Why B2B Marketers Need to Know About "Opportunistic Learning"

One of the most profound developments in B2B marketing of the last quarter century has been the emergence of empowered and independent business buyers.

The proliferation of readily available online information has been the driving force behind the increased power of business buyers. Easy access to a wealth of information about almost any conceivable topic has enabled business decision-makers to find most of the information they want or need on their terms. And now, artificial intelligence is making it even easier for buyers to access information.

Information abundance has fundamentally changed how business buyers engage with potential vendors and how they make buying decisions. Overall, B2B marketers have done a reasonably good job of adapting their methods and practices to address most of these changes.

However, there is growing evidence of an important change in B2B buyer behavior that marketers have only recently begun to appreciate and focus on.

A Flawed Model of B2B Buyer Behavior

For most of the past twenty-five years, the accepted paradigm  of B2B buying has assumed that a buying process begins when a company's leaders or managers recognize that a need or problem exists and decide to address the issue in some way.

These "buyers" then gather information about the need or problem, evaluate the available options, and may or may not decide to purchase a product or service to address the situation. So, the conventional paradigm of B2B buying behavior holds that most information gathering and buyer "learning" occurs after an intentional buying process has started.

Several recent research studies have shown that this widely-accepted paradigm is not accurate in many instances.

The 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report by 6sense describes one of the most recent studies regarding B2B buyer behavior. This study consisted of two surveys of business buyers that together generated nearly 4,800 responses. The survey respondents were located in North America (46%), Continental Europe (20%), Asia-Pacific (14%), and the UK and Ireland (20%).

The respondents to the 6sense surveys evaluated an average of five vendors per purchase, and they filled four spots on their vendor shortlist at the very start ("Day One") of their buying process. They also said they purchased from one of the four vendors on their Day One shortlist 95% of the time. In addition, 97% of the respondents said they had prior experience with at least one of the vendors on their Day One shortlist.

Earlier studies have produced similar findings. For example, in a 2022 survey of business buyers by Bain & Co. and Google, 80% - 90% of the respondents said they had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research, and 90% of the respondents said they ultimately chose a vendor that was in their initial consideration set.

A 2021 survey of business buyers by WSJ Intelligence and B2B International also illustrated the importance of the vendor preferences that B2B buyers bring into a buying process.

In this study, the survey contained several questions about a recent purchase and asked the participants to reflect on the vendor they ultimately selected (the "winning vendor") and on a vendor they considered but did not select (the "losing vendor").

The researchers divided the purchase journey into three stages and defined the "Pre-Decision stage" as ". . . the time between when they had selected a supplier (for a given product/service category) and when the 'trigger' occurred that prompted them to actively begin searching for and deciding on a new supplier."

The survey findings revealed that the mental impressions of vendors held by buyers during the Pre-Decision stage exerted significant influence on purchase decisions. For example, survey respondents were more then twice as likely to say they were very familiar with the winning vendor versus the losing vendor before their active buying process began. Respondents also said that during the Pre-Decision stage, they had a higher level of pre-existing trust and confidence in the winning vendor than in the losing vendor.

Enter Opportunistic Learning

These results clearly demonstrate that most business buyers do not begin a buying process with a "blank slate." In fact, most buyers bring strong opinions about vendors to the process.

These pre-existing opinions develop because information has become so abundant and readily available that business people are routinely consuming information about business issues long before they have formed anything close to "buying intent" or started an intentional buying process.

I call this type of information consumption opportunistic learning, and it occurs because humans are naturally programmed to seek rewards. We all have a mental radar system that is constantly scanning our environment to identify reward opportunities.

In a business setting, our radar system is always scanning our environment to identify information that may help us improve our company's performance and/or advance our career.

Opportunistic learning has important implications for B2B marketing, and some marketers have started to recognize its significance. The research findings discussed above show that reaching opportunistic learners is important because the impressions they form during opportunistic learning remain influential when they become involved in a buying process.

Making an impact on opportunistic learners requires marketers to use a particular approach to marketing messaging, and in my next post, I'll discuss the kind of messaging that's needed to connect with opportunistic learners.

Image courtesy of onewaystock.com via Flckr (CC).

How CMOs Can Cultivate Strategic Influence

Many marketing pundits and practitioners now believe the marketing function in most companies has less influence than it should have.

Marketers often describe this loss of influence in terms of the 4P's of the marketing mix. They frequently observe that in many companies, the marketing department is responsible for running promotional campaigns and programs, but has little influence over product, price, and place.

More broadly, many marketers complain that senior marketing leaders often don't have a meaningful role in the formulation of their company's business strategy.

Recent surveys by Marketing Week and McKinsey & Company have shown that one or both of these situations exist at many companies.

Virtually all marketers agree that rebuilding the strategic influence of the marketing function is important, but it's not always clear how this goal can be achieved.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the ultimate solution is for the CMO* to be seen as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor intelligence the company's senior leaders need to formulate a sound business strategy.

However, this level of trust doesn't develop overnight. Therefore, a critical question for the CMO of an organization where the marketing function has little influence on business strategy is:  "How can I begin building this level of trust?"

The short answer is that the CMO should identify the elements of their company's business strategy that are based on inadequate information about markets, customers, or competitors and begin providing that information to other senior company leaders.

To execute this approach, a CMO needs to perform three tasks.

Describe the Strategy

The first step is to describe the major components of their company's business strategy. Every company's competitive situation is unique, so every company's business strategy will also be unique. However, all complete strategies will address a core group of issues that are common to most companies.

For example, a complete strategy will describe how the company segments the market for its products or services and identify the company's target market. The strategy will also describe how the company's products or services will deliver value to customers that is superior to the value provided by competitors.

A complete strategy will also describe how the company will price its products or services and why its current pricing levels are competitive in the relevant market.

The goal of this step is for the CMO to develop an accurate and detailed description of the elements of their company's business strategy that collectively determine competitive success.

Identify Sources of Information

The second task the CMO must perform is to identify the information that was used to make the choices embodied in their company's business strategy.

For example, what information did company leaders rely on to define the company's target market? What data or information did they use to determine what the company's primary customer value propositions should be? How did they determine what new product or service features or capabilities to develop and bring to market?

The goal of this work is to enable the CMO to identify areas where more accurate or comprehensive information about relevant markets, customers, and competitors will enable company leaders to make more informed strategic choices.

Share Strategy-Critical Information

Once CMOs have identified the areas of greatest need for better insights about markets, customers, and/or competitors, they can begin to gather relevant information and share that information with other senior company leaders.

The most effective way to share this information will largely depend on the nature and quality of the CMO's relationships with the other senior company leaders, particularly their CEO.

Most CMOs will probably want to avoid any suggestion that they are criticizing their company's current business strategy. Instead, CMOs should position their work as providing information that may be useful and valuable during the next strategy development cycle.

This low-kay, indirect approach is primarily intended for situations where a company's CMO is not playing a prominent role in the development of the company's business strategy. When they have strong relationships with other C-level executives, CMOs can use a more direct and aggressive approach.

The approach described in this post will require a fair amount of work, and it won't always produce immediate visible results. But, the long-term payoff more than justifies the effort.

When a company's CEO and other senior leaders view the CMO as a trusted source of the market, customer, and competitor insights that will help them formulate better business strategy, they will place greater value on, and give greater weight to, the CMO's views and perspectives.

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*In this post, I've used the term "CMO" to mean the senior marketing leader in a company regardless of the specific title that individual holds.

Image courtesy of SMcD22 via Flickr (CC).