understanding a buyer’s problems, offering them the best solution, and supporting them through their purchase journey, you’re well on your way to closing more deals in your industry.

Timeline

  • [0:30] Brent’s Renegade Rapid Fire segment, and his unique definition of marketing
  • [7:30] The importance of putting the customer first
  • [12:11] Brent explains the traditional customer purchase journey model
  • [17:42] The 6 main steps to a buying process – they’re NOT linear
  • [25:40] B2B buying is incredibly complex, and it’s through a multi-channel approach
  • [33:27] Here are your need-to-know takeaways from part 1 of this conversation with Brent

Connect With Brent:

Resources & People Mentioned

Connect with Drew