EBlog

What does your buyer want?  Dissecting the complex B2B sale.  Part 3: Research.

August 21, 2008 | Posted by: Lee

A series of posts that looks at the complex B2B technology sale.  Specifically, what's changed, who's involved, what they want, and where they go to find answers.

PHASE 2: RESEARCH (making the short list)

Who's involved? 

Project managers take over and dig deeper.

Once the need for a new, or different, solution has been established it's time to research potential vendors and make a short list.  

For many companies, a project manager will step in at this point, pull together research on different vendors, and reach out to other departments who may be impacted.

What do they want?

Proof of how technology meets their needs is key.

The focus here is identifying the right vendors.  When creating the short list, buyers are looking for:

• How your technology solution meets their business needs including ROI.
• Extensive product information.
• How you stack up against other vendors including some idea on pricing.
  
• Who's using the product (case studies).
  
• How your company approaches customer service (often the reason they're looking for a new vendor).
  

Your site is key.

Once they know who you are, buyers are going to your site for answers.  If fact, IT buyers ranked the vendor's site as one of, if not the most valuable, source of information.   

Online and offline sources for validation.

They're also looking for 3rd party validation that you can do what you say.  They're using both online and offline sources as well as recommendations from colleagues.  Popular online sources include: 

• Online business publications related to their industry.
• Online news releases, and RSS feeds they've subscribed to.
• Online word of mouth (industry blogs, social networks, forums).

Offline validation comes from:

• Print trade publications
• Trade shows
• Industry related seminars
  

What does this mean for me?

Pump up your web site with relevant content.

The good news is that buyers are still looking to you (at least your site) for answers.  The trick is to give them what they want and that's where things have changed. 

Buyers are looking for a deeper, more detailed level of information than every before.  Specifically, your site should:

• Help them understand how you stack up against competitors by including point-by-point comparisons.  
  
• Provide whitepapers and case studies that describe clear benefits of the technology and address ROI.
• Offer up detailed product charts, tables, and specs in downloadable form so it's easy to passed on.
  

If possible, consider targeting content to specific industries.  It's one of the ways to make it more valuable to the buyer.

3rd party validation is critical.

While buyers are coming to your site to hear what you have to say, they're also looking for outside sources to validate your claims.  Vendors who don't have that 3rd party validation are less likely to make it to the short list. 

It's important to identify the influential industry sites that your buyer visits, then establish a presence on those sites. 

• Push out the content you create (whitepapers, podcasts, seminars) to those sites. 
  
• Look at creating relationships with influencers, bloggers, and experts and starting dialogs with them.
  
• Repurpose whitepapers into articles for industry publications (once you start creating core content you can often reuse it in multiple ways).

At this stage, buyers are looking to collect as much information as possible.  Anything you can do to help them find what they need the better.  These individuals are heavy influencers and their opinions carry weight when making the final decision.

In the next post, we'll dissect the third phase of the buying cycle - Negotiations.   Who's involved, what they're looking for, and where they go to get it.