B2B Buying Behavior and their Challenges by Brent Adamson

No.1 thing we should solve for today in order to increase the likelihood of a customer buying a high quality low regret deal is "Customer Confidence".

It's not customers confidence in supplier, or its brand, product or sales professional. It's customers confidence in themselves. Their ability to make large-scale decisions on behalf of their company. i.e. 

1. Have we asked the right questions
2. Have we looked at the right information
3. Are we even agreed how confident are we that we even agree on the right problem i.e. this is the best solution

4 significant forces eroding Customer Confidence on an ongoing basis

1. Decision Complexity - B2B buying decisions have become increasingly complex as more and more stakeholders have gotten involved in that purchase decision with competing priorities competing metrics
2. Information Overload - Its not a customer struggle with a high quantity of information but they struggle with high quantities of high quality information. Everybody's got data everybody's got research but now I don't know what to do so I just research it more and just wind up even more confused. Refer to Sense making for Sales in HBR
3. Implementation Uncertainity - This can deeply undermine customers confidence and their ability to actually well Implement that solution and actually increases their regret for whatever they buy and it's very interesting because much of that problem isn't really about suppliers but about customers own inability to implement that solution effectively but their failure to implement carries over to your solution 
4. Value Opacity (i.e. Value Promised Vs Delivered) - value gap between value promised and value delivered/ realized

Solution is "Make Frameworks". i.e. 

1. Creating Frameworks for our customers around decision making 
2. Framework around buying if you will a framework around information a framework around implementation 
3. Framework around value to help them organize and analyze and prioritize their thinking how do we buy, who should we pull in and what order, how do we get them on board you, know which information matters how do we organize that
4. Information on which questions do Customers need to ask themselves and ultimately answer as we consume that information what are the very specific steps of implementation in what order how do we know when we get there and what are the dimensions of value that will truly tell us whether or not we're succeeding and how do we measure those. 

 

That's the way that you set yourself apart today not just because you're approaching your customers differently because also you're solving for the number one thing customers crave today which is their belief not in you but their belief in their in themselves and their ability to make large-scale decisions on behalf of their Company. 

Note: Courtesy and Inspiration Brent Adamson. Adopted from Brent´s talk on Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wksen56eTn0