Even before the pandemic, the transformation of the B2B buyer’s journey was already underway. COVID-19 has simply fast-tracked and solidified the rise of digital buying behaviors. According to Gartner, by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will take place on digital channels. Email, chatbots, video conference calls, social media, and more now inform every step of the B2B buying journey, including research and discovery, requests for proposals, supplier selection, repeat purchases, and contract renewals.
It’s no surprise that solution providers are investing heavily in new buying capabilities and online content. A February 2022 study found that at least 83% of European B2B manufacturers plan to increase investment in digital business strategies. In the U.S., “B2B marketing technology spending will reach $6.59 billion by the end of this year and exceed $8.5 billion by 2024,” outpacing B2C growth, eMarketer reports.
That’s all well and good. The problem is that in their quest to master digital strategy, many companies overlook a key fact: B2B buyers don’t engage with companies, they engage with people — your employees.
Let’s start with the evolution of B2B buying patterns and end with how your company can influence a largely digital path to purchase by combining technology with the human touch.
Change 1: The increased complexity of purchasing decisions requires more research.
Corporate decision-makers are investing in sophisticated solutions that play an integral role in their ability to compete. Increasingly, companies want these solutions to integrate with one another so they can create a seamless technology stack to access and activate valuable data.
Let’s pause for a moment and step into the wayback bahamas phone number library machine. You learn about vendors from trade show booths, conferences, coworkers, friends, or niche industry magazines. You may even fill out a Business Response Card (BRC) stating your interest in a specific service. Then, sure enough, businesses reach out—businesses that bought leads from magazines or third-party leads.
In-person events still play a role in decision-making, and the right digital marketing strategy can amplify that influence. But coming back from your time traveling, you’ll immediately notice that buyers can easily do their research from home.
Change 2: Buyers are forced to adopt online purchasing tools—and now they prefer them.
During the pandemic, even buyers who preferred the in-person how to create a whatsapp survey to improve your sales discovery process were forced to embrace digital research. Most prefer it now. According to a 2020 McKinsey study, 70% to 80% of B2B decision makers prefer digital self-service and remote human engagement to in-person sales. Industry adb directory events are back and are a great opportunity to reconnect with colleagues. But the digital sales process is here to stay.