Sellers are striving to be more responsive than ever-taking the customer’s lead and providing whatever support is requested. Our research finds that the vast majority of sales professionals believe that giving customers more information helps them make better decisions that they must flexibly respond to a customer’s direction (even when they disagree with it) and that it’s “extremely important” to help customers consider all possible alternatives.
Unfortunately, the very tactics they think will increase ease of purchase often do the opposite.
Suppliers have of course been working on simplifying sales since the dawn of selling-and the majority in our surveys assume they’re succeeding. Clearly, much of what makes the process so hard has nothing at all to do with suppliers and everything to do with customers themselves. What’s more, 65% of customers tell us that they spent as much time as they’d expected to need for the entire purchase just getting ready to speak with a sales rep. Among their responses are “hard,” “awful,” “painful,” “frustrating,” and “minefield.” We find that a typical solutions purchase takes twice as long as customers expect it will. At CEB we’ve asked thousands of senior executives at companies around the world to describe the complex-solutions purchase process in one word. That customers struggle to buy comes as a surprise to many suppliers. In addition to slowing the purchase process, an excess of options leads to post-purchase anxiety: “Did we do the right thing? Would another choice have been better?” Our research shows that such second-guessing occurs in more than 40% of completed B2B purchases. No matter the choice, some stakeholders will always find aspects of an alternative more appealing. Research shows that for individual consumers, greater choice isn’t necessarily a good thing (see “More Isn’t Always Better,” by Barry Schwartz, HBR, June 2006) the same principle applies to big B2B purchases. The resulting divergence in personal and organizational priorities makes it difficult for buying groups to agree to anything more than “move cautiously,” “avoid risk,” and “save money.” One CMO has memorably referred to this as “lowest common denominator purchasing.”įinally, the expanding range of options that B2B customers face requires increasing amounts of time for evaluation as stakeholders deliberate over the trade-offs.
More information begets more questions, with the result that customers take longer and longer to make a purchase decision-if they ever do.Īt the same time, the number of people involved in B2B solutions purchases has climbed from an average of 5.4 two years ago to 6.8 today, and these stakeholders come from a lengthening roster of roles, functions, and geographies. With each iteration they work harder to ensure that they fully understand the requirements and the alternatives. In our work with companies around the world, we’ve seen decision makers pushed into unproductive, open-ended learning loops by the deluge of information. Customers are increasingly overwhelmed and often more paralyzed than empowered. But with a wealth of data on any solution, a raft of stakeholders involved in each purchase, and an ever-expanding array of options, more and more deals bog down or even halt altogether.
Buying complex solutions, such as enterprise software or manufacturing equipment, has never been easy.
They may be better informed than ever, but CEB research shows that they’re deeply uncertain and stressed. Most B2B sellers think their customers are in the driver’s seat-empowered, armed to the teeth with information, and so clear about their needs that they don’t bother to engage with suppliers until late in the process, when their purchase decision is all but complete.Ĭustomers don’t see it that way.