Sales Enablement

4 Steps to Simplify the Increasingly Complex Buyer’s Journey

It’s critical that sales reps understand the need for and the actions necessary to simplify the sales process at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Today, all sales reps understand that the buyer’s journey is no longer a linear process. But the difference between a good sales rep and a great one is how they navigate through the increasingly complex buyer’s journey to leave a lasting impact and close deals. According to Gartner, sales reps today have just about 5% of a B2B buyer's time before they make a purchase. 

Gartner stat that sales reps only have about 5% of a B2B buyer's time image

So, what does this mean for sales reps? How should they go about maneuvering through the complex buyer’s journey to make sales and drive revenue? It’s critical that sales reps understand the need for and the actions necessary to simplify the sales process. Thus, when a buyer is ready to speak to a sales rep, the value the rep is able to deliver is seamless, quick, and proactive.

1. Leverage Digital Sales Rooms to Ensure All Stakeholders Stay Informed

According to Gartner, the typical buying group for a B2B solution includes 6 to 10 decision-makers. And it’s likely that each member of the group has a slightly different buyer persona. Having the ability to effectively sell to each stakeholder is an essential part of navigating the new normal of sales. With digital sales rooms, you can touch on each aspect of the buyer’s journey for each buyer persona all in one room. 

A digital sales room serves as a one-stop shop, providing all stakeholders with the opportunity to access sales content and gain enhanced visibility into the entire sales process. A single digital sales room makes it easy for sales reps to manage an unlimited number of buyers. The question is, how do digital sales rooms help simplify the buyer’s journey?

Research shows that buyers who perceived the information they received from salespeople as helpful throughout their buying process were 2.8 times more likely to experience a high level of purchase ease (Source: Gartner). Plus, these buyers were 3 times more likely to make a larger purchase with less regret. Digital sales rooms help to simplify the buyer’s journey by housing all relevant sales collateral in one easy-to-access location. Thus, there is no need for stakeholders to have to search for relevant sales information, miss out on any product demos, or become left out of the sales process. Everything they need to make a purchasing decision is right in front of them.

2.  Align Your Sales and Marketing Strategies to Make it Easy to Find, Learn About, and Start Using Your Product

The buyer’s journey is long and it encompasses more than just sales. Marketing plays a major role in ensuring the buyer’s journey is smooth and streamlined. It’s essential for marketing and sales teams to align on their mission, goals, and messaging to effectively attract buyers and convert them into customers. 

Due to a lack of communication and efficacy data, the marketing team sometimes produces sales materials that aren’t relevant to the needs of the sales team’s buyers. This forces sales reps to spend the valuable time they could be selling on creating their own materials to share with their buyers. The problem is, the marketers have little knowledge that the salespeople are having difficulties finding content that resonates with their buyers. This is partially due to the lack of visibility into which pieces of content are performing well and whether or not sales has enough relevant content to support each decision maker. The key here is to foster consistent communication between the sales and marketing departments.

Essentially, marketing and sales teams must work together to create educational and relevant content that eases the buyer’s journey. With greater visibility into the sales process, marketing teams need to align their materials and messaging to sales tactics that have proven to be successful. 

3. Focus Your Efforts on Enhancing Buyer Enablement to Support the Buyer Along the Buyer’s Journey

It’s important to empower buyers with the resources they need to complete the purchase process in a timely manner. This is called buyer enablement. The best way to enhance buyer enablement at each stage of the buyer’s journey is to provide them with the most up-to-date and relevant information based on the buyer’s use case, pain points, and needs.

For example, enable your buyer by providing them with the right content at the right time in their buyer’s journey with collateral such as: 

  • Datasheets
  • Proof-of-concepts
  • In-depth demos
  • ROI calculators
  • Recorded customer references
  • Competitor analyses
  • Onboarding commitments and processes

At the same time, don’t forget to enable your buyers indirectly by building trust and creating urgency around your solution through thought leadership. To do both effectively, it’s important to advise the buyer on various options rather than hard-sell them on just one. This tactic will show that you genuinely care about the buyer’s best interest and that you have a breadth of knowledge on a given topic or industry. 

4. Leverage Real-Time Buyer Behavior to Create Hyper Personalized Sales Interactions

Today, B2B buyers expect the sales process to be personalized to their specific needs and use case. And why shouldn’t they? Personalization is just about everywhere. From the digital ads you see on social media to the hyper-relevant emails you receive from your favorite brands, they’re all personalized to grab your attention. Your sales tactics should be too. 

Here’s where real-time buyer behavior data comes in. Behavioral data helps sellers understand which pieces of content would be most helpful to share with buyers to move them along their buyer’s journey. This data includes information about:

  • Which pieces of content the buyer is viewing and sharing
  • The number of shares and views a piece of collateral receives
  • How the buyer is interacting with your content
  • Null search results signaling gaps within your current content universe

Behavioral data also shows you which stage of the buyer’s journey a prospect is in depending on the types of content they’ve interacted with so far. With these insights, you can determine which course of action to take next. Should you share an ROI guide next? Or maybe offer the buyer a demo. Real-time insight into the buying process increases sales pipeline visibility and helps you determine which deals are trending in the right direction.

Final Thoughts

Today, navigating the buyer’s journey is challenging. However, simplifying the sales process is essential to increasing sales velocity and your closing rate. We can help. Book your demo to see how our digital sales rooms speed up your sales cycle. 

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