What is the most important in the B2B buying process ?
During the purchase process when people need to decide on buying, they not only focus and evaluate on functions, features and benefits, but their main concern is about limiting the risks related to this decision.
Risk indicators in B2B purchase process
How does a potential client decide if it’s risky to do business with a vendor or supplier?
- Established company or a sole trader?
- Company registration number?
- Where are the offices located?
- Is the company address on the website?
- Telephone number available?
- Can the company really be called?
- The time it takes to reply an email?
- Possible to set-up a face-to-face meeting?
- Are the names of the C-level available? On the Internet (LinkedIn?)
Buying risk avoidance
- References and referrals
- Their personal experience with the vendors from previous project or purchase
- The approved vendor list of the company: the creator of the list takes the risk
- The brand importance of the vendor: the more a household name the less risk expected
- Their personal risk: How big is my own risk? What can I loose?
Maybe the last one is even more important as people don’t want to expose their career (or even life) to any risk.
If they take a daring decision that turns out into negative result or bad experience then they can be at risk themselves: end of career, end of job.
Therefore strong brands and companies with good referrals will score better in B2B.
Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM or Microsoft. Google on the other hand has still problems entering the BtoB market: Google is great for a free service like search and maps, but when it comes to real business or business processes then decision makers tend to avoid Google.
Recession vs prosperity
During recession or limited growth economy companies having well-known brand names and long referral lists will receive the highest amount of inbound leads. They will be the most successful as people will address to these companies in order to avoid risks.
On the other hand during prosperous times when:
- Companies need to innovate in order to keep ahead of their competitors
- Time is (more) money
- Better efficiency is most important
The importance of the risk factor decreases as opportunity knocks instead. People are eager to take risks in order to:
- Progress
- Move ahead in their career
Then lesser known companies will see an increase of inbound leads as the challenge is to innovative or have cost reducing solutions in order to compete the competition.
How do you perceive the risk avoidance of your buyers?
More from LEADS Explorer
- Most important in complex B2B sales: Branding or Salesman?
- The 2 most important departments in any company
- The most important step in the sales process is not the closing
LEADS Explorer Recommends
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by LEADSExplorer: What is the most important in the B2B buying process ?: During the purchase process when people need to decide on… http://twurl.nl/a7vcso...