Metric Monday: How Buyers Rank the Key Reasons for Choosing a Vendor

Hi all,

This year, we introduced a new question in our buyer experience research: What influenced buyers’ decisions to choose the vendor they did? Respondents were given a list of ten possible reasons, selected the ones that applied to their decision, and ranked them by importance.

While there weren’t many stark differences in what buyers considered important—most found all the reasons meaningful to some degree—certain themes consistently emerged. To reflect these patterns, we organized these 'purchase drivers' into tiers based on how they tended to cluster near the top, middle, or bottom of buyers’ rankings.

For example, price, product/solution features, and ease of implementation consistently ranked within the top five reasons buyers chose a winning vendor. This was true regardless of: 

• The respondent’s role in the purchase process (champion, ultimate decision-maker, financial ratifier, etc.)
• The business need the solution fulfilled (new business capability, renewal, etc.) 
• The type of solution (hardware, services, software) 

While these groups or ‘tiers’ provide some guidance on how buyers prioritize their final vendor selection, it’s important to consider that the range between these tiers is relatively narrow. Even though price, features, and ease of implementation consistently rank at the top, factors like thought leadership and customer advocacy/referrals should not be overlooked. In the grand scheme, their rankings aren’t far behind those of the Tier 1 factors.

@Kerry