Make it Easy for B2B Prospects to Buy (address the last mile problem)

Do some prospects slip away at the last stages of their buying journey, even though it seems your sales and marketing teams have done everything right? You may inadvertently be making it difficult for some prospects to make a decision. The following illustrates how this situation arises, and how to avoid it (names have been masked to protect the guilty).

Yellow Manufacturing seemed ready to buy Acme Tech’s CRM solution. It had conducted research about the solutions available prior to reaching out to vendors set a preliminary budget, etc. prior to reaching out to vendors. Acme provided extensive information about its CRM suite, outlined the different options available, demonstrated everything the solution could do and answered every question Yellow raised. But after months of back-and-forth Yellow put the initiative on hold.

What happened? Acme made it difficult for Yellow to make a final decision by providing too much information. In short, Yellow wasn’t ready to process the amount of information Acme provided and ended up with analysis-paralysis.

The tendency to overestimate readiness to buy stems from a misinterpretation of the new buyer journey. Many articles from the past few years talk about how prospects are 70% (or some comparably high %) or more through their buying journey before they reach out to vendors. These data suggest that when the prospect calls a vendor, they have objectively worked through their needs, know what they want and are at the stage of collecting the specific information necessary for vendor selection.

In reality, for many prospects the first 70% of the purchase journey focuses on the rudimentary elements of the buying decision. Yellow identified the problem that needed to be solved, the type of solution that might be able to help them, and some vendors that provide that type of solution. Their knowledge was still broad and thin when they reached out to Acme and competitors. Yellow may have been through 70% of their journey, but as with many situations in business and in life, it’s the last mile where the real learning, thinking and challenges take place.

When Yellow reached out to Acme CRM, it still needed to determine whether to invest in a solution at all. By providing stacks of information about its products, Acme increased the dimensions Yellow needed to consider, raised questions Yellow hadn’t thought of before, and made the solution and decision feel too big. Collectively this slowed down the decision process and eventually knocked Yellow out of the sales funnel.

This confusion about Yellow’s readiness to purchase isn’t entirely Acme’s fault. Prospects like Yellow can contribute to the impression that they are an informed buyer. Consciously or note, Yellow worried about being taken advantage of by Acme’s sales team and process, and presented themselves as knowing more than they did. Yellow knew the buzzwords, and had specific questions—they talked a good game. In addition, when faced with complex questions, people often substitute a smaller, easier to understand questions in place of the hard ones. Many B2B technology solutions raise big picture considerations about business processes, integration, how ROI will be measured, etc. The list of specific questions Yellow asked Acme CRM reflected a need to get their head around the solution, rather than an indication that they just needed a few more details to finalize their selection of vendor.

Improving the last mile.

Vendors can implement two related strategies to improve their effectiveness and win-rates during the last phases of the prospect buying process.

1. Map the last 30% of the buying journey in more detail
2. Use a prescriptive sales approach

Mapping the last 30% of the buying journey

When B2B marketers map the buying journey, many tend to focus on the steps in building awareness and consideration, which happens to be where marketing has the most responsibility. However, by paying as much attention to mapping what happens after a prospect engages with the sales team can enable their company to close more deals. Some of the key aspects to explore include:

• How knowledgeable and informed is the typical prospect when they begin to interact with the sales team. This helps marketers and the sales team set a baseline for creating materials and processes that speak to prospects in a way, and at a level, they can understand.
• Identify the 2-3 core drivers of the buyers purchase motivation—even when buying the most complex product, most prospects are focused on improving a handful of key activities. This will provide a framework for marketers and sales team to speak to the benefits that prospects care most about – instead of a range of things that are interesting but unlikely to influence their purchase decision.
• Determine the internal barriers your internal champion is likely to encounter and provide data and recommendations for how they can overcome them. Once your champion is sold, the deal can still be derailed if they cannot sell it internally.

Use a prescriptive selling approach

When prospects reach out to vendors most are still trying to understand what solutions would be the best fit for them and whether to should invest at all. Many ask for different options because they don’t really know what they need and hope that one of the options presented will stand out as the right choice for them. Instead too many options can confuse the issue. Research conducted by CEB shows that vendors that take a prescriptive approach—provide a recommendation with a clear rationale instead a series of options—close significantly more deals.

That said, it is important for your recommendation to be in line with the core drivers of the prospects purchase motivation. Prospects tend to reject solutions they view as too broad in scope relative to what started them down their purchase journey. Put another way, presenting your entire suite of products can knock you out of the running if the prospect is focused on a single module.

Making it easy for prospects to buy

The vendor that makes it easy for Yellow to make a decision by presenting information they can understand, addressing Yellow’s core needs, and presenting a recommendation instead of options, is most likely to win Yellow’s business.