What do B2B buyers want?
In a recent LinkedIn Survey*, 70% of B2B buyers said their vendor relationships are fair or good, with only 28% describing them as very good. This indicates a potential pit-fall for your current relationships but also an opportunity for converting customers of your competitors. How can a vendor ensure they win in this environment?
The key is to understand what buyers want from their vendors and why they choose whether or not to engage.
In the same survey, LinkedIn asked B2B buyers, “What are the important factors in your willingness to engage with a vendor?” Here are their top 4 answers:
1. Understands my company’s business model
2. Is a subject matter expert/thought leader
3. Provide valuable consultation, education, or tools
4. Knows my company’s products/services
LinkedIn summed it up this way, "Each of the top four answers has language that refers to knowledge in some way: understands, subject matter expert, knows, and provides valuable... education.”
In short, B2B buyers want knowledge.
However, according to Forrester, 75% of the buyer's decision is made prior to contact with a vendor's salesperson. Furthermore, CEB's research shows that suppliers account for less than 50% of all information buyers use to aid in their purchase decisions.
How can a vendor provide valuable knowledge in today's world of free-flowing information?
Insight > Knowledge
In their excellent, eye-opening book, The Challenger Sale, CEB makes the case that the most successful B2B salespeople are no longer relationship builders but rather "challengers" who teach buyers new insights about their business.
As B2B Marketers, we attempt to crack open a market by providing thought leadership content. However, most content fails to generate leads because of just that--it's based on thought leadership--not insight.
Insight vs. Thought Leadership
According to the CEB, the key is not to teach but to unteach.
Thought leadership teaches customers what they could be doing in their business. This content focuses on benefits of alternate action.
Insight, on the other hand, unteaches customers something they are currently doing in their business. This content focuses on costs of current behavior.
The difference is creating content that resets the buyer's purchase criteria decisively in the vendor's favor versus creating content that simply tries to make the vendor look smart.
Here is CEB's simple formula for creating insight:
1. Spark concern. Build interest in an under-appreciated business problem with provocative infographics, data, and factoids.
2. Scope the problem. Present evidence, testimonials, and frameworks illustrating the hidden dynamics of the problem.
3. Personalize the plan. Present the problem as it relates to the customer's specific business using benchmarking tools, pain calculators, and diagnostics.**
*Source: LinkedIn "Rethink the Buyer's Journey" **Source:
