A problem facing organizations today is generating more leads.  Making this issue even more challenging is changes in buying behavior.  Depending on which study to reference, buyers are performing different activities for up to 70% of their buying evaluation before sales intervention.

A recent report by the Aberdeen Group on sales performance shows there is a fair degree of dissatisfaction among sales leaders.  56% saying they were not seeing sufficient growth in top line revenue.  Nearly 30% expressed dissatisfaction with lead conversion to sales.  A recent CSO Insights report indicated that only 20% of organizations understood their buyer’s buying process.  These two perspectives combined point to one of the key issues – targeting the wrong buyer.

Looking back on over 12 years of qualitative buyer research and buyer persona development work, I found in 6 out of every 10 organization– a different buyer was identified than the organization had been targeting!  If you are off-target with the buyer – you will be off-target on your demand generation and lead generation.

Getting On Target

Marketing and sales leaders today are looking to increase their percentage of being on target when it comes to lead generation.  There are four steps you can take to resolve targeting issues:

Do Lead Research:  It all starts here.  You can no longer assume the buyers you've been targeting are the correct ones.  A level of lead research is needed to outfit your lead generation and nurturing team with knowledge about ideal prospects.  For example - it may not always be the CIO but the IT Director.

Develop Lead Personas:  Lead and buyer personas are useful in understanding consideration and purchasing behaviors.  Organizations, through personas, can determine how a prospect behaves when moving from a lead persona to a buyer persona.   One of the main benefits of this approach is the ability to tailor lead and buyer personas to fit the needs of dedicated lead nurturing teams as well as sales team.

Buyer-Centered Design: Designing your lead generation strategies, systems, and processes should revolve around buyers.  The key is in modeling their behaviors when in lead nurturing and when they enter the buying cycle.  Better results will happen when you meet buyer expectations and goals – which can be distinctly different when in lead nurturing versus buying cycle.  Conversion rates at the point of when a lead persona converts to a buyer persona (becomes a sales-ready lead) will rise.

Conversation Enablement Training:  What is needed is making conversation enablement a staple of training for lead generation and nurturing teams.  The long ramp-up time it takes for lead generation teams to understand prospects is out of synch with the pace of change in buying behavior.  As the CSO Insights report pointed out, barely 20% of organizations understand their buyer’s behaviors and buying processes!  In my qualitative research, I often hear of the frustration prospective buyers have in the lack of productive conversations.

Targeting the right prospect is becoming the lifeblood of organizations today.  For many companies, tackling this issue means discovering who represents their ideal target buyer.  In addition, gaining greater clarity on how buyers differ in behavior when they are being nurtured versus actively engaged in a buying cycle.  Combining these can be a winning ticket and get your lead generation results on target.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to theBuyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle
• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle

• One Way to Know the Ideal Buying Scenarios for Lead Nurturing (tonyzambito.com)

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
― Ernest Hemmingway
The concept of buyer personas, as a means for understanding buyers, has been around now for over a decade.  It is an understatement to say many things have changed in the world of buying and selling since their beginning.

We have witnessed the changing dynamics of the buyer-seller relationship. The dynamics I refer to are buying behaviors and buyer goals.  On the other side of the coin, we see marketing and sales making attempts to adapt.  The concepts of content marketing, lead nurturing, insight-based selling, customer experience, and brand management emphasized.  These practices have been introduced as gateways to connecting with buyers in the new digital age.

Adapting to New Realities

Personas, at their core, were introduced as a tool to communicate the goals and behaviors of users and buyers.  Specifically for informing strategies related to product design and marketing to buyers.  For B2B Marketing and Sales, a clearer picture has begun to emerge around the goals and behaviors of buyers.  Yet, there are many more miles to go.  My endeavor and work with organizations over the past decade lead me to this conclusion:

Personas, specifically in B2B, need to be adaptive to new goals and behaviors of buyers throughout their buyer’s journey.  In addition, personas need to be designed for the new practices, which are developing in marketing and sales.

The term buyer persona has been used universally to an extreme level. The term worked well when buyers relied on sales for their buying cycle for upwards to eighty percent.  We are seeing the inverse today.  Here is where I believe buyer trends as well as qualitative evidence is telling us to go:

B2B personas need to be researched, understood, and designed to meet robust goals and behaviors of buyers throughout the end-to-end buying cycle and brand experience.  In addition, personas need to be designed to enable as well as make more effective new practices, functions, and roles.

Persona Buying Cycle™

As new operational models for marketing and sales develop, there are 5 buying behavior phases of the buying cycle personas must now address:

1. Audience Behavior: the concept of content marketing reaching audiences is more prevalent.  Audience goals and behaviors are distinctly different when not in the market for products or services.  Yet, awareness, insight, and intelligence are an important component of connecting with existing customers and future buyers today.  Content marketing effectiveness is enabled when it can reach many different types of audiences.  Audience personas must now include the likes of industry influences and more.
2. Lead Behavior: one of the fastest growing areas, in terms of emerging practices, is the rise in lead nurturing and lead development.  Buyers have distinct goals and behaviors when they convert from being a part of a wider audience to an interested party.   New forms of lead research and lead personas can create more effective conversions from an interested party to an active buyer.
3. Buyer Behavior: the core persona when buyers have become actually engaged in the process of buying.  Buying behaviors, and buying goals, operate on a different level when buyers are actively engaged in the buying process.  Buyer personas, true their original intent, are designed to enable the buying process between buyer and seller.
4. Customer Behavior: when a buyer becomes a customer, there is a trial period underway.  This trial period consists of a different set of goals and behaviors meaningful to confirmation and customer experience.  Specific customer personas can enable understanding and capabilities to meet customer goals post-sale.  Implementation and customer support teams can benefit immensely from personas designed specifically for their roles.
5. Brand Behavior: brand management is emerging out of the shadows, as a competency B2B companies have to get right today.  Fulfilling the brand promise consistently is one of the hardest jobs of marketing and an organization as a whole.  Customers and buyers have different goals, behaviors, and beliefs, which surround brands.  The goal here is to convert customer personas into brand persona advocates.

A recommendation for forward-thinking marketing and sales leaders is to begin thinking in terms of the Persona Buying Cycle™ versus a singular focus on a buyer persona.  One certainty is the buyer’s journey not only begins before buyers think of themselves as a buyer, but also extends beyond the purchase.  Having a common visual and story of how buyer’s goals and behaviors change throughout the buying cycle is compelling.   We are also seeing activities, functions, and roles widen in marketing and sales in response to changing buying behaviors.  The Persona Buying Cycle™ is a natural extension to address both of these developments.

Positive Outcomes

Creating B2B personas through the lenses of a Persona Buying Cycle™ help bring these positive outcomes:

• • Make personas relevant throughout the major touchpoints of the end-to-end buyer’s journey
  • Make personas more practical to each functional team interacting with audiences, buyers, and customers
  • Make demand generation, lead generation, opportunity management, and customer experience more effective
  • Provide a common communications platform for understanding buyers
  • Foster alignment between marketing and sales by mapping to specific buyer goals and behaviors

In a dozen years, we have seen the then straightforward buyer-seller dynamics become more complex.  How B2B views the use of personas, from a pragmatic standpoint, now must adapt.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Related articles

• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• The Art of Buying

• 5 Buying Behaviors of the Persona Buying Cycle (tonyzambito.com)

The quest to uncover how and why people and businesses engage in the act of buying is becoming an endurance race.  Spurred on by increasing social technologies advances.  The result is many organizations, whether academia or business, have focused on the science of buying.  What we may be losing is critical understanding of the art of buying.

What we are witnessing in the new digital age is the old rules of near total dependency on understanding processes and rules associated with buying is no longer the sole winning ticket.  Buying processes and rules have been dissected and analyzed many times over throughout the past few decades.  We clung to the belief of knowing the how will lead us to systematic knowledge of how to close more business with buyers.   The problem marketing and selling organizations face today is the how – processes and rules – are not as easily defined or structured as in the past.  Social technologies have made it possible for new networks and collaboration amongst buyers – causing plenty of flex in processes and rules.

The Why of Buying

If the science of buying has focused on the how of buying, the art of buying is a heightened quest for understanding the Why of Buying™.  The focus on how businesses buy in B2B marketing and sales has led to many different spin offs of stages, processes, cycles, and funnel shapes.  These exercises do have value.  However, here is a way of looking at what is missing:

A pure focus on process and stages, for example, creates a focus on what buyers are doing rather than what they are thinking and why it is important.

My point of view goes something like this:

Despite all the hype and efforts made in demand generation and content marketing, organizations are still struggling in these areas.  This is due to campaigns and programs designed to fit into established ideas of how businesses buy.  We have even believed automating processes to fit into our view of how we believe buyers buy will speed up purchase cycles.  This is happening at the expense of innovating marketing and sales to get at the core why of buying.

In the recent B2B Demand Generation Benchmark Survey 2012 sponsored by Eloqua, CMO, and Software Advice, I was struck by how 45 to 60% of the 155 marketer respondents believed demand generation performance were below expectations.  Those using marketing automation believing performances were better than those not using marketing automation.   In recent CMI as well as eConsultancy surveys, 40 to 50% of marketers surveyed believed their content marketing efforts were not effective.

Effectiveness a Continuing Struggle

Effectiveness and performance continue to be ongoing issues when it comes to demand generation and content marketing.  While organizations may be getting more productive and efficient at automating processes related to demand generation and content marketing, the missing link is an understanding of why buyers behave, think, and decide as they do.  How buyers behave, think, and decide do not always fit squarely into boxes we have defined to go with processes, rules, or stages.

To become more effective at helping buyers, marketing and sales organizations will need to do this:

Put more investment and energy into understanding the why of buying as opposed to an over abundance on the science of marketing and sales.  We cannot understand how to help buyers unless we are grounded in knowing the why.

Competitive advantage will be determined by knowledge of the motivations, beliefs, thinking, perceptions, goals, behaviors, and responses on the part of buyers.  Marketing today must fulfill the role of understanding how buyers behave and think.   Sales must become the enablers of buyers helping themselves.

The Stories of Buyers

The art of buying is represented through the stories of buyers.  For every industry, there are compelling stories about buyers, which can be told.  It is through these stories we can learn the motivations and goals of buyers, which open the door to understand the why of buying.  For marketing and sales, the key to future success will be in understanding what stories are unfolding, why these stories are important, and how to become part of stories. To mold this key, it will take more art than science to achieve.

(Become part of the dialogue.  Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google Plus as well as subscribe to the Buyer Persona Blog on the tonyzambito.com website.)

Follow @tonyzambito

Related articles

• Marketing is in the Throes of a Buyer Revolution
• 4 Buyer Trends That Will Shake Marketing in 2013

• The Art of Buying (tonyzambito.com)

One thing I’ve found helpful I can share is to take a look at your email before you hit send, then play a game to see how many words you can delete without taking anything away from the point you’re making. If you can do that successfully you will find that you will save time, be more effective, and maybe actually get people to read what you want them to.

Brevity is underrated.

Originally posted on www.30thousandft.com

1 year? 6 months? 3 months?  How low can you go?

Join us as a top HR Director, Recruiter, VP of Sales and Agency Group Director debate just how short a job stint can be before it affects your career in Digital Media.

The Dos and Don’ts of Entertaining

Take a walk on the wild side with some of the best-known sales professionals on the digital party circuit as they give their “rules of the game.” Sellers of both sexes give their tried and true mantras for thriving and surviving during a long night out entertaining. Do flirt, don’t sleep; Do sip, don’t gulp; talk shop only if “shop” means late night karaoke. This panel could get crazy! We certainly hope so...

Entitlement is a God Given Right!

Sure to be an eye-opening conversation with four Millennials in their first job out of school.  See what a day in the life of the industry’s future is like first-hand as they navigate lunch and learns, pivot tables, CPMs and beer pong.  Is life like a Girls episode?  We will see.

Crowd-sourcing the Next Company.ly

Ever wonder where the witty and uniquely spelled digital company names come from?  So do we! In a Digital Media Conference first we’re going to use the crowd to come up with a name for a new Social Analytics / Entertainment company being started by three ex-Googlers and Facebookers. Bring your puns and feel free to use the following ideas to prime the pump:  Uber-likes -- “Order more likes than your competition.” SoVidMo (MoVidSo?) – “What’s next in Social Mobile Video.”

Buzzword Bingo

Shhhhhh – Keep this one to yourself as we get three of the industry’s biggest gadflies to pontificate on “What’s Next for Digital Media” while everyone in attendance gets a bingo card with the buzzwords du jour, unbeknownst to the panelists. The first person who gets “BINGO” will win an iPhone 6 (preordered, of course). Transparency? Big Data? Ninja? Freemium?  Bring it.

Of course these are a little over the top, but every good satire starts with a kernel of truth (or something to that effect).  If this does nothing but get a programming director to drop something a little out of the ordinary into their next conference then it’s a win in my book.

We live in a digital age, the age of communication and instant information. What once took hours, even days to reach people across the globe now only takes a few quick keystrokes and a matter of seconds. But don’t let me bore you with what you already know. What I’m really trying to get at is the fact that, when approached correctly, social networks are viable channels for sales and endless opportunities are within arm’s reach. All sales and business development professionals should consider leveraging this global social trend to broaden their sales funnel or you may one day, find yourself obsolete.

Back In The Day

In our grandparent’s time, business was conducted on a very personal level. The local baker knew what type of bread each family preferred, the butcher began cutting your favorite cuts as soon as he saw you walk through the door, everyone and I mean everyone, knew each other. This was relationship building at its best. Businesses across the globe lost this personal touch as time went on and our world grew a little bigger and busier. Until now.

7 Billion Strong

Yes, our world is no mere village, with over 7 billion inhabitants of planet Earth we are larger and more spread out than ever. Yet, with the advent of social media and its popularity, we have built a global network in which we are all connected; social communities like Facebook , Linkedin and Twitter unite millions of active citizens from all corners of the globe. In addition, smartphones are becoming commonplace in people’s lives allowing interconnectivity with the world whenever and wherever you are. This remarkable and ever-changing technology leads to one thing: communication. And as a business owner, salesperson or marketing executive this is key to reaching a broader audience and more importantly, building a closer relationship with your existing clients and prospects.

Laying The Groundwork

Get to know your social network, it’s great to have 2,000 followers but it’s best to have 200 that you truly know and engage with. Find out about their life, their work and their hobbies. Talk to them as you would a colleague or close friend; let them know you’re listening and that you care about what they have to say. After all, people just want to be heard. This is all part of that “relationship building” I was talking about earlier. So once you build that foundation of trust and friendship, you’ll be more credible when you pitch your business and its services. I say pitch with light reserve as you shouldn’t be pitching your business on social networks- it’s spammy. However, leads don’t always just fall in your lap so use your social network wisely to target specific companies or individuals who could benefit from your product or service. In addition, a humble tooting of your horn from time to time is highly recommended. Design an awesome project that just got posted in the city’s newspaper? Sealed a deal with a major distributor? Your new hire is kicking butt left and right? Toot that horn, baby! You’ll find that not only are people more likely to ‘Like’ and share your post but it also may strike a chord with a reader causing them to pick up a phone and call you directly.

Regardless of what channel you use, never forget that personable, peer-to-peer communication is key. Remember, it’s not about you, your business or your products; it’s about your followers, their life and their interests.

Meetings: they are the scourge of the digital ad industry. Reps desperately trying to get on client's and agency's calendars, and when they succeed they fail. Boring tedious nonsense. 60 slides of tripe. Clients and agencies, leaning back, expecting and getting the worst.

Bad meetings are sadly the norm, are a waste of time, and demeaning to all involved. Enough!

Let's make 2013 the Year of Great Meeting in Digital Media. Below are some simple tips for making everyone involved happier and more productive:

1. Have an agenda: it makes it so much more interesting to the audience.
2. State the objective of the meeting upfront: it's a sales meeting. Be bold. Tell them upfront that you've been thinking about their business, you have an idea, and if it works you expect them to invest in it. Be honest! Unless you want to sit around and talk endlessly about "the relationship".
3. Have a point of view: People are harried and overwhelmed. If you know something of value, drop the knowledge. Loud 'n proud, baby!
4. Know your client and solve a problem: Take the time to study the client and bring a custom solution. If one size fits all, you're going to be replaced by an algorithm and an exchange anyways.
5. Bring ideas: Oscar Wilde once said  “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”  Take some risks. Move fast and break things.
6. End early: People are busy. Get to the point and finish early. People really appreciate the extra time in their day to check out BuzzFeed.com.

Now, drop the mic and leave the stage.

Photo: Rob Young

Hundreds of digital media companies are vying to attract marketer dollars. Virtually every one says they want to be a trusted partner to agencies and brands.

It stands to reason. Partnership sounds great to a seller. Being a partner means longer contracts and, with a little luck, higher margins. A partner gets compensated in ways that a transactional seller just plain won’t be.

But partnership is more than a word.

In a business context, a one-way sales relationship doesn’t qualify as a partnership. Partnership is about collaboration - about shared risk and reward. It’s ultimately about nailing your trousers to the mast of a client’s success.

So what does it take for a seller to be a partner? I think it’s seven things:

1. Caring: Partnership is first and foremost a caring relationship. The vendor needs to attach import to the unique issues of a client company, and then care enough to shape their offering to actually solve problems. You don’t “pound to fit” a partnership.
2. Homework: Partnership is also about more than just ingesting what the client gives you. You need to add value and thinking in a unique and original way.
3. Attention: You have to be there after the sale. Partners don’t make themselves scarce after the ink is dry. They involve account managers and experts in the service they provide. And they stay attentive. To what is going on executionally. To what new issues and opportunities arise in their client’s business.
4. Proactivity: Fast reaction time is a great thing. But it alone doesn’t define a service partnership. You need to bring the client new ideas that can have a meaningful impact on their business challenges.
5. Honesty: Buyers don’t really expect everything to go perfectly. They know screw ups happen. But if you fess up to mistakes while finding the way to rectify the damage, they know they can trust you.
6. Goal Direction: A focus on client goals sometimes means that what you do today isn’t lockstep consistent with your own quarterly goals. But it is essential for long-term partnership.
7. Getting Face to Face: I don’t think you can be a partner to someone you’ve never met. In-person interaction speeds the development of a relationship, and is often the catalyst for deeper information sharing.

You also have to know when to cut bait. Partnership is about give and take. When a client agrees to terms net 30 and ends up 93 days late, they don’t deserve you. They are not good to their word. Similarly, if someone won’t provide you information about what their problems are, then you can’t really partner. That’s OK, you just do the transaction. You just have to get real about the sort of relationship you are going to create.

Finally, when a client’s daily interactions with you and your people are rude and abusive, it’s time to cut them off and find someone who will treat people right.

The world needs more genuine partnering, and less empty talk about partnership. Before you talk partnership, make sure you are prepared to live up to the word.

Be it a factor of too many companies chasing the same digital budget, the almost inhumane time-constraints on buying teams, or a lack of resources all around, it feels like there’s a communication problem at the end of the sales / RFP / proposal process in digital media.

One common topic that usually comes up over a casual lunch or happy hour is the lack of business etiquette or manners from both sides of the sales aisle when it comes to the final part of the proposal process. The buyer perspective is something like this:  “An RFP is not a promise of business, I’m sorry you didn’t make the plan this time – just wasn’t a fit - but if you continue to hound me and fire emails into the client there likely won’t be a next time.”  The seller perspective is generally looking for more insight:  “Just give it to me straight – did we or didn’t we make it?  If not, can I have feedback a little more detailed than ‘Budget cuts’ or ‘Change in Direction’?”

A thread recently popped up on SellerCrowd asking for “Things that media planners say.” Here are a few entertaining (or sad, depending on where you sit) responses:

-       Sucré:  “We'll reach out if we see a fit!”

-       Midas:  "We are going with preferred partners"

-       Cervantes:  "Thanks for the great lunch, but how about next time we do a helicopter tour of Manhattan for the team? Another vendor did that for another team here and it sounds fun!" That was before they spent any money with me, too...”

-       Parsley:  “My favorite response...NOTHING!”

-       Homer:  “I only answered the phone because I didn't recognize your number on caller ID, but now that we're talking, I have to go because I have a client conference call starting now. Give me a call back this afternoon and we can talk”

-       Shallots:  “After asking for availability for an in-person meeting I received the following one line as reply..."Those weeks will be tough, apologies"

These are six from a total of 40 responses. That’s right, 40.

And to keep it a level playing field, I reached out to some friends on the Agency side to get the other perspective:  Things reps do, but shouldn’t:

-       Telling us that they have spoken to the client about a program, and that the client is super excited about it and wants to move forward, when they have not spoken to anyone on the client side at all

-       Playing the lowly salesman unable to meet a quota card

-       Upon hearing the news they didn’t make the plan, saying:  “You know everyone in your content vertical is running with us except you all”

-       I once had a rep I thought was a friend and didn't make the plan.  I knew his inventory was tight so I emailed him an informal one off to let him know he wasn't on the plan. He then forwarded it to my director and the client even though in my email I said I would follow up with further rationale.

-       When they get my name wrong – really wrong as in “Hey Tiffany”, um, it’s Elizabeth, thanks though.

And this story deserves a spot all its own:

“I was extremely busy as an assistant planner, and was working on putting together a plan recommendation and hadn’t gotten back to a rep on an RFP they had sent a week earlier.  I was sitting at my desk when all of a sudden, a person in a monkey suit approached me and started singing a song and doing a dance.  As this was happening, the entire office was curious to know what was going on and crowded around the dancing monkey.  I was totally confused by this monkey, until he handed me a note with a banana – it read “you’re bananas if you don’t work with us”.  I supposed after several attempts at emailing and calling me, the rep thought this was a good way to reach me.  Needless to say, he never got my business again.”

I’d like to propose an informal media sales code, which boils down to a combination of communication and manners.  As sellers, let’s pick up the professionalism and manners, and buyers, please communicate the good, the bad and the ugly with us.  And speaking directly from experience to the Sellers out there – In an industry where a 40% close rate is hall of fame material, you’re not going to make every plan you submit a proposal on.  Don’t take it personally and be ready for the next time you’re up to bat.

A special thanks to my friends on the agency side who shared their stories.

Do Your Research Before You Pick Up The Phone © All Rights Reserved Kenny Madden

This is part 1 of a series on the challenge of targeting SMB markets and how the use of target buyer modeling and buyer-based marketing help organizations to grow their SMB customer base.

As we continue to come out of the deep freeze over the last few years, we are beginning to see encouraging signs of an economic recovery. However, the purse strings are still drawn tight and new patterns of buying has created an atmosphere of even more exacting pricing pressures from enterprise-wide level buyers and accounts. This means less room for revenue growth to come directly from the fabled 20-30 percent of large customers who typically have made up 70-80 percent of total revenues. This is how a VP of Sales in the software industry put it to me recently in my research:

“Here is what it looks like…we are actually selling more of our product into our larger accounts than ever before….but…over the last three years we've faced stiffer competition that has driven our pricing down. So the net-net has been that we are just holding on as best we can to these larger accounts. Another words, we are not getting significant real revenue growth from them.”

It is highly likely that this refrain is being repeated across many Fortune 1000, Global 2000, and even Inc. 500 listed companies across the globe. With revenue growth opportunities shrinking among their large accounts, senior leaders in these organizations are turning a focused eye towards the highly sought after small and mid-size business segment. For instance, in the highly compettive world of IT Products and Services, both HP and IBM made substantial investments and strategic moves in 2011 to target the SMB segment. Challenging Dell and its' low cost entry strategy for small to mid-size businesses.

A New Challenge And A New Frontier

There is good reason for Fortune 1000 or Global 2000 companies to target revenue growth from the SMB segment. It is one of the fastest growing segments and traditionally has been coming out of a recession. It also has proven to be lucrative when you consider that actual contribution margin percentages are much richer per sale when compared to large accounts. It is little surprise that senior executives have shifted at least one eye towards expanding their SMB customer base and tapping into the revenue growth potential that can exists.

While targeting or at least accounting for the SMB segment is not a new idea to larger enterprises, this time around they are waking up to new buyer realities. Buyer behaviors continue to change rapidly and these new behaviors are associated with largely buyer-driven changes. What is confronting those wanting to achieve revenue growth from SMB buyers and companies is that they may know very little about these buyers and companies. How to market to SMB buyers and companies becoming one of the hot priority items showing up on the agenda of many large enterprise management meetings being held daily, weekly, or monthly. As one Senior VP of Sales and Markerting in IT pointed out to me recently:

“I am almost afraid to admit that we may have taken the SME (my notation: some executives refer to SMB as SME – small and mid-size enterprises) businesses for granted all these years. We never really moved beyond segmenting by employee size and revenue so we really don’t know a lot about SME’s as we should. It’s easy say you want to target them but planning how to target them is basically a whole new ball game for us.”

Because little knowledge may exist about SMB businesses and buyers, there are perhaps more assumptions being made about SMB than for larger accounts. Generalized perceptions and preconceived notions run rampant in the halls and meeting rooms of larger enterprises attempting to figure out how to market to SMB segments. There is what I call a “definition churn” that can happen when knowledge is found wanting – new definitions, classifications, segmentations, and etc. begin to appear every 3, 6, 9, or 12 months. Moving around 1,000’s of accounts and prospects in virtual databases to new buckets created for employee size, revenue size, product targets, and verticals.

Unprecedented Transformation Occurring

In the past, working with these definitions may have been sufficient. Looking ahead into the future - and the near future at that – these definitions alone will no doubt prove to be limiting and even detrimental to growth. We are experiencing an unprecedented transformation in the world of business with new buyer-driven economies, ecosystems, networks, and communications emerging constantly – making understanding of SMB buyers and companies that may have been attained even as little 3 to 5 years ago nearly obsolete.

For many large enterprise organizations that show up on the famed Fortune 1000 or Global 2000 lists, growing the SMB customer base may be their number one, or at least in the top five, priority. It is also, as a result of new buyer realities that are emerging, their number one challenge. To tackle both angles of this two-sided coin, gaining deeper layers of understanding about SMB buyers and companies will need to get on these same priority lists.

Next Up: Understanding New Buyer Realities In SMB

Follow @TonyZambito

Related articles

• Predictive Buyer Modeling Is Changing the Future of B2B (buyerology.com)
• Revenue Growth by Choice and The Buyer Orbit (buyerology.com)
• 5 Ways New Buyer Behaviors Are Impacting B2B Sales (buyerology.com)
• 3 Ways To Connect With Today's B2B Buyers (customerthink.com)

© All Rights Reserved Kenny Madden

This is part 3 of a limited series on why buyer choice modeling is the new view B2B Business must adopt to improve revenue performance and develop long lasting relationships with buyers.

When it comes to understanding the psychology of the buyer, much has been done in the world of B2C to get inside the mind of consumers to understand buying choices and preferences. For B2B, it has been harder to translate B2C research dynamics into ways that would make the psychology of B2B buyers more readily understood. However, what we do know is that there is an increasing consumerization effect happening in B2B buying whereby B2B buyers have the same desires for more experiential purchasing as opposed to a heavy emphasis on sterile transactions.

In part 2 of this series, I discussed the Buyer Orbit and the elements of the Buyer Choice Model. Each of these now filled with more psychological aspects related to why B2B buyers buy. This comes with many implications for B2B leaders to not only understand new buyer psychology but to also shift business models, operations, strategies, and interactions that transforms the way they connect with B2B buyers. In part 3, let us look at how B2B leaders are responding to new buyer psychology in relations to the elements of the buyer choice model.

Psychology of Buyer Choice

Understanding buyer choice has many implications for B2B strategies and tactics – whether they are focused on demand generation, content marketing, or selling approaches. Addressing new buyer psychology and buyer choice paradigms, within elements of buyer choice modeling, can be transformational:

Explore

With more and more buyers mapping out exploration due to the proliferation of content and information channels, a side effect of B2B businesses scrambling to be noticed in the 50% to 70% window of buyers remaining anonymous, B2B businesses are considering the implications of buyers taking deliberate action to map out their exploration.

What this means: predicting and modeling how buyers map and begin their exploring as well as what forms of navigation they usually take specific to their industry.

How to respond: devote more resources to qualitative investigative means, such as contextual interviewing and ethnographic research, to uncover how buyers begin their efforts to explore and how they are dealing with content proliferation.

Network

As elaborated upon recently, the single buyer model is no longer sufficient and more and more B2B buyers operate from the new buying model of working within ecosystems and relying on network participation. Codependency is here to stay and B2B businesses must adapt.

What this means: reexamine how buyers are viewed internally and what forms of outmoded approaches may be resulting in missed opportunities.

How to respond: use various forms of B2B buyer research and begin working with buyers to understand important ecosystem and network drivers for their business and industries. Incorporate important ecosystem views into strategy and organizational infrastructure.

Decide

The art and science of decision-making is becoming more complex each year. An increasing number of variables are being introduced into decision-making such as globalization, uncertainty, ecosystem considerations, and more – shifting how buying is taking place.

What this means: how buyers are buying today is shifting dramatically and B2B businesses need to understand the new rules of decision-making, in addition to the buyer decision journey, that are being implemented for purchase decisions.

How to respond: shift internal focus to understanding new rules affecting decision-making, acquired through the mix of analytics and qualitative insight, and support how buyers are making purchase decisions.

Buy

Buying today, as mentioned in part 2, is a higher stakes game for many businesses today. The margin for costly mistakes is the slimmest in decades. The extent of poor choices can have disastrous effect on many aspects of a business. Understanding high stakes motivations enables a focus on why B2B buyers buy.

What this means: B2B leaders must not confuse how buyers buy with why buyers buy. The focus here is on understanding the new buyer psychology in terms of their collective attitudes, goals, beliefs, perceptions, and drivers. This new collection of mental models are changing each time new variables, such as new technologies, are introduced.

How to respond: getting an understanding of buyer mental models through qualitative research efforts will become more crucial each year as buyer psychology continues to shift.

Relate

With higher stakes involved in decision-making and purchases today, B2B buyers seek more assurances post-purchase than ever before. Unlike the emphasis on engagement in B2C post-purchase, the need for deeper ties relationally is affecting long-term loyalty.

What this means: shifting out of funnel thinking and viewing the entire buyer experience cycle is a new rule of B2B thinking today.

How to respond: post-purchase support and talent can no longer be an after-thought of organizational planning but be seen as the gateway to being included in newly formed ecosystems and networks by buyers.

What we are witnessing today is a marked shift from funnel-thinking to that of focusing on the total buyer experience that does not fit neatly into stages or step approach thinking. The new buyer psychology compels B2B businesses today to make the buyer the centerpiece of strategy and respond to the continuous loops of what confronts them (the buyer orbit) and the choices (buyer choice model) they must make.

Next up: Impact on Marketing and Sales

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Related articles

• Revenue Growth by Choice and The Buyer Orbit (buyerology.com)
• Slow Death of the Funnel: Why Buyer Choice Matters to Revenue (buyerology.com)
• Predictive Buyer Modeling Is Changing the Future of B2B (buyerology.com)
• 5 Ways New Buyer Behaviors Are Impacting B2B Sales (buyerology.com)
• The Single Buyer Model: A Dangerous Road Towards Competitive B2B Marketing (buyerology.com)
• How B2B Leaders Are Understanding Buyers Better With Behavioral Buyergraphics (buyerology.com)

IT Buying Process © All rights reserved by Kenny Madden

This is part 1 of a limited series on why buyer choice modeling is the new view B2B Business must adopt to improve revenue performance and develop long lasting relationships with buyers.

Finding the keys that unlock improving revenue performance and achieving growth is becoming harder and harder as we go from a single buyer model to that of more interdependency among ecosystems and networks by B2B buyers. B2B marketing and sales is still predominantly tethered to traditional ideas, approaches, and systems that are being dragged into the modern era. While we have seen modifications, the idea of the traditional funnel is still at the core of many B2B organizations today. It matters little whether you keep it vertical or flip it sideways and make it horizontal – it is still suggesting a funnel that winnows down opportunities down to a “buy” decision.

As the modern era rages on with increasing speed where the Internet and Social Technologies are converging into new forms, the oversimplification of the funnel becomes more and more apparent. Simply put, buyers just don’t act or behave in that way anymore. Evidence suggesting that buyers are behaving well out of the norm of our conventional views of the funnel as well as the buying process is abundant from surveys. These behaviors cannot be represented in the view of a funnel. DemandGen, for example, reported that B2B buyers don’t talk to a sales rep until they’ve conducted independent research 77% of the time. There are plenty of surveys around showing buyers acting and behaving differently – yet – the willingness to snap the tether cord of the funnel doesn't appear readily apparent. It does beg the question of: what is going on?

I believe that is still an open question without an answer. We are about to see an uptick in Big Data being touted as the next Big Thing. Why? To figure out what’s going on. My thinking is that if this Big Data explosion is designed to tell us what’s going on within the confines of the funnel - then B2B organizations can find themselves in the untenable position of explaining why Big Data is not telling them anything. Here’s why: we will learn a lot about what buyers purchase and we will learn a lot about how they are purchasing - perhaps. What is missing is the most important question of all – why. And there are two very important components to the why question:

First, why are they buying and second, why are they making the choices they make.

Traditional marketing and sales, oriented towards the funnel, don’t answer these why questions very well. To get close, it may take years of piling on data after data to get a clue. This is a very expensive proposition for companies to take on today.

Despite the many super hyped concepts coming to the forefront attempting to address the 77% who are not getting a sales rep involved until much later, the funnel – whether vertical or horizontal or even cyclical – seems to be glossed over like a sacred cow. The language of these many new concepts is spoken through the prism of the funnel – still. For example, if we take an often used expression of the first part of a funnel – awareness – many of the new concepts are really talking about how to make awareness happen differently in the new social buyer era. But is that what’s really going on? I don’t believe so.

Before moving on to what I believe, let’s review limitations of funnel thinking against the new realities of today:

Buyers Explore vs. Become Aware. B2B buyers are less likely to become aware of solutions and more likely to explore and find them. And they are making significant choices during their exploring based on what they find. Unlike consumer purchases where there is an object of purchase desired – for example a HDTV – B2B buyers are making choices on which path they will invest more time hiking and exploring.

Buyers Are Part of Ecosystems and Networks. The age of the single buyer has come to a close in complex B2B environments. While there may be a target buyer per se’, they are increasingly dependent upon various ecosystem participants who are directly impacted by purchase decisions and have a voice in these decisions. The funnel is very limited outside the scope of the single buyer.

Buyers Just Don’t Make New Buys. In the complex realities of today, buyers are not repeating the new buy orientation of the funnel. There are many choices being made around how to modify different alternatives. In the age of just-in-time – and now in the age of real-time, buyers look ahead into the longevity of repurchase – or continuous supply that feeds the ecosystem with little disruption.

Buyer Views Extend Beyond Purchase. The funnel is based on the short-term view of making the sale and it is measured in quantities. In today’s environment, the funnel cannot accommodate the long term views buyers have on the overall buying experience and doesn’t account for many factors that happen well after the sale.

Given these limitations, I believe that companies today must attempt to understand buyer choices and adopt a different model. A Buyer Choice Model that begins to reflect buyer behavior and provides the language and terminology needed to understand why buyers choose as they do. It puts the buyer at the center of B2B marketing, sales, and service and reflects, more accurately, that buyers are making multiple choices throughout their actions as well as behaviors that ultimately lead to a purchase decision. But – it doesn’t stop there at the purchase decision. There is a continuous loop that extends beyond the purchase decision. The idea of buyer choice modeling is to understand choices that are being made in this continuous loop – so as not to be left out of the loop.

Next up: The elements of the Buyer Choice Model

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Related articles

• The Single Buyer Model: A Dangerous Road Towards Competitive B2B Marketing (buyerology.com)
• How B2B Leaders Are Understanding Buyers Better With Behavioral Buyergraphics (buyerology.com)
• 5 Ways New Buyer Behaviors Are Impacting B2B Sales (buyerology.com)
• Predictive Buyer Modeling Is Changing the Future of B2B (buyerology.com)
• Boost Demand Generation Using Target Ready Buyer Models (buyerology.com)
• One Thing That Can Get You From Here to There in 2012 and Beyond (buyerology.com)
• The Single Buyer Model: A Dangerous Road Towards Competitive B2B Marketing (blogs.imediaconnection.com)
• 5 Ways New Buyer Behaviors Will Affect B2B Marketers in 2012 (blogs.imediaconnection.com)

Buyer Trend: On A Quest to Be Demand Fulfilled

The conventional as well as social buyers of today can be said to be on a quest to have their demands fulfilled.  Demand being, for the purpose of this article, the catchall phrase to represent a buyer’s desire to have their goals realized, challenges met, problems solved, and concerns alleviated.  What the convergence of the Internet and the Social Age has proffered is the ability for buyers to chart the quest for meeting their demands with much more control, participation, and engagement than in any time in history.

The significant buyer trend of the past decade has become the blinding obvious – we know that buyers are self-directing 70% to 80% of their own buying process.  This trend is profoundly changing the landscape of business in macro as well as micro level ways.  It is the under layers of this trend that is having the most affect on marketing and sales in terms of the thinking towards demand generation.  I have emphasized thinking in this series of articles due to how trends require us to reshape our thinking.  When you change the way you think about things, the things you think about change.

One of the things we need to change our thinking on – and what is meant by the under layers – is what happens when buyers find you?  If our thinking is still in the context of push and generation, then there will be little difference in whether buyers found you or you found them.  Their thought processes are becoming more complex and intelligent engagement is what they seek to help them get their demands fulfilled.  What do buyers find – when they find you?  Do they find themselves akin to being in the middle of Times Square with flashing billboards, bright lights, and the consistent horns of taxi cabs?  Are they bombarded by insistent push messaging – loaded with the conventional features and benefits dogma they’ve come to loathe?

Being in the business of buyer personas for over a decade now, I’ve seen organizations still have this thinking despite having personas right in front of them.  The fatal flaw being buyer personas were developed as profiles with push messaging and demand generation thinking as opposed to how to fulfill the goals of buyers.  Buyers today are developing a sixth sense and becoming fairly astute at knowing the difference in how an organization is thinking.  The under laying aspect of this trend is this: what buyers are seeking today is to have their own demands fulfilled - not to have your demands for generation met.

What Must CEO’s, CMO’s, and CSO’s do?

The C-Suite today can begin to look at what really is going on in its’ interactions with existing customers and prospective buyers.  Questioning whether the incessant need to hit short-term quarterly results is blinding them to the need to shift their thinking.  In essence, finding that the drum keeps beating loudly on urging the troops to push harder and harder.  Evaluations can be performed to look at interactions and determine whether they are being used as an opening to push message or are they being made into an available opportunity for buyers to have their demands fulfilled.

CMO’s can begin to look at how to develop fulfillment models based on the demands of their existing customers and prospective buyers.  Fulfillment modeling will thus become an important new competency.  By fulfillment, I do not mean the mere availability of information and content as in the early days of direct marketing – where collateral was king then.  I do mean that CMO's will have to lead efforts to develop an appreciable deep understanding of the demand fulfillment goals and scenarios that drive purchase decisions.

When buyers are in the 70% window of self-directed activity or in the 30% window of direct engagement, CMO’s and CSO’s can ensure that buyers are able to connect in ways that allows them to continue their quests to have demands fulfilled.  As opposed to push messaging, buyers find tools and logic available to them that help them in their pursuit.  What CMO’s and CSO’s have to be on guard for, especially in light of the growing role of content strategy and content marketing, is if their content is more of the same – push messaging – or is it truly serving the purpose of demand fulfillment.

The Future

Perhaps I am playing on words and semantics.  I think not.  My many conversations while engaged in qualitative investigative efforts is telling me that the future will require a shift in thinking on exactly what takes place when buyers find you.  How organizations think on whether they are performing demand fulfillment or demand generation will be reflected in how buyers find organizations to be when they do find them.  Changing thinking and getting results from that change is one of the hardest undertakings an organization can go through.

The businesses of the future who think demand fulfillment first will find a new world of opportunities opening up to them.  It opens the road to creative and innovative ways to engage buyers in helping them to have their demands fulfilled.  Developing fulfillment models that no longer force buyers into the tired framework of push and generation – a framework that still exists and cannot be disguised with the label of content marketing or the technologies of social business.

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As we’ve entered into a new decade with new web and social technologies continuing to advance at warp speed, new buyer behaviors continue to emerge.  Some new buyer behaviors, such as informational search, are no longer emerging but have crossed over into accepted reality.  With other new buyer behaviors, such as those related to social influence, we are only getting a glimpse of at this moment in time.  The given in the current state of B2B marketing and sales is that buyer behavior and complex buying processes have changed.

One of the toughest challenges in the past few years has been to figure out how to respond to these changes.  One place to start is for executives to ask a bold question: are we still selling like it’s 1999?  An especially valid question for companies that have traditionally been sales driven and the dominance of a sales culture has reigned for several decades.  Companies have changed and responded - but have the changes been more cosmetically enhancing or truly systemic in nature?  I think there is a big difference and let’s look at a few important areas:

Budgeting

Let’s start with the money trail.  Has the proportion of budgets devoted to sales and marketing changed?  Or are you still having the same ratio as far back as 1999?  I am mentioning this first because companies and people will tend to behave and adapt to how much budget they have and how they are paid.  If the ratio is still the same or the needle has moved marginally – might be good to think about changing.

Technology

Companies are implementing new marketing and sales automation technologies.  The real question is: are new technologies automating new systemic adaptations to changing buyer behaviors or are they simply automating existing sales processes that haven’t changed much since 1999?

Inbound versus Outbound

The inbound versus outbound reflection is fraught with real cultural issues.  Let’s not pretend that there has not been for several decades a kind of power play and power struggle between inside and outside.  For years, most prominently in sales driven cultures, the inside sales teams and inbound marketers have been relegated to the second tier in terms of budget, talent, perception, and support.  If your culture is still a reflection of 1999 where there is top heavy dominance for outbound activities and strategies, then you might want to get past the idea that you have new web site as being your big change.  Inbound marketing and the support of highly skilled inside sales teams are here to stay.

Talent and Hiring Criteria

Are your hiring criteria’s the same as 1999?  If you haven’t worked with human resources for several years to examine new talent requirements for true systemic changes, then this could be a good starting point.  Does the majority of your sales teams still look like and possess the same talent like it’s 1999?  If so, the attribute and skill levels may prove to be a mismatch to new changing buyer behaviors and having buyers heading towards competitors.  Buyers will want to work with advisors good at orienteering versus sellers good at presenting.

Sales Training and Processes

When was the last time you examined sales training and sales processes?  Are sales people still going through the same or similar sales training that sales teams went through in 1999?  Do your sales processes, despite the addition of new technologies, represent the same 4, 5, 6, or however many stages you had in 1999?  To adapt to new changing buyer behaviors calls for systemic changes to training and sales processes.  Not doing so in today’s evolving buyer driven world will alienate your company from buyers.

The world of buyers and sellers has literally been turned upside down since 1999.  If your organization hasn’t made transformational changes yet, it’s not too late.  The first step to doing so is to take a hard look in your boardroom mirror and ask perhaps one of the most profound question you can ask: are we still selling like it’s 1999?

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The notion that perceived risks influences purchasing behavior has been around for quite some time.  As we have seen an increase in the complexity of the buying process, we are seeing a correlating increase in Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© associated with purchase decisions.  Compounding perceived risks is the increase in choices as mentioned in my previous article as well as new social channels to explore.  This new mishmash of complexity, choices, and new channels causes a much higher degree of uncertainty on the part of buyers.

What does understanding choice have to do with Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)©?  It comes down to two general areas:

Buyers are dealing with the uncertainty and the risks of making a bad choice

Buyers are dealing with the unknown consequences resulting from a bad choice

These two general areas of perceived risks are not necessarily new however the degree of impact has expanded significantly as a result of the convergence of the Internet and Social Technologies.

Variables that are affecting the degree of impact include speed, awareness, chance, and reputation.  Put more simply:

The impact of a bad choice is happening much faster, more people as well as organizations are aware when they happen, there are fewer chances to recover, and more damage to individual as well as company reputation.  The end result being that buyers are perceiving risks to be greater than ever and making the right choice more challenging than ever.

Previously, I had written about Buyer Perceived Values (BPV)© and the need to understand how buyers prioritize values.  The other side of the coin is to understand Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© and to understand how buyers see the degrees of consequences that can result from a bad choice.  This calls for senior executives and strategists to increase their understanding through what I call Buyerology© -  which represents a deeper qualitative level of buyer intelligence.  Gaining deep understanding of complex perceived values and risks provides a window into the mind of the buyer as well as the business culture of an organization.

What research with C-Suite executives has borne out is that this understanding arrives too late when it comes to new services, products, and strategies.  Oftentimes, learning the hard way why a new product launch, a new service capability, or a much hyped strategy implemented fell flat on its’ face – and both seller and buyer reputation bruised and battered.  To prevent their own consequences, selling organizations will need to improve their early-stage buyer intelligence capabilities and make the investment upfront as opposed to investing in post-failure debriefings.

Improving buyer intelligence in Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© can lead to being informed on important decisions related to:

Pre-Sales Content: Providing knowledge and information that instills confidence in choice and reducing perceived risks.

Sales Interaction: Enabling sales to engage in conversations and interactions that authentically confront perceived risks and brings them to the forefront of the sales process as opposed to last minute barriers.

Post-Sale Implementation: Content, implementation services, and interaction can all be used to enhance a buyer’s perception that adverse risk has been avoided and value gained.

There is a given in all this.  The given is that a selling organization truly has the quality and the confidence that it can deliver for the buyer and that it has assurances in place that they can reduce Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© significantly.  No amount of content, smooth talking, and excuses will make up for poor quality and capability of a product or service.

Understanding perceived risks today through deeper qualitative buyer intelligence (Buyerology©) can go a long way towards organizations standing out from the pack of options that can exists.  Insightful understanding leading to helping buyers to make choices that are made with more ease, confidence, authenticity, and affirmation that ultimately results in hard sought loyalty.

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From a B2B market view, the new social buyer ecosystem continues to undergo a rapid evolution.  The pace in 2011 has noticeably quickened.  While the social customer ecosystem in the B2C market space is still legions ahead of B2B, it behooves B2B executives to not fall prey to the false sense that the comparative differences means they have to pay little attention.  A new social buyer ecosystem is developing with implications on our conventional thinking about how B2B buyers in particular may actually go about researching and buying.

New Buyer Perspectives Evolving

As a primer to talking about the ecosystem, it is important to first visit how buyers are changing against what we think is actually going on.  We know from such sources as Basesone’s Buyersphere Report what B2B buyers are doing respective to the use of social media and the Internet as they ultimately make purchase decisions.  My focus has been on using qualitative research to understand how buyers are developing social oriented ecosystems and how does this map to conventional thinking in B2B marketing and Sales.  There have been some surprising revelations.  I would like to break this down for you in several categories and let the actual voice of buyers speak:

• Buyer’s Journey:
  “I’m not sure what that means.  I know I don’t go on a so called journey when looking for solutions.”
• Buying Stages:
  “One of the biggest changes for me has been that I no longer think of a step-by-step approach.  In fact, I can’t even recall when I last did that.  It really is an ongoing almost never ending process of staying on top of the challenges you have and knowing what’s out there."
• Content Marketing:
  “The term, content marketing, I am seeing here and there.  Not sure I get it.  What I do know is that the sources of information is abundant but can be overwhelming.  You have to pick and choose.”
• Sales:
  “Look, I’ve been around a while.  Here’s the thing that’s changed.  On high ticket items you still need a sales rep to help pull it together but the difference is you expect them to know a heck of lot more than in the past.  If they don’t, then it is tough because we can’t spend too much time on bringing them up to speed.”
• Social Media/Internet:
  “The game changer has been that with the Internet and Social Media you can really cull information together about products, solutions, companies, and the likes.  Basically it is the first thing we do.  As for some of the social networks, like LinkedIn, you can connect with people who can help you out.   Without a doubt, I am on the Internet or some social networking site daily.”

The above represents consistent themes heard over several conversations.  The qualitative interviews are not as rigorous as I would normally do in a buyer persona research and development effort but nevertheless revealing.  This has caused me to reflect more deeply on the changes we are seeing and how a new social buyer ecosystem is forming.

Social Buyer Circles

With Google Plus, circles are suddenly the new rage.  In this context they do serve a purpose.  Circles are not new.  I’m influenced by David Armano who came up with the concept of influence ripples or circles to depict blogger spheres of influence as far back as 2006.

Most recently, Michael Brito offered a great perspective via the use of circles on why content still matters and how the social customer is filtering relevant content.

Here is my view of Social Buyer Circles within a Social Buyer Ecosystem:

Implications for Engaging the Social Buyer

1. Always On: the Social Buyer is living and breathing the “always on” life via social media, social networks, and the Internet.  The implications are that the Social Buyer – from a B2B prism – is active on the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook daily.  This includes blurring the lines between personal and business.
2. Non-Linear Thinking: the Social Buyer appears to not be thinking conventionally with respect to a methodical stage-by-stage buying process or buying stages.  Rather, challenges and solutions awareness as well as evaluation are in a constant state of motion and monitoring.  This has implications to how we think in the future about sales and content marketing.
3. Pull Affect on Challenges: the Social Buyer is exhibiting behavior of setting up what I would like to refer to as “Challenge Circles”.  Social Buyers have challenges they are constantly addressing and pull various elements of social networks and social information sources into these challenge circles.  The implication for B2B marketers and sellers is how to get pulled into one of the social buyer’s challenge circles.  From a sales standpoint, I like Tibor Shanto's perspective via his co-authored book with Craig Elias entitled Shift!:Harness the Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers and his focus on trigger events.  The relevancy here is understanding what triggers one of the challenge circles to activate into motion towards a solution.
   
4. Information Sources Go Social: the Social Buyer is beginning to migrate from a purely search behavior to that of social media stored recall.  What this means is that social buyers are using social information sources to recall when a “challenge circle” needs to be addressed with a solution.   Storing recall through YouTube, Product Review Sites, Q&A such as Focus and Quora, and blogs they subscribe to.
5. Internal Collaboration Rules: the Social Buyer is engaging and collaborating through internal and private social networks.  New platforms such as Jive are influencing the way organizations work and migrate towards being a social business.  IBM is way out in front on this.  This is making stakeholder buy-in and validation happen more rapidly.  It is also establishing precedents for more open sharing of solutions which impacts how budgets are created for expenditures and allocating resources.
6. Validation Goes Social: the Social Buyer has rapid ability to validate solutions and potential purchase decisions socially through peer networks, social networks, internal networks, review sites, analysts, almost instant feedback on forums, online assessments, and the likes.  The implication for B2B companies is that their online presence must extend beyond just their web site and few social networking accounts – it must be extended by influence sources.  This is also radically changing the concept of public relations in the social age.
7. Become a Circle of Influence:  the Social Buyer, as I have previously written about, is also interested in their professional growth and becoming a circle of influence themselves.  Through blogging, tweeting, discussion groups, and etc. social buyers are actively seeking to be a “sphere of influence” as David Armano describes.  This is new phenomenon in B2B market spaces whereby engaging with a recognized social influencer takes on new meaning.
8. Connected Influence: the Social Buyer is more connected, interpersonally as well as socially, than we could ever have imagined.  We are finding that many interact with connections through social networks and other forms such as email or telephone.  With many never having met their peer in person or arranging to meet peers at conference.  The impact of peer influence on the social buyer is immense.  The implication is obvious for B2B marketers and sellers – how do you make peer influencers brand advocates?

Surrounding the social buyer circles are interaction points with the top representing the buyer’s perspective and the bottom representing what the seller must provision.  I offered a more detailed view of this when describing the importance of organizations to focus on buyer experience interactions.

While circles may be the rage, it is for good reason.  They clearly are helping in gaining social intelligence about the social buyer.  The driving forces of being always-on, instant accessibility to sources, overwhelming information overload, social networking management, and increase forces of internal collaboration are influencing buyers to have these circular adaptations.  Changing forever conventional perceptions of how buyers in the social age work, collaborate, meet challenges, find solutions, engage with sellers, and ultimately make purchases.

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This is the fourth and last installment of my initial reflection on Social Buyerology.  The first article, Social Buyerology: Understanding Buyers in the Social Age reflected on the need for a new science of examining buyers in the social age.  The second, The Research Methods of Social Buyerology, reviewed the types of research methods needed to attain a deep understanding of the new social buyer persona.  In the third installment, Social Buyerology: Listening to the Social Buyer, we looked at how Social Buyerology can be designed to listen to revealing insights about the social buyer.  In this fourth article, we examine how to turn insights about the social buyer persona into social influence.

A starting point I believe is to take a hard look at what I believe is a fundamental change on the part of social buyers related to the old adage of turning insight into action.  In the social age, influence or perhaps more correctly, social influence, has become the centrality of the social buyer’s mindset towards taking steps leading to a buying decision.  This, in fact, is creating a tension point between marketers and buyers today.  For years and yet still there has been an almost unstoppable inertia on the part of marketing and sales efforts towards affecting an immediate “action” on the part of buyers.  For many in the world of B2B Marketing, for example, it is hard to resist the impulse to plan for very action-oriented campaigns.  These efforts usually accompanied by PowerPoint presentation ad infinitum extolling how much “action” is going to take place as a result of the latest campaign.  Social Buyerology requires a new way of thinking as well as adapting to turning insights into social influence.  These insights indicating how to mitigate the tension point created when social buyers are asked to take “action” without experiencing influence.

There are three guideposts for turning insights into social influence gathered through the previously outlined research methods as well as listening principles of Social Buyerology:

Dynamic

In an action-oriented mindset, the design of marketing and sales plans is usually directed towards attempts to create a scenario for the buyer to act upon.  Social influence dynamism require us to look at the opposite of duplicating messages across multiple channels.  Insights can reveal how social buyers are accustomed to social interaction by various channels.  Savvy marketers today will be asked to look at how to optimize each channel uniquely.  In essence, marketers will need to learn new skills and perspectives to interact with social buyer personas in ways unique to each social channel and social interaction scenario.  The advent of the social age is in effect closing the coffin lid on the one size fits all marketing tactics of yesteryear.

Organic

Marketing and sales plans have a tendency to be concrete and finite plans.  Either they worked or didn’t work.  And, when they didn’t work they are shelved.  Those they did work sometimes run its course and then are neglected to move onto the next “big” thing.  An organization, without knowing it (except by the smart frontline people who oftentimes not listened to), can find itself in a high-stakes game of rolling the dice repeatedly.  The dice in this case being the newest, latest, and grand marketing or sales campaign.  The social organization of today must look at how each component of its marketing and sales planning allows for organic growth and plants seeds of growth in each other’s landscape.  This is where insights become critical to interpretation and understanding how to create integrated efforts that feeds such things as web traffic, leads generated, social branding, viral public relations, and etc.  These integrated efforts then spreading the seeds of social influence in many places.  This is very much opposed to the conventional islands of plans that are created by various departments who truly act as if there is a deep blue ocean between them.

Connect

We are rapidly moving towards a highly socially connected society.  The societal changes in connectivity are bleeding into the business community more prominently than ever before.  Insights gathered via the research methods of Social Buyerology must go through an interpretative process of understanding how to help foster connections between peers, organizations, communities, and other circles of social influences.  In the coming years, this capability may become the center most skill and talent level an organization possesses.  The ability to create social connectedness will far eclipse marketing and sales abilities as we know it today as a barometer of success and survival.

In this series, I have attempted to lay out the concept of understanding buyers in the social age through Social Buyerology.  Given the ongoing rise of the millennial generation into the work force over time, both business organizations and business academia will need to adapt to the meaning as well as transformational changes brought on by the social age.  Many of today’s graduates are leaving their universities ill-equipped for the work world they will ultimately find.  These graduates are more socially adaptive than the very professors who taught them.  In the end, what this incoming generation finds will be a factor of survival for an organization in the long term.  The question coming down to: will they find a social organization adapting to the world that surrounds them or will they find an organization continuing to practice archaic business, marketing, and sales operations out of touch with social buyers?

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In my article, Social Buyerology: Understanding Buyers in the Social Age, I offered perspectives on the need for a new discipline in B2B Sales and Marketing related to understanding new buyer behaviors and interactions in the social age.  This is a follow up article that looks at the methods for helping B2B to research and gain valuable insights about the social buyer.  Coincidentally, my thoughts come at a time when the LinkedIn IPO and valuation has sent a ripple effect in the B2B business community.  Undoubtedly bringing a heightened awareness to understanding the social buyer today.  Whether the LinkedIn IPO impact is short lived or creates yet unforeseen outcomes, buyers have been impacted and will continue to be so by the advent of social technologies and social connection.  Gaining insights into the social buyer will become an increasing imperative for B2B businesses in the global marketplaces of the Social Age.

Understanding the social buyer involves utilizing social research methods to gain deep insights into how buyer dynamics associated with networking, affiliations, influence, and decision-making are being impacted by the influx of social technologies and multiple channels.  Multi-disciplinary approaches yielding new understandings will inform B2B organizations on adapting to as well as aligning with the evolving networked behaviors of social buyers.  Such approaches guiding B2B businesses to develop business models and strategies that social buyers welcome.  This welcoming very much opposed to what is fast becoming a worrisome fire hose of non-insight based content and 140 characters messaging inundating social buyers.  This fire hose trend indicates that there has been an overemphasis on the technology versus a balanced view that looks at the social behaviors of buyers that are changing.

Social Buyerography: Multiple Qualitative Approaches

What we do know today is that traditional methods of structured customer, buyer, and market research that are quantitative based cannot address the social and cultural changes taking place in our business society.  This includes the severely hindering structured methods typically associated with focus groups and surveys.  It is not to say that quantitative structured approaches are worse but to say that qualitative approaches are specifically needed to understand behavioral and interaction changes in situational settings.  Such situational as well as social settings involve group participation, networking, and decision-making.  A social research strategy for understanding buyers can be described as well as housed under the term Social Buyerography.  There are several qualitative approaches, both traditional as well as new, that can be considered when deploying Social Buyerography:

Field Buyer Research: there is no substitute for going out to the field to talk with buyers directly and using qualitative data gathering methods to understand buyer behaviors and interactions.  Much of this is centered on unstructured qualitative interviewing as well as observations.

Ethnographic Immersion: when the situation calls for an in-depth “day in the life” perspective, immersion into the business culture of potential buyers can provide a very enriching picture of insights that is unmatched.

Contextual Buyer Interviews: this qualitative approach is used to help understand specific situational and behavioral contexts in which buyers are engaged in group and individual decision-making.

Grounded Theory Interviews: this can be used when there is a need to test and validate hypotheses on specific “grounded” observations or data.  For example, a hypothesis can be formed on why an organization is experiencing year-over-year declining revenues.  This type of qualitative interviewing method, while still unstructured, can be used to validate theoretical reasons that may come from observations and customer data.

As we look to the future of understanding the social buyer persona, new forms of social research methods are forming.  These include webnography, digital ethnography, virtual ethnography, and others related directly to social media and social networking.  The commonality amongst these and other evolving methods is that they are based on the foundation of qualitative research.  These new methods augmenting sound core qualitative approaches and methods.

What is becoming more and more evident is the need to understand the social buyer of today.  Again reiterating that the emphasis be gaining insight into how B2B buyers today are becoming more “social” than ever before in their behavior.  Social technologies impacting the way buyers interact, network, and reach decisions.  Social Buyerology and the multiple social research methods that could be enveloped under the term Social Buyerography can go a long way in helping companies to stay relevant with buyers in the social age.

Next: Communicating Social Buyerology

The pendulum has been swinging rapidly during the past two years with respect to understanding buyer behavior and interactions in the social age.   What we know for sure is that the dynamics and interactions between businesses and buyers are undergoing their most significant transformation in many years and decades.  How groups of buyers as well as individual buyers are interacting with each other and with sellers continue to metamorphosis anew monthly redefining our knowledge of how buyers make decisions today.

We are also witnessing the phenomenon of buyers in B2B marketplaces becoming more social in their interactions.  This phenomenon is fueled by the advent of social networking technologies that enable buyers to interact with selling businesses and peer buyers.  The degree of interactions amongst buyers, both at a group and individual level, is most likely at the highest levels in the history of B2B selling and buying.  This phenomenon is causing turmoil in the rank and file infrastructure of B2B Marketing and B2B Sales.  We are seeing the births of new technologies and processes, such as content marketing, inbound marketing, marketing automation, and social media technologies attempting to address the voids created as B2B businesses shift their own buying processes and cycles.  The results of these new approaches and technologies are mixed as best to date.  Why do some work and others do not remain a puzzle.

Reflecting on the significant changes still evolving has led me to a belief that a new discipline is warranted in the B2B business world.  This discipline is called Social Buyerology which is centered on understanding buyers in the social age.  It seeks to understand the social influences on buyers as well as understand social networking relationships between individual buyers, social buyer groups, and sellers.  B2B buyers today are becoming more social and not just in technology usage but in terms of what the influence of the technology has done to make buyers behave more socially.  As if there were a social reservoir that has been untapped for many decades and social technology serving as the key to open the locks of the reservoir.

There are seven social factors embedded in Social Buyerology that lead to an understanding of buyer behaviors and interactions in the social age:

Social Mental Models: this represents the collective insight into attitudes, beliefs, perceptions, ideas, and emotive thoughts that are learned, experienced, and acquired in a social and business context.

Social Goals:  buyer behavior, as well as the foundational principle behind buyer persona development, is goal oriented.  In the social age, we are beginning to see the rise of social goals related to interacting and networking.  Drastically affecting how organizational as well as personal goals are established and fulfilled.

Social Persuasion: proactive approaches are cropping up everywhere in terms of messaging designed to persuade specific buyer groups.  Creating an imperative to understand new communication mediums and approaches to have buyers not only engage but adopt certain viewpoints.  Obviously, content marketing comes to mind here.  Which may go through several iterations as a practice and concept or something new may arise altogether as buyers continue to evolve socially.

Social Experience: this represents understanding the collective experiences a buyer and/or group of buyers has both in the social networking world as well as in the offline world.

Social Influence: this is looking at how new social networking and social group dynamics affect as well as influence individual and collective social buyers.  We are just beginning to understand social influence on a generational level and by certain professions.

Social Interaction: how groups of sellers, buyers, stakeholders, and multiple departmental affiliations interact socially as well as through new social technology mediums have direct correlations to decision-making.  New decision-making and buying cycle processes are now being based to a high degree on social interactions between multiple parties.

Social Networking:  the advent of the social age is affecting and changing how buyers relate to colleagues and peers not only within but outside of their organizations.  The spheres of networking has exploded and connections are made daily through channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.  We are still on top of an enormous current that is flowing rapidly in terms of understanding how this has changed buyer behavior and interactions.

Buyer behavior today with respect to decision-making is being directly affected by the continuing evolution of the social age.  B2B buyers are more social than ever which behooves B2B organizations to understand this impact as well as to adapt their business operations to the new social buyer.  While traditional influences remain strong, overtime and as younger generations grow into leadership, social constructs and social models of behavior will become more prevalent.  Social Buyerology can be a discipline devoted to understanding the new social buyers for organizations and allow for collaboration with academia.

Next:  The Methods of Social Buyerology

Without question, while B2B Marketing is focused on developing its new prominence in the early stages of the buying cycle via content strategy and content marketing, B2B Sales is caught flat-footed on how to adapt to changing buyer behaviors.  Professionals in B2B Sales must feel like they under assault from the constant dire predictions of outright dissolution in organizations as well as the constant pressure to squeeze more revenue out of the pipeline.  This may be especially true in B2B organizations where inbound competencies haven’t been developed and measurements for productivity are based on outbound calls, appointments, and deals.

I do not subscribe to the notion that B2B Sales will face extinction much like when the Roman Empire fell and the city of Rome burned.  What is true is that B2B Sales must go through a period of reinvention and cannot stand idly by as the world of B2B buyers continues to transform with each passing day.  The good news is that B2B Sales can become a critical resource for buyers in a new found way if reinvention means becoming buyer enablers.

Here’s the interesting twist in the changes that are occurring – as buyers become more self-directed - the more B2B organizations will view “buying” in a professional light as opposed to something they do.  My thought here is very different than the conventional purchasing department.  Self-directed buying that involves research and evaluation as well as stakeholder analysis will become an increasingly important role in B2B organizations.  Just like in other professions in embryo stages, a few will begin to lead the pack and bring some sense to the chaos of buying.  B2B organizations will begin to assign and delegate buying to “professional buyers” skilled in using Internet and social technologies and who are skilled in the process of executing a self-directed buying cycle.

Buyer Persona Development can be a process and means for B2B Sales to reinvent itself.  Understanding the archetypes of buyers and their relevant goals can provide the powerful insights B2B Sales needs to engage with buyers in this new social age.  How can B2B Sales begin to reinvent themselves starting today?  Here are a few guiding steps:

Commit to Research: this step is like perhaps going to a 12-step program related to an addiction.  A B2B organization must first admit and come to the realization that they may know very little about the new social buyer and that the reason they need to reinvent their sales organization is because they are out of touch with their buyers.   The first step is to recognize the need to know your buyers in a new and deep way.

Do the Right Research: the right research is based on qualitative research and contextual inquiry.  Meaning you must go where your buyers are and gain insight into behavior that no amount of quantitative arm twisting will reveal.  And oftentimes this means investing in third party help for a very important reason: not only will buyers be more forthcoming outside of the seller-buyer relationship but qualitative research and contextual inquiry (with knowledge of ethnographic and anthropology practices) takes skillful effort.

Don’t Fall in the Profiling Trap: a misunderstanding I wrote about in my recent article, Use Buyer Personas to Segment by Buying Behavior, is thinking that buyer personas are a profiling of specific titles and/or roles in your target organization.  Thinking only in this way will put you no further ahead than you already are in terms of reinvention.  Food for thought: if B2B organizations are assigning and delegating “professional” social buyers, how well do you know about them?  Who are they?  Are they the same as the titles and roles you’ve thought for the last twenty-five years?  What do these new buying cycles look like?

Build Insight-Based Buyer Personas - Not Templates:  in B2B Sales, insights about buyers are crucial to having a platform for engagement and conversational relevance.  Templates of buyer personas are very limiting in keeping the focus where it should be – on key insights and narratives that matter to how buyers go about accomplishing goals.

Design for Sales Readiness: the design of buyer personas should focus on sales readiness in B2B Sales.  Today’s B2B Sales Teams must be ready to anticipate and meet buyers where they are in the buying cycle.  Buyer Persona Development grounded in the right research can give an insightful window into how today’s “assigned” social buyers are self-directing their buying cycles.

Design for Interaction: designing buyer personas should include a healthy focus on interaction that involves personal engagement - whether it is by a social technology medium, by phone, or in person.  This can be done on two levels.  One to design for conversation and two to design for customized content assembly.

Inform Sales Structure: buyer persona development can contribute immensely to informing how to organize sales team structurally and in ways that best map to how buyers are self-directing their engagement.  The development effort informing on the right mix of inbound and outbound competencies that allow for an engaging as well as a redesigned buyer experience.

Inform Sales Roles and Hiring: the role of B2B Sales is transforming significantly and is at a critical juncture point.  It must demonstrate role change to the buyer community in order to restore as well as regain relevancy.  This means that B2B must junk their existing hiring criteria for sales they are wedded to.  Buyer persona development can inform on the skills, knowledge, education, and attributes needed by sales teams to succeed.

These steps outlined above will contribute towards the reinvention of B2B Sales within B2B organizations.  I also predict as B2B Sales adapts and evolves to changing buyer behaviors and reinvent anew, it will gain a prominent role in the eyes of the buyer.  The changing buyer is already starting to experience “content overload” and overwhelming information sorting.  B2B Sales, in a new role of expertise, can be the enabler and assembler of goal attaining opportunities that B2B buyers and social buyers alike will want as resources.