"No Decisions" - Why They Happen and What You Can Do About Them

The quest to understand how people make buying decisions has probably consumed more brainpower than any other topic in marketing and sales. In B2B, we've also devoted a lot of time and energy to diagnosing why some potential customers fail to make any purchase after conducting a thorough buying process.

Such outcomes are usually called no decisions, and several studies have shown that B2B companies lose more sales to no decisions than to competitors. In the research for their 2022 book, The JOLT Effect, Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna found that between 40% and 60% of prospective sales result in no decisions.

Rational vs. Non-Rational No Decisions

Some no decisions are entirely rational. For example, a potential customer may decide not to buy because their current solution is superior or equivalent to the proposed alternatives. In such cases, the alternatives don't provide enough additional value to justify a change.

However, many no decisions can't be explained on a rational basis. These are situations where the potential customer has recognized the existence of an issue or challenge that needs to be addressed, the fit and business case for the proposed solution are strong, and the price of the proposed solution is affordable. But despite these circumstances, the potential customer decides not to buy.

Such "non-rational" no decisions point to the role of human emotion and psychology in B2B buying. An impressive body of research has shown that many B2B buying decisions are driven more by emotional and psychological factors than by logic.

So, how do emotions and psychological factors drive no decisions? To answer this question, the starting point is understanding the power and prevalence of fear in B2B buying.

How Fear Drives No Decisions

More than a decade ago, Enquiro conducted a landmark study of the B2B buying process. The research used several methods to gather data from almost 4,000 individuals involved in B2B buying. A core finding of the study was that B2B buying is not a rational process, but rather an "emotional, heuristic process" in which fear plays a leading role.

Gord Hotchkiss, the CEO of Enquiro, discussed the results of the study in The Buyersphere Project, where he described the role of fear in B2B buying in unequivocal terms. He wrote:

"B2B buying decisions are usually driven by one emotion - fear. Specifically, B2B buying is all about minimizing fear by eliminating risk. And in that, there are two distinct types of risk. There is organizational risk, typically formalized and dealt with in various procurement processes and then there is personal risk, which is unstated but remains a huge influencing factor in organizational buying."

The personal risk that is present at some level in every B2B buying situation is the risk that the decision-maker will be blamed if the purchase doesn't deliver the promised benefits. So, fear of blame is a hidden force in every B2B buying situation.

Personal risk often causes business buyers to practice what psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer has called defensive decision-making.*

Defensive decision-making occurs when a business buyer doesn't choose the option that would probably produce the most benefits for his or her company, but instead chooses the option that will protect him or her in case something goes wrong.

Defensive decision-making can easily lead business buyers to view their status quo as the safest option, and that results in a no decision.

A Strong Brand Reduces No Decisions

You will never completely eliminate no decisions. As I noted earlier, some no decisions are completely rational. Sometimes, your offering won't be significantly better than what your prospect is already using or doing. Your objective should be to identify these situations early in the sales process so that you don't waste time pursuing a deal you are unlikely to win.

Reducing the number of non-rational no decisions is challenging because, by definition, you are dealing with emotional and psychological factors that are difficult to identify and usually differ for every buyer.

In The JOLT Effect, Dixon and McKenna lay out a four-pronged approach that sales reps can use to reduce no decisions. The authors argue that high-performing reps look for ways to "take risk off the table" (the "T" in JOLT). Examples of these tactics include free trials, opt-out clauses in contracts, and performance guarantees.

One of the most effective ways to reduce non-rational no decisions is to build and sustain a strong brand presence in the relevant market. A strong brand reduces the level of personal risk associated with choosing your company.

If your company/brand is well-known by the decision-maker's superiors and colleagues, the perceived risk is even lower. This explains the rationale of the quote:  "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

In a recent paper published by The B2B Institute, Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK and author of Alchemy, described the power of a strong brand to reduce risks:

"A decision to appoint a respected brand is much less reputationally risky than the appointment of an unknown. If you appoint a well-known company to a task and things go wrong, your colleagues are likely to blame the supplier. If you appoint someone obscure, they may blame you."

Advocates of brand marketing often assert that building a strong brand will improve the performance of demand generation programs, make buyers more willing to pay a premium price, and increase customer loyalty. Unfortunately, it's not usually clear why a strong brand delivers these benefits. One likely reason is that buyers are apt to view a strong brand as the safest choice.

*Gerd Gigerenzer is director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, and director of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the University of Potsdam. For a more in-depth discussion of defensive decision-making, see his book, Risk Savvy:  How to Make Good Decisions.

Image courtesy of Dan Moyle via Flickr (CC).

Buyer Insights That Should Guide Your Planning for 2025

With the fourth quarter of 2024 less than two weeks away, many B2B marketing and sales leaders will soon begin planning for 2025. To develop an effective go-to-market plan, it's vital to understand how the decision-makers in your target market(s) prefer to engage with potential suppliers at all stages of the buying process.

Recent research by McKinsey & Company provides several important insights regarding B2B buyer preferences and behaviors that you should consider as you develop your go-to-market plans for next year. McKinsey's 2024 B2B Buyer Pulse Survey produced nearly 4,000 responses from B2B decision-makers across 34 sectors in eight industries from 13 countries.

Here are some of the key findings from the McKinsey survey.

B2B Buyer Archetypes

McKinsey's research identified three distinct archetypes of B2B decision-makers based on their varying preferences and needs.

• Adapters (44% of survey respondents) - These decision-makers are highly relationship-oriented. "While willing to try new channels, they tend to stick with patterns that they are familiar with and are slow to try new experiences, channels, and suppliers . . ."

• Innovators (20% of respondents) - These decision-makers ". . . are on the cutting edge when it comes to newer technologies . . . They are highly likely to be on any and all digital channels."

• Seekers (36% of respondents) - These decision-makers ". . . demand a seamless omnichannel experience. If they don't get it, they are quick to seek out a new supplier."

Planning Consideration - McKinsey found that all three archetypes are "consistently present" across geographies and economic sectors. Therefore, it's likely the potential buyers in your company's target market(s) will include all three archetypes, and your go-to-market strategy will need to contain elements designed to appeal to each buyer archetype.

The "Rule of Thirds"

McKinsey found that B2B decision-makers interact with potential suppliers in multiple ways. In the 2024 survey, respondents reported that on average, they spend about one-third of their "interaction time" engaging with suppliers via each of three types of interaction.

• Traditional - In-person meetings, direct mail, fax, etc.

• Remote - Phone calls, video conference calls, emails, etc.

• Digital self-service - Company websites, e-commerce, chatbots, internet searches, mobile apps, etc.

McKinsey observed that this "rule of thirds" is consistent across all stages of the buying process and that it holds true across all geographies, industries, company sizes, and buying scenarios (new vs. repeat purchases, high-value vs. low-value purchases).

Even more significant, McKinsey found that the "rule of thirds" is generally consistent across all three B2B buyer archetypes. Adapters have a slightly higher preference for Traditional interactions, but the difference is not great.

The most significant departure from the "rule of thirds" relates to buying scenarios. About 40% of the survey respondents tend to prefer Traditional interactions for "high-effort" purchases. High-effort purchases would include first-time purchases, high-cost purchases, purchases of complex products or services, and purchases from new suppliers.

Planning Consideration - The "rule of thirds" is nearly universal. Therefore, your go-to-market approach should include options for all three interaction types.

Omnichannel/E-Commerce

The findings of the McKinsey survey confirmed the importance of providing seamless omnichannel experiences, including robust e-commerce capabilities. Most survey respondents reported using ten or more ways to interact with potential suppliers during their buying process. This was up from five interaction channels in the 2016 edition of the Buyer Pulse survey.

Equally important, more than half of the survey respondents said they were likely to switch suppliers if they didn't have a smooth experience across channels.

The 2024 survey results also made the importance of e-commerce emphatically clear. Seventy-one percent of the respondents said they offer some form of e-commerce, and in those companies, e-commerce sales generate 34% of total revenue, on average.

The survey also confirmed that many B2B buyers are comfortable making larger purchases via e-commerce and other remote interaction channels. The survey asked participants this question:  "What is the maximum order size that you would purchase through end-to-end digital self-service and remote human interactions for a new product or service category?"

Seventy-three of the respondents said $50,000 or more, 39% said $500,000 or more, and 20% said $1 million or more.

Planning Consideration - Unless your company is an outlier, your go-to-market strategy needs to include a major focus on providing seamless omnichannel interaction experiences, and e-commerce should be the centerpiece of your omnichannel strategy.

*****

Every company's competitive environment is unique in some ways. Therefore, not every finding in the McKinsey survey will be literally and precisely applicable to your situation. However, the broad trends identified in the survey should be carefully considered during your planning process.

Image courtesy of Mike Lawrence (CreditDebitPro.com) via Flickr (CC).

What Causes "No Decisions" - And What To Do About Them

At some time in our lives, most of us have experienced anxiety when we're faced with a major decision. In most cases, the level of our anxiousness is proportional to the potential ramifications of the decision we are facing. When the stakes are high enough, we can easily be tempted to avoid making a decision at all.

This phenomenon can affect both personal and business decisions. Many B2B companies track their sales performance by categorizing the outcomes of potential deals as wins, losses or no decisions. Typically, no decision is a catch-all category used for those potential deals that are neither successfully closed nor lost to a competitor.

Several research studies have shown that B2B companies lose more sales to no decisions than to competitors. For example, a recent large-scale study by Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna found that between 40% and 60% of prospective sales result in no decision. In many cases, a potential customer will go through a thorough buying process, but ultimately fail to make a purchase.

Rational No Decisions

Some no decisions are entirely rational. For example, a prospect may decide not to make a purchase because their current solution is objectively superior (or at least nearly equivalent) to the proposed alternatives. In such cases, the proposed alternatives don't provide enough value to justify making a change. Or, a downturn in the financial condition of a prospective customer can result in the implementation of cost controls that effectively take the proposed purchase off the table.

The Status Quo Bias

Frequently, however, a prospect's decision not to make a purchase can't be explained on a rational basis. In such cases, psychologists and behavioral economists attribute the no decision to the status quo bias, a powerful cognitive bias that causes humans to prefer the status quo for non-rational reasons.

Psychologists demonstrated the existence of the status quo bias in the late 1980's. and since then, behavioral scientists have been attempting to identify the underlying cause or causes of the bias. The current thinking is that the status quo bias is probably caused by other biases in human decision making.

Daniel Kahneman has argued that the status quo bias is closely related to loss aversion. Loss aversion is the human tendency to prefer avoiding loses to acquiring equivalent gains.

Research by Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the 1970's showed that, for humans, the pain of a loss is psychologically twice as intense as the pleasure felt from an equivalent gain. Because of this effect, most people are risk averse, and they will tend to avoid making a decision that involves a risk of loss even when the decision could result in substantial gains.

Kahneman contends that most people make the status quo their reference point and tend to view change from the status quo as a loss, which makes them inclined to prefer the status quo.

Richard Thaler has argued that the status quo bias is closely related to a cognitive bias called the endowment effect. This bias refers to the fact that most people like and value something more simply because they already own it. The endowment effect can cause us to overvalue the benefits of the status quo and to under-appreciate its disadvantages.

Customer Indecision Also Drives No Decisions

While the status quo bias is an important cause of no decisions, recent research indicates that it isn't the only or most significant cause.

In an article published last month at the Harvard Business Review website, Matthew Dixon and Ted McKenna wrote that their research had shown that 56% of no decisions were caused by the inability of prospective customers to make buying decisions - what they called customer indecision - while only 44% resulted from a preference for the status quo. This research also found that 87% of sales opportunities contained moderate or high levels of customer indecision.

Dixon and McKenna argued that overcoming customer indecision requires a different "playbook" than the one used to overcome the status quo bias. As they wrote, "Where overcoming the status quo is about dialing up the fear of not purchasing, overcoming indecision is about dialing down the fear of purchasing."

The authors' research found that top performing sales reps use four distinct behaviors - which they call the JOLT Method - to overcome customer indecision.

• "Judge the level of customer indecision" - Top sales reps assess the level of customer indecision that exists in every sales opportunity and qualify opportunities based on those assessments.
• "Offer their recommendations" - The most successful sales reps will - at the appropriate point in the sales process - recommend what the prospective customer should buy.
• "Limit the exploration" - Top performing sales reps recognize that prospective customers can easily become overloaded with information and that the result of information overload is often "analysis paralysis." Therefore, they use information selectively to guide prospective customers to the best decision possible.
• "Take risk off the table" - High-performing sales reps offer prospective customers "safety nets" that reduce the risks associated with making a purchase.

Marketers Must Also Focus on Customer Indecision

While Dixon and McKenna focused on how sales reps can reduce customer indecision, it's important to recognize that marketing also has an important role to play in helping potential buyers feel confident enough to make a purchase decision.

Buyer decision confidence has three major components.

1. Confidence in the specific product or service under consideration
2. Confidence in their company's ability to successfully implement any organizational changes required to reap the full benefits of the product or service purchased
3. Confidence in the soundness of the process used to make the purchase decision

Because business buyers are increasingly relying on content to support their evaluation of potential purchases, B2B marketers should develop content resources that will nurture all three components of buyer decision confidence. For a closer look at the importance of buyer decision confidence and how marketers can nurture it, see this earlier post.

***

Dixon and McKenna have also written a book that provides a much deeper discussion of the issues covered in the HBR article. The Jolt Effect:  How High Performers Overcome Customer Indecision will be released in September. I've pre-ordered a copy, and I plan to review the book this fall.

Image courtesy of Dan Moyle via Flickr (CC).

One Vital Way to Cultivate Buyer Trust and Confidence

For the past several years, industry analysts and other thought leaders have been urging marketing and sales professionals to shift from selling to helping buyers buy. Advocates of this change argue that it will enable marketers and salespeople to better align with the decision-making needs of potential buyers and create more meaningful and trusting relationships.

The problem is, the helping buyers buy approach doesn't go quite far enough. As Tony Zambito, the founder of Buyer Persona, noted in a recent blog post, "If content and sales conversations are about helping to buy, then a mindset towards selling only can still exist. And it can be clear to buyers that you and your team are selling. That you want to help them buy your products, solutions, and services."

Tony suggests that a better approach for marketers and salespeople to adopt is:  "Helping buyers to accomplish future goals and meet future challenges." He argues that this approach will better align them with where many prospective buyers actually are in their decision-making process. Once marketers and salespeople have helped potential buyers "figure things out," they can then move to helping those potential customers to buy.

Helping buyers accomplish future goals and meet future challenges is the right first approach to use when engaging with a potential customer, but it will only be effective if the prospect's buying team believe the information and advice the prospective vendor provides is accurate and, more importantly, unbiased. Only then will potential buyers trust the information and advice enough to confidently rely on it to support their decisions.

The Importance of Decision Confidence

In an earlier post, I discussed the importance of helping potential buyers develop confidence in their decision-making process. Research by Gartner has found that decision confidence increases the likelihood of a positive decision relating to a "new" purchase by 2.6 times.

The best way for marketing and sales professionals to help potential buyers develop decision confidence is to provide accurate and objective information that will help decision makers make the most appropriate choices for their organization. And this can mean providing information or advice that might lead a buying team to decide not to purchase your product or service.

At this point, you may ask:  "Why would we want to provide information or advice that could lead a prospective customer not to do business with us?" The answer, of course, is that you don't want this circumstance to arise very often. And the best way to avoid being in this situation is to make wise choices about which prospective customers to work with.

Choose the Right Customers

Customer selection is a vital issue for both business strategy and marketing/sales strategy. In Playing to Win:  How Strategy Really Works, Roger L. Martin, a Professor Emeritus at the Rotman School of Management, and A.G. Lafley, the former Chairman and CEO of Proctor & Gamble, described a five-point framework for designing an effective business strategy. Martin and Lafley described their framework in the form of five basic questions. While all these questions are important, the two most critical in strategy formulation are:

1. Where will we play? -  In which markets, with which types of customers, in which channels, in which product categories, and at which vertical stage or stages of the industry will we compete?
2. How will we win? -  How will we succeed in our defined field of play?

For marketing and sales professionals, customer selection is the most important aspect of the "where to play" question. The objective should be to identify which types of prospective customers will be likely to purchase your products or services after performing a thorough evaluation of their needs and the available alternatives based on accurate and objective information.

Identifying this group of prospective customers will enable marketing and sales professionals to provide accurate and unbiased information and advice with the assurance that the probability of winning the prospect's business is high.

Image courtesy of Melanie Shaw via Flickr.com (CC).

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What B2B Buyers Rely On to Make Purchase Decisions

Earlier this month, TrustRadius published the findings of its fifth annual B2B buying disconnect research. The 2021 B2B Buying Disconnect report is based on two surveys that were conducted in September of this year.

One was a survey of 907 individuals who are involved in making business technology purchases for their organization, and the second was a survey of 227 individuals who work for technology vendors in a sales or marketing capacity. More than 75% of the respondents in these surveys were based in the United States.

In my last post, I described some of the characteristics of the technology buying process identified by the TrustRadius research. In this post, I'll discuss what the TrustRadius study discovered about how technology buyers learn about products or services and research potential purchases. I'll also review where there are still disconnects between technology buyers and sellers.

It's important to note that the TrustRadius research focused exclusively on the attributes of technology sales and purchases and on the attitudes and behaviors of technology buyers and vendors. Therefore, the results of the TrustRadius surveys may not be completely applicable to all types of B2B purchases and sales. However, these research findings are relevant for those that involve high-consideration products or services.

Information Used to Inform Buying Decisions

A primary focus of the TrustRadius surveys has been to identify what sources of information technology buyers use to inform and support purchase decisions and which sources they view as trustworthy and influential. The latest survey found that buyers used an average of 6.9 sources of information when researching potential purchases, up from 5.1 sources in last year's survey.

The sources of information most widely used by technology buyers have not changed for the past five years, although their rank order has varied slightly. In the latest TrustRadius buyer survey, the five most frequently used sources of information were:

1. Product demos (58% of buyer respondents)
2. Vendor/product websites (51%)
3. User reviews (45%)
4. Vendor representatives (43%)
5. Free trials/accounts (41%)

The Disconnect - In the seller survey, TrustRadius asked technology vendors what marketing tactics they used to engage buyers in 2020. The following table compares the percentage of sellers using each marketing tactic (the top 5 identified by seller respondents) with the percentage of buyer respondents who reported using that source of information. As the table shows, buyers and sellers generally agree about the importance of product demos and vendor/product websites, but sellers overvalue the importance of marketing collateral, case studies, and customer references.

Information Trust and Influence

TrustRadius also asked technology buyers about the trustworthiness and influence of the information sources they use to support purchase decisions. Three of the five most widely used sources of information - free trials/accounts, product demos, and user reviews - also received high marks from buyers for trustworthiness and influence. This suggests that buyers favor sources of information that provide direct hands-on experience with a product and those that feature the opinions of actual users of a product or service.

The Disconnect - Only one of the three most trusted and influential sources of information - product demos - is among the top five marketing tactics used by vendors. In addition, three of the marketing tactics most widely used by vendors - marketing collateral, case studies, and customer references - were not rated highly by buyers for trustworthiness or influence.

How Buyers First Learn About Products

The top three ways that technology buyers first learn about new products are:

1. Their own prior experience with the product (25% of buyer survey respondents)
2. Recommendations from their network (15%)
3. Online search for top products (15%)

On this issue, there isn't much of a disconnect between buyers and sellers. In the TrustRadius seller survey, the respondents identified the same three top ways that buyers first learn about products. 

One noteworthy difference between buyers and sellers relates to industry events. Nearly half of the surveyed sellers (49%) believe that buyers first learn about products at conferences and tradeshows, but only 10% of surveyed buyers said they first learn about products at such events.

The buyers' response on this point may have been influenced by the absence of in-person events this year, but it also may be that sellers tend to overestimate how often buyers first learn about products at conferences and tradeshows.

Top image courtesy of Jinx! via Flickr CC.

New Research Unveils the Attributes of B2B Technology Buying and Selling

Image Source:  TrustRadius

This month, TrustRadius published the findings of its fifth annual B2B buying disconnect study. The 2021 B2B Buying Disconnect report provides a wealth of valuable insights regarding the sale and purchase of business technology solutions.

The report is based on two surveys that were fielded in September of this year. One was a survey of 907 individuals who were involved in making business technology purchases for their organization, and the second was a survey of 227 individuals who work for technology vendors in a sales or marketing capacity. More than 75% of the respondents in both surveys were based in the United States.

These surveys addressed a broad range of topics. The buyer survey includes findings about the technology buying process, how technology buyers learn about products and services and research potential purchases, and how they view technology vendors. The seller survey explored how technology vendors seek to engage potential buyers and how they rate the effectiveness of their marketing and sales tactics. And of course, both surveys addressed how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted technology buying and selling in 2020.

The TrustRadius study focused exclusively on the attributes of technology sales and purchases and on the attitudes and behaviors of technology buyers and vendors. While the results of these surveys may not be completely applicable to all types of B2B purchases and sales, it's likely they would be similar to those involving complex, high-consideration products or services.

It will take a few posts to unpack the results of the TrustRadius research. In this post, I'll describe some of the basic attributes of technology buying and selling in 2020 and what we may see in 2021.

Technology Spending in 2020 and 2021

In the TrustRadius buyer survey, 49% of the respondents said their spending on technology products and services decreased in 2020, 27% reported increased spending, and 19% said their spending had not changed. It's noteworthy that only 21% of the buyer respondents expected their 2020 technology spending to decrease "substantially."

These responses reflect the uneven economic impacts of the pandemic. COVID-19 has severely affected companies in some industries (travel and hospitality, for example), while several other types of businesses have experienced dramatic revenue growth (think Amazon and Zoom).

TrustRadius found that the outlook for technology spending in 2021 is mixed. Fifty-six percent of the respondents in the buyer survey expect their technology spending to return to pre-pandemic levels or increase in 2021, while 17% expect spending to decrease next year, and 27% aren't sure what their technology spending will look like in 2021. More specifically, a majority of the buyer respondents expect to spend more on video and web conferencing software (64%) and online collaboration/project management software (53%) in 2021.

More Time Spent on Buying

TrustRadius also found that the pandemic has changed how much time buyer spend on technology purchases. In the buyer survey, about one-third of the respondents said they spent more time this year:

• Clearly defining the expected ROI of technology investments
• Researching products
• Comparing products
• Prioritizing selection criteria

Interestingly, 26% of the buyer respondents said they spent less time in 2020 talking with vendor representatives, and 20% reported spending less time consulting with their buying committee.

Despite buyers' efforts to streamline the buying process, vendors believe the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in longer sales cycles. In the seller survey, 57% of the respondents said their deal cycles are longer than before the pandemic. One in four respondents said the length of their sales cycle hasn't changed, and 19% reported shorter sales cycles.

Buying Groups Get Slightly Smaller

During 2020, a significant number of employees at B2B companies have been working from home. Online conferencing tools such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams have enabled remote employees to perform their work fairly effectively. However, the pandemic appears to have caused some companies to reduce the number of people involved in purchase decisions.

In the latest TrustRadius buyer survey, respondents indicated that 67% of buying decisions are made by buying groups composed of 2 to 5 individuals. That was up from 61% of buying decisions in last year's survey. Meanwhile, the percentage of buying decisions made by buying groups composed of 6 or more people fell from 34% in last year's survey to 29% in this year's survey.

Coming Up

In my next post, I'll discuss what the TrustRadius research says about how technology buyers learn about and research products and services.

Four Keys to Strong Customer Relationships

A recent report by Accenture Interactive provides several interesting insights on both the fragility of B2B seller-buyer relationships and what B2B companies need to do to strengthen long-term customer relationships. Service is the new sales was based on interviews with 748 business buyers and 1,499 B2B sellers across 10 countries and 16 industries.

All of the study respondents were directly involved in (or had oversight of) their company's buying or selling strategy or processes. About 75% of the respondents were manager-level or above, and about 25% were C-level. All the companies represented in the research had annual revenues of at least $25 million.

Accenture's report opens with some rather disconcerting statistics. The research found that 44% of B2B buyers had switched sellers in the 12 months preceding the study. The percentage was even higher among buyers who made weekly B2B purchases. Sixty-two percent of those study respondents said they had switched sellers in the previous 12 months. Another 36% of these frequent buyers said they plan to switch sellers in the coming 12 months.

When Accenture asked buyers why they had switched (or plan to switch), the three top reasons - each identified by 25% of the study respondents - were:

• Uncompetitive pricing
• Long lead times for delivery/fulfillment
• Missed delivery dates

This finding indicates that business buyers are a pragmatic group, and it suggests that, before anything else, B2B sellers need to be sure they are getting the basics right.

On a more positive note, half of the buyers interviewed by Accenture said they had increased their average number of items per purchase and grown average purchase values with those sellers who met their needs and helped them succeed.

The Accenture research also sought to identify important attributes and behaviors of B2B "leaders," as compared with "laggards." The report does not provide a precise definition of "leaders" and "laggards," but it does describe how Accenture made the distinction:

"To discern the leaders from the laggards, we weighted responses to 12 questions from the sellers' survey across three key pillars of B2B transformation:  organizational strategy, activities, and infrastructure. To give a robust and accurate picture of the global state of buyer-seller relationships, greatest weighting was given to questions reflecting the objective and measurable elements of B2B sales and service."

With this "definition" in mind, here are some of the major differences between leaders and laggards that the Accenture report highlights.

Personalization - Leaders were twice as likely as laggards to track buyer behavior and more likely to make personalized offers based on "the sum of all behaviors." The Accenture study found that leaders consistently offered greater personalization at all stages of the customer journey.

Digital and Human Interactions - Laggards tended to prioritize digital sales channels over channels with a human touch. Leaders, on the other hand, emphasized interaction channels that provide a dialogue with buyers. This includes digital channels such as chatbots and traditional sales reps and call centers.

Organizational Commitment - Leaders were more likely than laggards to view customer experience as an ongoing work-in-progress rather than as a one-time effort. Seventy percent of leaders said that providing good service and experiences had been a top or high priority in their company for at least three years.

Functional Integration - Forty-eight percent of leaders said they had fully integrated marketing functions across channels, compared to only 19% of laggards. Leaders were also more likely than laggards to have partially or fully integrated their sales and marketing teams.

The Accenture report also highlighted the benefits of being in the leader category. Ninety-seven percent of the leader respondents said they had gained market share, 96% reported higher profitability, and 90% said they had won a greater share of their customers' wallets.

This research also confirmed the importance of blending digital and human-to-human interactions to build and sustain strong customer relationships.

Image Source:  Accenture Interactive

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Why One Strategy for the Status Quo Isn't Enough

B2B purchases come in all shapes and sizes, and B2B buying decisions are made under a wide variety of circumstances. The context of a buying decision includes - among other things - the cost of the product or service, the complexity of the product or service, how familiar the buyers are with the product or service, the amount of internal change the purchase will require, and buyers' current or past experiences with a prospective vendor.

Collectively, these circumstances largely dictate the psychological factors that will influence buyers and the shape of their decision-making process. The result is, most B2B marketing and sales professionals must be ready to deal with multiple buying scenarios that usually call for different strategies, content, and messaging.

For example, acquiring a new customer presents marketers and sales reps a very different scenario than retaining an existing customer (at the current level or scope of business). And expanding your business with an existing customer presents a third scenario that has some elements of both customer acquisition and customer retention.

The Central Role of the Status Quo

Some marketing and sales pundits say that one vital key to success in all three of these scenarios lies in how marketers and sales reps address the status quo bias, which is typically defined as a cognitive bias that causes humans to prefer the status quo for non-rational reasons. If you think about it for even a few moments,  it should become obvious that customer acquisition and customer retention call for dramatically different approaches for dealing with the status quo bias.

When your objective is to acquire new customers, the status quo is often your toughest competitor, and no sale can be made unless potential buyers first become willing to change their status quo. In this scenario, the first thing that marketing and sales content and messaging need to do is to weaken the grip of the status quo and convince prospects to make a change. Today, the most effective customer acquisition content and messaging uses disruptive insights to encourage prospective buyers to think differently about some aspects of their business.

The circumstances completely change with your objective is to retain existing customers. In this scenario, your company is the incumbent and part of the customer's status quo. Therefore, the first thing that marketing and sales content and messaging need to do is to reinforce the status quo bias and use it to your advantage.

Customer Expansion is More Complex

The situation becomes more complex when your objective is to expand your business with existing customers. As noted earlier, customer expansion scenarios usually have elements of both acquisition and retention. Therefore, marketing and sales content and messaging will need to reinforce some aspects of the status quo and weaken others.

Corporate Visions has developed a content and messaging framework for addressing customer expansion scenarios. The framework is based on research conducted by Corporate Visions in partnership with Dr. Nick Lee, Professor of Marketing at the Warwick Business School in the UK. The study consisted of a test simulation or "experiment" of the kind widely used in academic psychological research.

This research tested five types of customer expansion messaging, and one message type proved to be more effective than the other four across several performance dimensions. The framework of the willing message has five components that are used sequentially. The following table shows the five message components and how Corporate Visions describes each component:

As the table shows, the winning message is a "hybrid" that both reinforces and challenges the status quo. It begins by documenting the value of your relationship with the customer (part of the status quo). But from that point on, it emphasizes the need for change and the positive results that the right kind of change will produce.

Key Takeaway

The bottom line is, most B2B companies derive revenue from multiple buying scenarios, and the impact of the status quo is different in each scenario. Therefore, marketing and sales professionals need to develop and use content and messaging that embodies an approach to the status quo that's appropriate for each scenario.

Top image courtesy of Nichole Burrows via Flickr CC.

Related Articles

How to Persuade Prospects to Leave the Status Quo

How to Show Buyers That Inaction Has a Price

How to Reinforce the Status Quo

What to Do When the Status Quo is Your Friend

How to Weaken the Grip of the Status Quo

The Key Characteristics of Business Technology Buying

TrustRadius recently published The 2019 B2B Buying Disconnect report, which provides several important insights regarding the sale and purchase of B2B technology solutions. The report is based on a survey of 712 individuals who played a key role in a significant business technology purchase during the preceding year, and on a survey of 229 individuals who worked for technology vendors in a sales or marketing capacity.

This research covers a broad range of topics. The buyer survey includes findings about the general characteristics of technology purchases and the technology buying process, how technology buyers research potential purchases, and how they view technology vendors. The vendor survey explores how technology vendors seek to engage potential buyers and how the perceive their effectiveness with those prospects.

The TrustRadius surveys focused exclusively on the attributes of technology sales and purchases and on the attitudes and behaviors of technology buyers and sellers. While the results of this research may not be directly applicable to all types of B2B purchases and sales, it's likely that they would be similar in other cases involving complex B2B products or services.

Major Attributes of the Buying Process

The findings of the TrustRadius buyer survey describe the types of technologies purchased, the cost of the technology, and several important attributes of the buying process.

Types of Technologies Purchased - TrustRadius asked buyers to think about the most significant technology purchase they were involved in during the preceding year. The largest cohort of survey respondents (24%) said they bought an IT solution. The second and third most frequently purchased types of technology were marketing technology (13% of respondents) and business intelligence solutions (10%).

Purchase Size - Thirty percent of the respondents said the annual cost of their most significant technology purchase was between $11,000 and $51,000. Another 27% of the surveyed buyers said they spent between $51,000 and $500,000 on their most significant purchase.

The Buying Group - Almost two-thirds of the surveyed buyers (64%) said they were part of a buying group that included between two and five influencers and decision makers. Almost a third of the buyers said their buying team included six or more people.

Length of the Buying Cycle - Forty-two percent of the respondents said it took their company between one and three months to complete a significant technology purchase. Forty-six percent of the buyers said that a major technology purchase typically required three or more months to make.

The Shortlist - Forty-four percent of the respondents said they usually evaluate a shortlist of three or more products when making a significant technology purchase. Another 41% of buyers said their shortlist typically includes two potential solutions.

How Buyers Determine the Winner

The authors of the TrustRadius report say that pragmatic factors - such as features/functionality, price, and ease of integration - are important to buyers in making the final purchase decision. They write:  "If your budget is non-negotiable, or if certain missing features or integrations are a deal-breaker, boom! These factors sometimes help buyers narrow things down to a single option."

However, the report authors also identified two other common reasons given by surveyed buyers for making the final decision.

1. How easily the buyers can visualize using the product in their particular circumstances; and
2. The buyers' level of trust in the vendor.

The report states:  "There were a number of different ways buyers seemed to gauge trust in their use case and the future of their relationship with the vendor, from the tenor of sales communications to feedback from existing customers."

In my next post, I'll discuss what the TrustRadius research reveals about how buyers research technology purchases, what sources of information they trust, and why TrustRadius contends there are still disconnects between buyers and sellers.

Image source:  TrustRadius

What's Required for Effective Demand Generation

CSO Insights (a division of Miller Heiman Group) recently published its 2018-2019 Sales Performance Report. This report describes the findings of the 2018-2019 sales performance survey, which generated responses from nearly 900 global sales leaders.

Sixty-one percent of the respondents were either executive managers or senior sales managers, and respondents represented 23 industries. Half of the respondents (50.8%) were located in North America, and the balance were based in EMEA, APAC, and Latin America.

The CSO Insights study focused specifically on the performance of the sales function, but the survey findings provide valuable insights for everyone involved with B2B demand generation. That's because many of the factors that characterize successful sales performance also apply to the other business functions that play important roles in demand generation.

The Defining Attributes of High Performance

CSO Insights identified three defining attributes of high-performing sales organizations. The study found that respondents from top-performing organizations were more likely than other respondents:

• To say their company has a customer-centric culture
• To report they have a high level of alignment between their sales process and customers' decision-making journey
• To say they are confident in the ability of their sales reps to provide valuable insights and perspectives to potential buyers

These characteristics can be extended and applied to the other business functions involved in demand generation. For example, a marketing organization that excels at demand generation is more likely to:

• Be part of a company with a customer-centric culture
• Align its programs and messaging with the customer buying journey
• Create and use content that provides valuable insights to potential buyers

The authors of the survey report acknowledge this point when they write:  "Looking at all three of these characteristics together shows that . . . [high-performing] organizations are embracing 'customer experience' as a broad concept, of which sales process and salespeople are just one piece."

Lead Generation Needs Significant Improvement

The CSO Insights research highlights several areas where better cross-functional collaboration is needed to improve demand generation performance. One of those areas is lead generation. Survey respondents identified improving lead generation as one of their four primary objectives for the coming 12 months, and they also identified the inability to generate enough qualified leads as the second most significant barrier to achieving demand generation success.

Unfortunately, the CSO Insights report reveals a distressing lack of alignment between sales and marketing when it comes to lead generation. For example, only 29.5% of the survey respondents said their sales and marketing teams have an agreed upon, formal definition of who is a legitimate sales lead. And the level of lead definition alignment between sales and marketing has actually gotten worse since 2014, as the following chart shows.

The low level of sales-marketing alignment also shows up in lead nurturing. Only 33.9% of the survey respondents said their sales and marketing teams have an agreed upon, formal process for nurturing leads. Another 30.8% said they have an informal process - whatever that means.

The CSO Insights research provides more compelling evidence that effective B2B demand generation requires a coordinated effort by both sales and marketing, and that sales-marketing alignment is still very much a work-in-progress.

Top Image Source:  CSO Insights (a Division of Miller Heiman Group).

Why Buying Scenarios Should Be Part of Your Planning for 2019

The stereotypical image we have of B2B buying is that it involves expensive and/or complex products or services, large buying groups, and long buying cycles. But in reality, many B2B companies derive substantial revenue and profit from other types of sales. That's why defining relevant buying scenarios should be an integral part of your go-to-market planning.

Most of the B2B demand generation research and other literature that's been published over the past few years has focused on "high consideration" purchases that involve multiple decision makers, complex decision-making processes, and long buying cycles.

For example, in the 2018 B2B Buyers Survey by Demand Gen Report, 79% of the respondents said that between one and six people are involved in their purchase process, and another 13% said that the process involves between seven and nine people. Sixty-one percent of the respondents said that the length of their buying cycle had increased compared with a year earlier. And during the recent Gartner Sales and Marketing Conference, CEB said that the average size of the B2B buying group had increased to 6.8 people, up from 5.4 people in its earlier research.

But high consideration purchases with large buying groups and long buying cycles have never represented all B2B buying. In fact, many B2B purchases are fairly routine, where the buying decision is made quickly by a small group of people, or even by a single individual. In a 2018 survey of 114 "industrial buyers" by Thomas, 56% of the respondents said they make buying decisions in less than one month, and another 29% said their typical buying process is between one and three months.

While we don't have much recent data regarding the distribution of B2B purchases across various types of buying situations, it's likely that substantial dollars are associated with buying scenarios other than the high consideration stereotype.

In an important survey of more than 3,000 B2B buyers conducted in 2009 by Enquiro and discussed by Gord Hotchkiss in The Buyersphere Project, survey respondents estimated that 50% of their budget was spent on "Repeat" purchases. In this research, Repeat purchases were defined as low risk purchases that are made frequently and involve only minimal changes from purchase to purchase.

The important point here is that most B2B companies derive at least some revenue from multiple types of purchases, and many companies derive significant revenue from more than one buying scenario. It's equally important to recognize that different buying scenarios require different go-to-market and demand generation strategies to achieve maximum success. Therefore, defining relevant buying scenarios and mapping revenue to those scenarios should be an integral part of your go-to-market planning.

What is a Buying Scenario?

A buying scenario is a description of a buying process that includes two major components - the functional attributes of the process itself, and the factors that describe the context of the decision-making process. The diagram at the beginning of this post depicts the buying scenario model that I've been using for several years:

The functional attributes of the buying process are shown on the right side of the diagram. These attributes include the size and composition of the buying group, and the length of the buying cycle. One attribute that often receives too little attention is what I call "Relative influence of individual buying group members." It's not that uncommon to identify a buying scenario in which the "official" buying group includes three or four people, but the buying decision is actually driven by one member of the group.

The items on the left side of the diagram describe the context in which a buying process is conducted. The common denominator across all these factors is that they are designed to capture the level of risk that buyers associate with a purchase decision. As the level of perceived risk increases, most buyers take steps to mitigate the risk, and those steps largely dictate the functional attributes of the buying process that's used. So for example, the buying process used for an expensive product or service, or for a purchase that will require a significant amount of change in the buyer's organization will usually involve more decision makers, include more research activities, and take longer to finish.

Buying scenarios can vary in significant ways, and those variations call for different go-to-market strategies and different demand generation tactics. Therefore, it's important for marketing and sales leaders to identify the buying scenarios their company is encountering, and use that information to craft appropriate demand generation programs.

Holistic Revenue Management Moves Toward the Mainstream

Fundamental changes in the business environment have led a growing number of B2B companies to adopt new approaches for managing their revenue generating activities. While the specific approaches vary, they all arise from the recognition that successful revenue generation requires a combination of interdependent activities. Therefore, it's important to view such activities as components of a larger revenue generation process that must be managed holistically.

The need for a new approach to managing revenue generation and growth has been driven by the convergence of several competitive forces, including:

• The growing power and independence of business buyers enabled by an abundance of easily-accessible information
• The need to provide outstanding customer experiences at every touchpoint across the entire customer lifecycle
• The emergence of "as-a-service" and other types of subscription-based (or subscription-like) business models

Meanwhile, the leaders of most B2B companies are under persistent and growing pressures to produce organic revenue growth that is consistent, predictable, and sustainable. To meet this challenge, a growing number of B2B companies have changed how they manage the business activities and processes that impact revenue generation.

The Rise of the Chief Revenue Officer

Some companies have responded to the growth challenge by creating a new C-level position - usually called the chief revenue officer - to manage revenue generating activities. The specific duties of the chief revenue officer, and the scope of his or her authority vary across companies, but the CRO is usually tasked with managing most or all of the company's revenue-related functions. 

This would typically include marketing, sales/business development, direct outside sales, channel sales, and customer success/customer service. So, a high-level organizational chart for a typical CRO function would look something like the following:

Until recently, chief revenue officers have largely been a Silicon Valley phenomenon. Most of the early adopters of the CRO role were startup or early-stage SaaS companies. As far as I can tell, there are no reliable estimates of how many (and what kinds of) companies now have a CRO. However, a Google search yesterday - limited to the preceding year - produced about 68,000 results for the term "chief revenue officer." Most of the search results were announcements regarding the hiring of a first-time or new CRO, and most of these announcements were by technology companies.

It appears, therefore, that most CRO's can still be found in technology companies, although it also appears that the use of CRO's is beginning to expand beyond the technology sector.

Revenue Operations Teams

Some B2B companies have sought to address the growth and revenue management challenge by creating revenue operations teams. While this approach is still in its early stages, recent research suggests that the use of revenue operations teams is poised to grow.

Earlier this year, LeanData and Sales Hacker published the findings of The State of Revenue Ops 2018 study. This study consisted of a survey that produced 785 responses. About three out of four of the respondents (73.6%) were sales and marketing professionals, and about 60% were manager-level or higher.

In this study, only 22.4% of the respondents reported having a revenue operations team in their company, but an additional 15.2% said they are currently building one. Most respondents in this survey have a fairly clear picture of what revenue operations encompasses. About 45% defined revenue operations as "a unified alignment of marketing, sales, and customer success," and another 24.3% would add "operations" to the definition.

There was less consensus in the study regarding who should be primarily responsible for revenue operations success. When survey participants were asked who should "own" revenue operations metrics and key performance indicators, respondents provided a range of answers, as the following table shows:

Form Follows Function

The architect Louis Sullivan wrote that "form ever follows function," meaning that the shape of a building should be primarily based on its intended function or purpose. When companies create a chief revenue officer position or a revenue operations team, they are attempting to make the "shape" of their organization reflect the realities of modern revenue generation. Therefore, these approaches represent an important step in the right direction, and the use of both approaches is likely to grow.

Top image courtesy of Chris Potter (ccPixs.com) via Flickr CC.

How to Persuade Prospects to Leave the Status Quo

Most B2B marketing and sales professionals recognize that their more formidable competitor is usually the status quo. The grip of the status quo can result in longer sales cycles, stalled deals, and the dreaded "no decision."

Persuading prospects to move away from their status quo is a significant challenge, and there is no "silver bullet" technique or tactic that will work with every prospect. However, recent research by Corporate Visions has identified a messaging framework that can improve your odds of defeating the status quo.

The Corporate Visions Research

Corporate Visions (in association with Dr. Nick Lee, a professor of marketing at the Warwick Business School) designed an experiment to test what type of messaging is most effective at persuading business executives to move forward with a purchase. Corporate Visions discussed the experiment and the results in a very interesting report, but here's a brief description of how the experiment worked.

Study participants were asked to imagine that they are an executive at a vegetable processing company. The company has traditionally processed vegetables in large batches using large-scale equipment, but the most promising growth opportunity is organic and specialty vegetables, which require small-batch processing. The company's existing equipment is not suitable for small-batch processing.

Study participants were then divided into six groups, and each group was given a sales presentation relating to small-batch processing equipment. All of the presentations were economically equivalent, but each presentation used a different combination of message elements. After the presentation, each study participant rated the presentation based on how impactful he or she believed the message was across four dimensions:

• How urgent is the need to purchase?
• How important is the purchase to future growth?
• Confidence that the purchase is a good business decision
• How likely he or she would be to make the purchase right away

The presentation that scored highest in all four of the rated dimensions used three message elements - a description of the relevant business issue, followed by a description of unconsidered needs, followed by a detailed, quantitative ROI analysis.

In terms of breaking the grip of the status quo, the key element in this messaging framework is unconsidered needs. Corporate Visions identifies three basic types of unconsidered needs:

• Unknown needs exist when there is a problem or risk that a potential buyer is unaware of.
• Under-valued needs exist when a potential buyer is aware of a problem or risk, but doesn't understand or appreciate its impact, or how quickly the impact will be felt.
• Unmet needs exist when a potential buyer is aware of a problem or risk, but believes there's no way to effectively address it.

Emphasizing unconsidered needs is a effective way to loosen the grip of the status quo for two reasons. First, it makes the potential buyer think about a problem or threat that he or she had not previously considered. But more importantly, unconsidered needs tap into the inherent human desire to avoid losses.

In the late 1970's, research by psychologists Daniel Kahneman (who later won a Nobel Prize in economics) and Amos Tversky established three core principles of human decision-making:

• When choices are framed in terms of gains, most people are risk averse. They will usually choose a certain benefit rather than a gamble that may produce a greater benefit or no benefit at all.
• When choices are framed in terms of losses, most people become risk seeking. They will resist a choice that will result in a certain loss and will prefer a gamble that may result in a greater loss, but also may result in no loss at all.
• Humans are more sensitive to losses than to gains. We are more likely to act to avoid losses than to win gains.

Unconsidered needs are effective for breaking the grip of the status quo because they enable us to frame the flaws or weaknesses of the prospect's status quo as losses that are immediate, significant, and, most importantly, certain. When prospects recognize the reality of these losses, they become more willing to consider change.

Image courtesy of Nichole Burrows via Flickr CC.

Research Says B2B Buyers Want Strategic Partners

For decades, the basic approach to B2B marketing and sales has been to identify a prospect's "pain points," and then demonstrate how your product or service can alleviate the pain. New research now suggests that many buyers look beyond immediate pain and take a more strategic approach to B2B buying.

A recent study by the Aberdeen Group (in collaboration with PJA Advertising and Marketing) indicates that B2B buyers are looking for vendors who can help them achieve strategic company goals, improve competitive differentiation, and identify new growth opportunities. The What Do B2B Buyers Want? report is based on a survey of over 250 B2B buyers from a range of industries and company sizes.

When survey participants were asked to select two factors (from a list of nine) that play a role in their buying decisions, the three most frequently chosen factors were:

1. Total cost of ownership (45% of respondents)
2. How the vendor/solution supports our company's goals (42%)
3. Efficiency gains (ROI) (40%) 

When survey participants were asked what other factors they consider when they make buying decisions, 68.2% of respondents said the vendor can help sharpen our competitive differentiation, and over half (55.7%) said the vendor can help me identify new possibilities and avenues for revenue.

Viewed together, these survey responses make two points. First, B2B buyers are still focused on cost and ROI, and those economic factors remain at the core of B2B buying decisions. And second, many of the buyers in this survey panel appear to be taking a more strategic approach to buying decisions, once basic financial criteria are satisfied. 

It's noteworthy that when survey participants were asked how they usually know when they need to buy something, over two-thirds (67.2%) of the respondents said, "When our business strategy calls for it."

The Aberdeen study also found that B2B buyers are looking for vendors who can help them think through the business issues they are facing, and who are willing to challenge their current business practices. When survey participants were asked if they are more likely to work with a vendor who challenges they way they currently do business, almost two-thirds (65.4%) of the respondents answered, "Yes." So, the Aberdeen research provides support for the approach to B2B marketing and sales advocated by CEB in The Challenger Sale.

The Aberdeen study could be good news for B2B marketing and sales professionals, if the survey findings reflect the attitudes of a significant number of B2B buyers. The traditional "pain-solution" approach has a serious limitation because, at any given point in time, most potential buyers are not experiencing enough pain to take action. The Aberdeen research indicates that some business buyers are willing to look beyond the absence of immediate pain and consider longer-term strategic issues.

Illustration courtesy of Naval Surface Warriors via Flickr CC.

Debunking a Myth About Millennial B2B Buyers

In 2015, Millennials became the largest generational cohort in the US population and the largest generation in the US labor force. Research studies by the IBM Institute for Business Value, Google/Millward Brown Digital, Sacunas (now Merit), and SnapApp/Heinz Marketing have shown that Millennials are now playing significant roles in B2B purchase decisions. So it seems clear that we are in the early stages of a generational shift in B2B buying.

This generational shift raises an important issue for leaders of B2B companies:  Do the attitudes, preferences, and behaviors of Millennial B2B buyers require a different approach to marketing and sales? 

The popular view among industry pundits is that Millennial buyers have distinctive characteristics which require different marketing and sales methods and tactics. One recent research report emphatically stated that "the Millennial buyer is impacting the entire buying journey and the old marketing and sales tactics won't work."

In reality, many of the claims made about the attributes of Millennials are greatly oversimplified or just plain wrong. The global research firm Ipsos recently characterized Millennials as "the most carelessly described group we've ever looked at." In a detailed analysis of Millennial attitudes and behaviors published earlier this year, Ipsos wrote, "Myths and misunderstandings [about Millennials] abound, with bad research jumping to general conclusions based on shallow caricatures about a group that makes up 23% of the population."

Most researchers define the Millennial generation as individuals born from about 1981 through about 1997. The two other generational cohorts relevant to B2B marketing and sales professionals are Generation X and Baby Boomers. Generation X is typically defined as individuals born from 1965 through 1980, and the Baby Boom generation is defined as individuals born from 1946 through 1964.

Clearly, B2B marketing and sales professionals must recognize that Millennials have become active participants in the B2B buying process, and they must be prepared to engage Millennial buyers on their terms. But recent research has shown that Millennial B2B buyers are more like their Gen X and Baby Boomer counterparts than is usually recognized. To develop and implement effective strategies and programs, marketing and sales leaders must be able to separate Millennial myths from Millennial realities.

Millennial Myth vs. Millennial Reality

One of the most pervasive myths about Millennial B2B buyers is that they are digital addicts who prefer to do everything online. According to this myth, Millennials access and consume information primarily, if not exclusively, via digital channels, and they tend to view other means of communication with a certain degree of disdain.

Like many myths, this one has a basis in reality. Millennials are the first generation to grow up surrounded by digital technologies. Many Millennials have been using digital technologies since they were children or young teenagers. Gen X-ers and Baby Boomers, on the other hand, largely began using digital technologies in their everyday lives as adults. So, it's probably accurate to say that, on average, Millennials are more comfortable and more proficient with some digital technologies than older generations.

But there is strong evidence that the "comfort and proficiency gap" has narrowed significantly. For example, the research by Ipsos found that large majorities of all three generational cohorts access the internet on a daily or almost daily basis, and that Gen X-ers are almost as likely as Millennials to use a smartphone to go online. Ipsos did find that Millennials spend considerably more time online on their smartphones than older generations, which indicates that the comfort gap hasn't disappeared completely.

The Ipsos research demonstrates that members of all generations are now relying on digital technologies to obtain information and communicate. This isn't something that's unique to Millennials. The similarities between Millennials and Generation X are particularly relevant for B2B marketing and sales professionals because most of today's B2B buyers will be found in these two generational cohorts.

Research also shows that Millennial B2B buyers, like older buyers, rely on non-digital sources of information to support buying decisions. In a recent survey of B2B buyers by the IBM Institute for Business Value, study participants were asked what sources of information they are most likely to turn to when researching a vendor's products or services. The following table shows how nine sources of information (digital and non-digital) were ranked by respondents in each of the three generational cohorts:

As this table shows, the three research sources most preferred by Millennial buyers are all non-digital. In the study report, IBM suggested that one possible explanation for this somewhat surprising result is that Millennial respondents view online research as routine, and that they were focusing on sources of information that could provide richer insights about what it would be like to work with a particular vendor.

Ipsos addressed a similar issue in its research and found that the distinctive attribute of Millennials is that they typically draw on a broader and more varied pool of information resources than older generations. Millennials tend to seek out more sources of information, and they seem to be more comfortable than older generations at integrating information from multiple sources.

Two Key Takeaways

To sum things up, the idea that Millennial B2B buyers are digital addicts who prefer to do everything online is a myth. The evidence just doesn't support it.

The available evidence does provide two key takeaways for B2B marketing and sales professionals.

• First, it's critical for B2B companies to provide marketing and sales content and messaging in digital form and to leverage digital channels to engage potential buyers. But this isn't only because Millennials are now active participants in B2B buying decisions. The reality is, buyers of all ages now rely extensively on digital content and digital communication channels.
• And second, it's vital to remember that Millennial B2B buyers want to interact with a potential vendor in non-digital ways. Millennials may be "digital natives," but at some stages of the buying journey, they value person-to-person interactions.

Top image courtesy of ITU Pictures via Flickr CC.