Metric Monday: Little Impact on Initial Buyer-Seller Engagement, Except for This...

saraboostani

B2B buyers dedicate approximately 70% of their purchasing journey to researching solutions and vendors before engaging directly with sellers. This point of first contact is remarkably consistent across industries and departments, as well as solution and purchase types, and solution price points.

Interestingly, we discovered one factor that influences the duration of this independent research phase: the number of vendors under consideration. When buyers expand their evaluation pool from the typical four vendors to more than six, the length of their independent research phase extends by approximately 10.4%.

This reflects the thoroughness with which buyers approach their research, showing that additional vendor consideration leads to more time dedicated to independent research in the buyer’s journey.

Kerry

This is really great evidence of how complicated making b2b purchases is, how overloaded buyers are, and therefore what the opportunity is for vendors who do a great job of enabling their buyers.

Brandon McBride

@Kerry I just had a thought and I'm curious for your take on it. I believe it was either at Breakthrough or in the initial report release webinar where you mentioned having sellers recommend two competitors as way to potentially influence the number of vendors on the shortlist.

I would love to hear your thoughts, and I welcome any hole-poking you have.

What if we took a similar approach from the marketing angle? Two key competitors on a comparison page instead of half a dozen (or, as a middle ground, emphasizing the two key competitors visually while graying out the rest). An ad campaign focused on comparisons with those specific vendors, establishing Vendor X and Vendor Y as the vendors to consider alongside us. This wouldn't mean dropping efforts against other competitors, but would focus on giving the impression that Vendor X and Vendor Y are the only "real" competition to consider.

Kerry

I think that's a great idea. Prioritizing which ones should be a collaborative decision between you and sales. Which are the competitors that are really there all the time, and then, do you have a good story to tell there. But providing your buyers with a smaller core list to evaluate makes a ton of sense.