Key Decisions That Determine Whether B2B Buyers Will Buy From You

Last week’s post discussed the 3 reasons that motivate B2B buyers to find and consider buying a product / service / solution:

• Solve a problem
• Pursue an opportunity
• Improve performance.

In this article we’ll look at what the key decision factors are that determine whether they buy, what they buy and who they buy it from.  Based on work I’ve done over the years reviewing countless win/loss analysis reports from thousands of deals, there are always 3 key decision factors at play that determine what a buyer decides to do:

1. Meets their needs – B2B buyers set out to find something that will enable them to pursue the goals they have established based on one or more of the 3 primary motivators and supporting objectives.  While this may be intuitively obvious to anyone who has been around B2B marketing and sales for any time, meeting the specific buyer needs based on their buying motivators and business goals is the #1 reason that determines which product / service / solution they buy.  These needs are frequently expressed as lengthy lists of requirements, Requests for Proposals (RFPs), demonstrations and other nitty-gritty details for vendors to show that their proposed solution will meet the customer needs.  While it is possible for vendors to influence some of the specifics to suit their solution, the ultimate decision is still whether the buyer believes a specific choice will meet their needs.
2. Affordability – the most frequently mentioned reason for a deal loss from salespeople is price, but affordability for buyers is much more than just the price of the product / service / solution.  Firstly, many B2B buyers usually have underestimated expectations of what they are willing to spend to pursue the goal of the buying motivators.  Secondly, it’s more than just the purchase price – it’s the total cost of ownership over the projected lifetime of the solution.  Thirdly, it always boils down to ROI – buyers determine the value to the business for achieving the goal they identified based on the buying motivator(s).  From a vendor perspective, the discussion with the buyer should be more about value creation for the business and less about the actual price.  If you create the right value for a business, the price becomes incidental.
3. Trust – while this is not an overt discussion topic like needs and affordability during the buying process, it is a significant influential factor that determines who a buyer buys from.  All things being equal in meeting the needs and affordability factors, buyers will choose the vendor and people they most trust.  I’ve seen cases where buyers don’t choose the best fit and most affordable option because they don’t trust the vendor and/or the people representing the vendor.  Salespeople usually put a lot of effort into building a good rapport and trust with buyers.  Trust extends to every aspect of a vendor company and all the vendor people all the buyers deal with.  Building trust with buyers should be a major objective for all marketing, sales, consulting, management, support and other interactions.

Sometimes B2B buyers decide not to decide and defer buying to some undetermined future time.  When you delve into these cases, the reason for the non-decision is probably because one or more of the above 3 decision factors wasn’t met.  The buyer doesn’t believe they can achieve the goal of the original motivators and decides against proceeding.

Vendors can significantly improve their marketing and sales performance by understanding and focusing on the 3 motivators that initiate the buying process and these 3 key decision factors that primarily influence the buyer’s decision of what they buy and who they buy it from.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

The 3 Reasons That Motivate B2B Buyers to Buy

An interesting (more like disconcerting) observation from some of the work I do is the dichotomy between Information Technology vendors and buyers on why a customer buys a solution.

IT vendors tend to focus a lot on the features and functions of the solutions, their claimed technology leadership, their innovations, and how they are better than the competitors. It’s all about them and how wonderful they are and how wonderful it would be to be their customer. While these might be selling points worth mentioning, they are hardly the reasons most buyers decide to buy.

When I talk to vendors, a lot of the discussion centers around who they can sell something to and how to best go about marketing and selling it to get buyers. When I talk to IT users and buyers, they’re primarily concerned with creating value for their company. Buyers frequently need help interpreting the vendor gobbledygook and vague statements into what a particular solution actually does and how it can create value for their business.

Based on what I’ve seen and experienced over many years in the IT industry, there are three fundamental reasons that motivate IT buyers to buy a solution:

1. Solve a problem – something is wrong or not working properly in the business that seemingly cannot be resolved with the processes and technology they already have. The scope of the problem can be in one or more functional areas or across the company. The scale of the problem may range from a serious detriment to an annoyance. The scope and scale of the problem determines the urgency and budget to resolve the problem.
2. Pursue an opportunity – companies find new opportunities to expand or grow their businesses beyond their current confines. In many instances these opportunities require new or additional business processes and solutions (e.g. a manufacturer adding an aftermarket service center) that they currently don’t have. The scope and scale of the opportunity determines the urgency and budget to buy what is needed to pursue the opportunity.
3. Improve performance – it could be argued that underlying every buying decision a business makes is a goal to improve performance. That’s true, but businesses do have specific performance improvement initiatives such as decreasing inventory investment or reducing days sales outstanding (DSO) that may require the acquisition of specific solutions and/or services. The scope of the performance improvement goal can be in one or more functional areas (e.g. reduce overtime wages in the service department) or across the company (e.g. increase operating cash flow). The scale of the problem may range from imminent demise if not fixed soon to a long range continuous improvement process. The scope and scale determines the urgency and budget to buy.

While all three of these buying motivators could be present in many situations, there is usually one primary motivator. Look for the primary driver and primarily focus on that, but don’t overlook the importance of the other one or two secondary motivators to support the buying decision process.

Marketers and Salespeople can significantly improve their odds of finding and converting suspects and prospects into buyers by paying attention to these three reasons that motivate buyers to buy and by connecting with prospective buyers based on why they want to buy.

In my next post, I’ll explore the next step for buyers – the three reasons that cause them to finally decide to buy and who they buy it from.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Does Your Marketing & Sales Engagement Sync with the Prospects Interests?

Despite highlighting this problem for many years, I’m still regularly dumbfounded when I see what Marketing and Sales organizations do when they engage with prospective buyers after they’ve expressed interest.  This practice regularly exasperates buyers, and I would contend that it’s a major reason buyers look elsewhere after expressing initial interest in a particular company / product / service / solution.

This is the type of scenario that leads to the problem I’m referring to:

• Marketing formulates an appealing value proposition for a target market segment
• A marketing campaign uses typical awareness programs such as white papers and webinars to create awareness and attract prospective buyer interest
• A prospective buyer sees this, the specific value proposition connects with their needs and they express interest by responding to the call-to-action for the marketing program
• Marketing immediately get the prospect into their marketing database for follow-up
• Marketing assign a tracking identifier to designate which campaign / program / webinar / landing page / offer / etc. originated this lead
• The marketing lead qualification and nurturing process kicks in – usually based on a set of standard scripts and progression steps to eventually get a qualified lead to Sales.

But what does marketing do with the tracking identifier that links to the specific value proposition which is the key reason why a prospect expressed interest?

• They primarily use the tracking identifier to analyze the effectiveness of a campaign / program / webinar / landing page / offer / etc. to determine what’s working and what they should continue doing, change, update or drop.
• However, what many marketing organizations fail to do sufficiently is to use the tracking identifier to determine how to specifically engage with each prospect relative to their specific needs – the reason they expressed interest in the first place.
• What is frustrating for buyers is that they see a great value proposition and offer that attracts their attention, but when they express interest they are dumped into the generic marketing sausage factory.

And what happens when Sales get the qualified lead?  The tracking identifier might be visible, but is there anything to highlight what it means and identify how sales should specifically engage with each prospect relative to why they expressed interest?  From what I’ve seen over the years, sales tend to pay insufficient attention to this – they jump on the lead and use the standard selling cycle process to engage with prospects.

The buyer’s perspective and interests get lost in the internal marketing and sales processes.

And what does this look like from a prospective buyer’s perspective?  Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes.  The buyer expresses interest because a very specific value proposition attracted their attention, but the engagement process with the vendor is mostly based on the vendor’s processes and perspective to eventually get a sale.  This is downright frustrating for buyers and makes vendors look incompetent because they can’t connect the dots between why the buyer expressed interest and how they engage with the buyer.

It’s a buyer’s market; the buying cycle takes precedence over the selling cycle.  It’s tough to find prospects and convert them into sales – improve your conversions by paying attention to how your marketing and sales organizations engage with buyers relative to their expressed specific interests.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Are You Selling or Facilitating Buying for Customers?

We all know when we’re being sold to – whether it’s a straightforward advertisement, or a clever marketing campaign, or a salesperson going through their shtick.  How do you like being on the receiving end of this process?  Most of us dislike the process, but we have to play the game in order to get the information we need to ultimately make a decision that is right for us.

It’s not that we don’t want to buy, in too many instances it’s that we don’t want to buy in the manner we’re being sold to.  We’ve all experienced this frustration and possible annoyance as a consumer or business buyer.  But why do so many marketers and salespeople, especially in B2B and Information Technology, still persist with this selling oriented approach?

Ask most marketers how they approach marketing to prospective customers and you’ll hear a lot about market segmentation, demographics, value propositions, campaigns, lead tracking, lead qualification, etc.  Ask most salespeople how they approach selling to prospective customers and you’ll inevitably hear about the various stages of the sales cycle and all the predefined processes to move the buyer through each stage to closure and purchase.

Now ask a prospective customer how they want to approach buying and you’ll hear about their reasons, specific requirements, expected results, risk, trust, proof, competitiveness, etc.  Prospective buyers have their own buying cycle of what they need to accomplish in order to make a purchase decision.

So we start with an inherent conflict of interests and processes:

• Prospective buyers have an approach and buying cycle they need to get through before making a decision
• Marketing has an approach and process of finding possible buyers and converting them into leads for Sales
• Sales have a selling cycle and predefined processes to take a lead and convert them into a buying customer.

And we wonder why B2B and IT sales cycles take so long.  Consider all the wasted time, effort and resources on both sides because the selling process is not aligned with the buying process.

Marketers may point out that there are specific buyer-oriented value propositions in their marketing campaigns.  That may be true, but the pitch and process is still mostly focused around the seller and driving leads and statistics through their marketing processes.

Salespeople may point out that they find out what problems and pains a specific prospect wants resolved and then align the sales process accordingly.  That may be so, but from I’ve seen, more often than not it’s more like a “show me your nail and I’ll show you how our hammer will do the job better for you” approach.

“He who buys had need have 100 Eyes, but one's enough for him that sells the Stuff.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

How are you marketing and selling to customers?  How and why do prospective customers want to buy from you?  Consider how you can move from a vendor selling approach and rather facilitate prospective customers to buy from you.

Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2010 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

SaaS Solutions – Are You Marketing for Leads or Sales?

Traditionally, Business Software vendor marketing has primarily focused on generating leads for sales to follow-up and engage with prospects.  This was predicated on the complexity and duration of the sales, delivery, deployment and implementation processes for traditional On-premises solutions.

Software as a Service (SaaS) radically changes the delivery, deployment and implementation processes for business solutions.  This creates opportunities to rethink the sales and marketing approach and processes for the SaaS solution model.

Business software vendors that started life in the SaaS world, primarily focus their marketing campaign strategies, materials and website on:

• Demonstrating the real product online, on-demand
• Offering a free trial to sign-up online right now to use the full product for a limited time period and subsequently convert to a paying customer
• Pricing and other specific information about subscribing to the solution
• Providing relevant information for prospective buyers in their context with multimedia materials
• Engaging with their audience using online marketing and sales methods to expediently make the sale online with or without salesperson involvement
• Alternatively, collecting contact information for generating leads for subsequent follow-up by a salesperson.

The intent for new generation SaaS vendor marketing is to firstly attempt to make the sale or part of it online and secondly to capture contact information for the lead generation process.

In contrast, On-premises business software vendors that also offer SaaS versions of their solutions, seem to be continuing their traditional marketing approach:

• Providing general information about products, solutions, industry applicability, etc.
• Focus on harvesting contact information for their lead generation process at every opportunity such as registration to read a whitepaper, view a video clip, etc.
  
• Limited or no information about subscription costs and terms
• Creating the need for a prospective buyer to provide their contact details to get additional information and details they need for a buying decision.

Even though SaaS creates new opportunities to reorient marketing to actually sell solutions or initiate the sales process online, most traditional On-premises vendors that offer SaaS versions of their products are still primarily focused on generating leads for SaaS solutions like they have done for On-premises solutions in the past.

Some SaaS solutions such as CRM, Expense Management, eCommerce, etc. have a proven track record of selling online in a customer self-service mode with little or no live salesperson assistance.  Prospective buyers may not be ready to buy all SaaS solutions, especially more complex or higher value solutions, in an online self-service mode.  However, there are proven methods for opportunities to redirect the focus from marketing for leads to marketing for sales.

“I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.” ~ F. W. Woolworth

The ultimate objective is to make a sale – SaaS provides the opportunity to directly market for the sale, rather than market for leads for the sales process.

Have you shifted or considered shifting your marketing focus from leads to sales and what have you experienced?  Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Marketing & Selling the Service Differentiation in SaaS Solutions

My previous post ‘Are there Differences for Marketing SaaS versus On-Premises Solutions?’ proffered that customers need to make 2 buying decisions with the increasing availability of mainstream SaaS alternatives to traditional On-premises solutions:

1. Which solution best fits their business needs
2. Which acquisition / deployment option best fits their IT strategy.

The second buying decision means that prospective buyers will want information and comparisons to help them make the best decision for their business.  This creates a need and opportunity for marketing and sales to establish additional differentiation for their solution based on the Service aspect of Software as a Service.  It may help to consider the following three questions more broadly to develop your Service differentiation for marketing and selling your SaaS solution:

Who are you competing against?
In the first buying decision of solution fit you are primarily competing against other vendor solutions.  In the second buying decision of acquisition / deployment options you are competing on multiple fronts such as:

• Other vendors on service costs, terms and delivery
• Other vendors on the delivery platform – is it just a SaaS solution or are there Platform as a Service (PaaS) and/or Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing differentiators?
• Customer’s internal IT organization’s perspective on SaaS solutions
• Other vendors and customer’s internal IT on service delivery – Service Level Agreement (SLA), operational controls, security, SAS 70 compliance certification and whether it’s Type I or II, etc.
• Financial – operational expenditure versus capital expenditure considerations
• Total Cost of Ownership – there’s a lot of spin from both On-premises and SaaS marketing and sales pitches about which model costs more over three, five or more years
• Inertia – some buyers and/or companies may be reluctant or even resistant to having their business systems run in a data center they don’t control.

Considering all the possible competitive points will help formulate your best competitive differentiation.

What are customers buying?
Although a customer needs to make 2 decisions during the buying cycle, once they decide on going with a SaaS solution, they are buying one inseparable solution comprising of the application functionality, acquisition method, services, deployment, provisioning and other elements to make it work.  In a previous post I suggested a bifurcated marketing approach to attack the market from two positions to find prospective buyers on either decision track.  However, the overall marketing and selling strategy should be on the goodness of the complete SaaS solution, because that’s what customers are buying.

What are you really selling?
The bottom line is that you’re selling trust – that the customer trusts your company, product and the representative people they’ve dealt with to provide the solution to satisfy their core buying motivations of solving business problems, developing new opportunities, improving performance, increasing profitability, etc.  This isn’t different for SaaS versus On-premises solutions, but SaaS adds another major dimension of trust in the Service aspect.  With the continuing commoditization of business software and minimal functional differentiation between products in the same category, Service is the operative word for differentiation of Software as a Service solutions.  Marketing and selling the Service differentiation will attract and engage prospective buyers, and trust in your company’s ability to deliver the Service will make the sale.

Do you have additional suggestions and ideas for marketing and selling the Service differentiation in SaaS solutions?  Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com

Are there Differences for Marketing SaaS versus On-Premises Solutions?

From a customer perspective Software as a Service (SaaS) and On-premises business software solutions have the same objectives of creating business value by providing applications and functionality for improving business processes and performance.  The customer buying motivations are the same – solve business problems, develop new opportunities, improve performance, increase profitability, etc.

Marketing SaaS and On-premises business software solutions have the same objectives of developing a credible market presence, creating awareness, generating leads and enabling sales to efficiently sign up new customers.  The marketing tactics are the same – using a familiar mix of webinars, events, collateral, PR, SEO, web content, analyst reviews, email marketing, videos, social media, etc.

When SaaS solutions first emerged as viable alternatives to the traditional On-premises approach, the marketing focus was primarily on the different acquisition and deployment characteristics of SaaS.  More recently the marketing focus for SaaS solutions has shifted to the application functionality and business value for customers as more SaaS and On-premises vendors compete for the same customers in target markets.

So what’s different?  The real difference is that customers now need to make 2 buying decisions:

1. Which solution best fits their business needs
2. Which acquisition / deployment option best fits their IT strategy.

Customers can take two different paths to making the buying the decision:

1. First develop a short list of best fit solutions and then decide on available acquisition / deployment choices as part of the final decision process.  While SaaS versus On-premises may not be the initial primary decision driver, it could be a key final decision factor.
2. First decide which acquisition / deployment option they want and then find the best fit solution that meets the selected acquisition / deployment criteria.  SaaS versus On-premises is the initial primary driver, but functional fit between qualifying solutions will be the final decision factor.

This has implications for marketing both SaaS and On-premises solutions for positioning and differentiating according to each decision choice and path in the customer buying process.  It also has implications for sales to determine how to engage with prospective buyers depending on which decision path they are following.

Given that customers need to make 2 buying decisions and usually take two different paths to reach a decision, business software vendors may want to consider a bifurcated marketing strategy for positioning and differentiation:

1. Traditional functional fit solution marketing approach emphasizing business benefits and applicability of the solution functional capabilities.
2. Acquisition and deployment marketing emphasizing the business and IT benefits of each available acquisition / deployment option.

“If you're attacking your market from multiple positions and your competition isn't, you have all the advantage and it will show up in your increased success and income." – Jay Abraham

I’ll explore the differentiating and positioning possibilities in future blog articles.

Have you faced this situation and how are you approaching it?  Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com