B2B Marketing has changed, here is what you do you about it.
B2B Marketing has changed, this is due to millennials moving into position of influencer and buying decision makers. What they are seeking is replication of B2C shopping journey. Their behaviour and ask has significantly changed the way you approached the B2B sales.
Millennials, which now makes up nearly 50% the Decision makers, is driving a significant shift towards personalized and instant purchasing experiences. With 21% of millennials in VP- or C-level positions and over 60% influencing buying decisions, these buyers are reshaping expectations.
Years back when I started my career in 2002 with a Telecom company my job was to sell enterprise solutions and my TG was usually the CEO, the CTO and similar people.
I used to work with my sales team who had relationships with the people in companies. Every day I will Hop on to car of one of the sales colleagues and we will drive to one or two companies for product demo and interactions.
Getting appointments was easy, meeting people was fun and interactions were great fun. When we had partners like Microsoft or Nokia the representation was even better, there were joint presentations, joint sales and interactions. Though it took time but it was easy to ring people up, Telemarketing wasn’t a mess then and people took calls.
After a few years I joined a IT company where the core was selling IT services for Big projects, sometimes it was acting like a system integrator which will bring people and systems together for the best solutions for the client. Things were changing slightly, but not so much. The deal size was various sizes but the sales still needed people to meet up and interact with each other.
During the sales process, you could bring in partners as well, who will bring their heavy weight as well to influence the deal. Lunch meetings would happen and some regional head would fly for the final presentation with the client. This was the story with everyone around.
However, A few things were changing, there is lot of information which begin coming on the internet. The technology teams started putting all the information on the web. Now everyone could set up their own requirements, check the possible pricing, see the possible stack of systems, configurations, hosting and so on. This was cloud computing which was knocking our doors and giving rise to something called self-serve.
There is another behemoth which was moving without much interference and this was SAAS, Software as a service. SAAS was set to democratise the software buying and it did.
Now there were comparisons, choices, user based licenses, begin the day you want and no need to set up your own infra for any software requirements or needs you have.
Unless your company is on big legacy systems, Retail, Big bank, stock markets, government, you could no longer give an excuse of being a fence sitter. Today If one wants, one could begin and change all the IT software infra in matter of weeks if not days.
B2B Marketing/sales is now digital and would lean towards Buying experience that a B2C product provides. Think how one checks a new product on Amazon. People would look at images, Videos are better, Pricing, Ratings, reviews, Social proof of number of people happy with the product, Competition and so on.
Now apply the same logic and experience for the B2B product in 2024. All of the sudden you may need all product specs, architecture, use cases, Demos, videos, Reviews and Ratings, Pricing, fastest delivery, Colour options (Read Personalisation), Tech specs, look and feel and so on.
Look at snowflake Story, a testament to the power of innovation and unwavering customer focus. They did exactly what a customer needed and boom today they are a force to recon with. They built a platform that sang the language of the cloud, offering a pay-as-you-go model and intuitive user interface, making data analysis a breeze, even for non-technical users.
Look at any other B2B SAAS story like Hubspot or Zoho, Shopify or Mailchimp, almost all of them figured a way to circumvent the traditional sales process and go through small windows of department budgets like marketing or finance. Get a foot in the door and scale like salesforce.
B2B success is tough but you need to listen to customers, ride beyond the buying cycles and process and meetings. See how you can break the process, know who is buying, what’s working and what’s not working.
Navigating the Landscape of B2B Marketing.
In the book Navigating the Landscape of B2B Marketing, Strategies for Digital Buying Cycles and Sales Success I have tried covering the evolution of the The modern buying process and how you can you can change your strategies to adhere to new rules of sales and consideration. There are elements of what you need to change in your marketing and how to implement. You can buy here or at Barnes & Noble book store. Happy Reading.
Let me know your feedback. I would be great to collaborate.
