Our monthly newsletter, Affect, offers business-to-business sales and marketing insights, trends and helpful content that is applicable to your business. Check out an exerpt from the latest edition of Affect, written by our director of client growth, Charles Simpson.
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Affect | Your Customers are Getting Smarter
Your customers are getting smarter by relying on a slew of online resources – websites, blog posts, white papers, webinars, online communities, videos and LinkedIn pages. As a result, the way B2B purchasers evaluate their options has radically changed.
By the time a B2B buyer contacts a sales rep, the prospect has already progressed through 60% of the consumer decision journey. They’ve done most of their due diligence to not only define their problem, but assess the value of your solution. This explains why...
72% of B2B decision makers say that a major determinant of purchase choice is a sales rep’s ability to “solve business objectives.”
Sales forces are seeing that desire for deep expertise and practical thinking in their daily customer interactions: 65% of sales organizations identify heightened customer expectations as the number one barrier to closing deals.
Consultative selling isn’t new. What’s changed is this: prospects now have access to all of the resources they need to educate themselves at their own pace; free of guidance (or influence) from your sales force. As a result, B2B prospects are reaching out to sales reps later in the consumer decision journey. The power of your sales team to shape initial expectations, to frame problems in a way that couches your offerings in the most favorable light, has been severely eroded.
“Tell me what you know,” has been replaced with, “Teach me something new"...
To learn how to empower marketing to teach your prospects and customers, join us for a FREE 30-minute webinar on Thursday, October 16!
“Marketing that Teaches” will outline real-world B2B examples to show you the basics of how to educate your prospects, on their terms, across multiple channels (web, social media, events, smartphones and tablets) through marketing automation.
