Chapter 1
The state of Buyer Enablement
Sales enablement focuses on helping sales teams support buyers. In contrast, buyer enablement represents a subtle shift that aims to fully empower buyers by building a strategic arsenal of assets to access at their convenience.
For sales teams struggling to close deals and marketers frustrated by a non-linear process, it’s important to keep this in mind: buyers are overwhelmed too! It’s not like being a buyer was ever stress-free or easy, but several factors have made their experience considerably more difficult.
Sales are hard. Buying is harder.
The equation is simple: more voices + more information + a prolonged purchasing process = a more stressful buying experience. Anyone who has done online research before purchasing anything from a laptop to a vacuum cleaner to a set of kitchen utensils knows the quest for info can become a dizzying descent into data overload.
The struggle of buying has pushed a sales response that prioritizes more information, flexibility, and peak responsiveness, even in the face of data showing those don’t help close deals. In fact, according to research done by Harvard Business Review, a “responsive” sales approach that strives to satisfy all customer requests for information and support harms purchase ease and increases the likelihood of purchase regret by 50%.
Bending backward to be on a call with every data point won’t make buying easier, nor will it help buyers wade through an ever-growing array of buying options.
Buying units are growing
But it’s not just a problem of more options. It’s that there are way more people chiming in than ever before. The average buying unit now consists of anywhere from 6 to 11 people, which, based on recent research, will continue to trend upward. And each additional voice is coming with their own opinions, armed with their
research, and advocating for their respective place in the organization. Buying units may now include folks from finance, legal, compliance, procurement, data protection, IT management, accounting, and a broad spectrum of buying perspectives with conflicting interests.
Timelines are inconsistent
and buying journeys are non-linear
Mounting evidence suggests the fundamental purchase process has splintered into a fragmented series of steps with no consistent order of operation. In essence, the more predictable, step-by-step order that many buyers followed in the past has morphed.
Contacting a salesperson for a demo, which may have been the initial step for a buying team 15 years ago, is now done towards the backend of the process. This is a repercussion of 70% of the buying process occurring online and can leave marketers in the dark as to what specific piece of content or insight made an actual difference in the customer’s decision.
So yes, forging consensus creation amongst such a diverse buying collective is an exceptionally slippery slope and requires a thoughtful balance of providing buyers prescriptive advice and tactical support.
Achieving that balance can only be achieved with a grasp of who the buyer is and what motivates them to make purchasing decisions in 2022.