It’s a Race for Trust and Buyers Pick the Winner
At Saleslove on Tour, Joe McNeill, CRO at Influ2, and Randy Littleson, CMO at Salesloft, discussed the non-linear nature of the modern buyer's journey. Together, they explored how companies can win over decision-makers and build momentum in the sales cycle by personalizing their experience throughout the entire journey. Here are key highlights from their conversation.
Understanding today’s buyer behavior and journey
The root of B2B business is building human-to-human relationships and trust. But over the past few years, it’s gotten more and more challenging for GTM teams.
Before you even know a buyer is interested in your company, they’ve already done their homework. They've scrolled through reviews, checked out product comparisons, and watched your virtual demo. According to Gartner, a sales rep gets roughly 5% of a customer's total purchase time.
At Salesloft, we consistently hear from our customers how critical it is to adapt to and serve the needs of the evolved buyer – one that is self-serve, digital-first, and value-conscious. Buyers and their preferences are changing. They have changed.
Buyers are not only granting us less face-to-face time, but the number of decision-makers involved in deals is also on the rise. This translates to a wider range of personas, each with unique expectations and motivations when it comes to the software purchase.
Gartner reports that B2B buyers are 1.8 times more likely to complete a high-quality deal when they engage with supplier-provided digital tools in partnership with a sales rep rather than independently.
All this demands a shift in sales and marketing strategies. To thrive in this landscape, companies need to achieve commercial alignment – in other words, seamless collaboration between sales and marketing.
How can revenue teams effectively deliver on the increased expectations of buyers?
I believe commercial teams often think of the sales process as a paint-by-numbers rather than a jigsaw puzzle. We try to impose our sales and marketing funnel on their journey when in reality that’s not helping buyers. Being able to meet them where they are is such an important aspect of helping move them through the complexity of today’s buying process.
To do this, we need to remember that it's not one person going through this complex journey, it's a whole buying group. Conversion rates grow exponentially with the number of outreached prospects. In bigger buying groups, sales outreach can increase conversions by 3.4 — 4.4x if sales talk to 11+ people instead of just one person.
At the same time, effective outreach requires a multichannel approach. Compared to cold outreach alone, campaigns that incorporate ads can see a significant lift – up to 6% depending on the buying group size.
This success hinges on close collaboration between marketing and sales. Marketing can guide through their entire journey with informative content and targeted campaigns, providing sales with actionable engagement data. Sales reps, armed with the right data from marketing, can then effectively answer the crucial questions: "Who to call first?" and "What to say to them?"
At Salesloft, we align our sales and marketing teams around the buyer and key moments in their journey. Our teams at Salesloft are seeing success with signal-based and trigger-based GTM. For example, we automatically route certain buyers into Cadences that are relevant to their signal and situation. It can be competitor-related, business funding, or circling back on a closed lost deal. In addition, we use Drift and Rhythm to guide the buyer journey at the right moments and prioritize the right actions to take based on the intent, the deal, and the revenue outcome.
Anastasiia is a Marketing Manager at Influ2 with over 8 years in the industry. She specializes in content marketing and appreciates the creative aspects of her role. When not generating more pipeline, she enjoys reading, knitting, and spending time with her two rescue cats and a lovely beagle named Bibi.
