The Experience Buyers Expect Right Now

By now we should all be aware that buying preferences are becoming uniform across the board. The line between "B2C" and "B2B" has largely dissolved, as B2P (Business-to-People) has become the new paradigm. No matter how large or small the company, the common denominator in all of these purchases is...a person.

If you own a smartphone, you may not even be aware of the algorithms that have changed your buying expectations, even without you knowing the change has taken place. Their criteria for a good commerce experience is somewhat subjective based on the person, but here are 3 things we all have in common. We want:

1.   WHAT we want. (We expect wants/needs to be anticipated.)

2.   WHEN we want it. (Support our education about your product/service, at every stage of our journey.)

3.   HOW we want it. (Give the customer a great experience.)

WHAT THEY WANT

There are 3.5 billion Google searches each day. Your prospects are a part of this staggering statistic and part of their search includes trying to find out about your services and products, without any help from you.

From HBR and CEB we know that buyers are 60% through the buying journey before they reach out to a salesperson. The balance of informational power has shifted from being purely on the sell-side to the buy-side, assuming they have all the facts and know exactly what they want. The process looks like this: gather broad general knowledge, arm yourself with info, then engage the sales team to laser in on details (see how I bought my last car like this).

This shift has led to the rise and importance of selling methodologies like "The Challenger,” which is really focused on educated consultation over merely pitching product. (I'm a big fan of this approach. If you've gotten a note from me and your company is public, you better believe I've read your last earnings call transcript and the last annual report.)

With the move to being more consultative, you should know your customer better than they do and be prepared to prescriptively solve their problems before they even ask.

Buyers crave to have their needs anticipated and validated, so that they know they're not alone in their problem and that you’re capable of solving it.

Salespeople: because of the move to a consultative approach, remember good counseling practice when you talk to your customers: validate their pains, tell them they’re not alone in their problem, and relate a similar customer story.

It can be tough to know what a new prospect wants, but we’ve seen companies miss what their existing customers want even when they have the information right under their fingertips. For example, many distribution companies struggle with seeing buying trends and variances within their own customer-base, as it can be unwieldy for a salesperson to manage a myriad of customers and products. Through products like Opportunity Detection and SmartCPQ, you can see what customers are buying, gaps in their buying patterns, customer churn, cross-sell opportunities, and what/when they should be buying based on scientific and prescriptive recommendations. This is very helpful to know before the next customer meeting. How many times have you shopped online and, when you saw “Customers Like You Also Bought” said, “Oh wow, I should get that, I almost forgot!”

WHEN THEY WANT IT

With the exponential growth of the web and overwhelming amounts of information, our attention spans are getting exponentially shorter. You need to have information that supports your buyer’s journeys through every stage of the process, the “when.” If they don’t have those resources from you now, rest assured they’ll lose interest quickly (or get distracted) and move right along.

Your sales and marketing processes should effectively mirror and guide the market’s respective maturity and awareness of your products and services. Simple product/service? Make the “Buy Now” button easily accessible. Complex sale? Marketing and sales should work hand-in-hand to walk and educate someone through the process with aligned information and personnel.

For earlier stages make sure you have current content and information on your website to help educate your buyers through that first 60%. For later stages that involve a sales person, make sure sales has the information they need to support the remaining 40% of the process: add value at every step.

Some companies do better supporting different stages than others. For example, before becoming a PROS customer Hewlett Packard had enough educated buyers, but their processes were out of pace with demand, and were bottlenecking in order fulfillment. They couldn’t turn orders around fast enough or at the right price, which ultimately contributed to considerable attrition. We helped provide intelligent pricing and automated deal approvals so they could turnaround quotes faster, and not leave money on the table: this helped them deliver a customer experience with less friction.

I want you to imagine the last item you bought on Amazon. Now imagine, after reading and researching for days, agonizing over finding the right protein powder, the best guitar, the best Three Wolf Moon Shirt, you click “BUY NOW” and get this message: “Thanks for your interest. We’ll get back to you on availability and pricing in 3-5 business days.”

That tension you feel is the same tension your prospects feel whenever they get differing purchasing experiences in the same day: “Same-Day Shipping” and “We’ll Get Back To You.”

HOW THEY WANT IT

Effortless. Easy. You're only several clicks away from your favorite items on Amazon, and Prime NOW has done to shipping latency what fiber did to dial-up. (And their recent acquisition of Whole Foods will change the way we shop for groceries forever!). You're only several clicks away from finding the next best person to reach out to at a prospect company with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You’re several clicks away from having your favorite fast food delivered to you with Door Dash. In this Podcast from NPR, Apoorva Mehta talks about how he invented Instacart to circumvent the entire uncomfortable grocery shopping experience; your groceries can be delivered to you in just a few hours. In the Masters of Scale podcast by LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Brian Chesky explains how they completely reinvented and personalized travel and hospitality experience through AirBnB.

What do all of these companies have in common? They are so easy to use that many of us can't imagine NOT using them.

Time and customer experience are the new currency. If the experience with your company costs a prospect too much time, you’ve cost yourself that once-lost-never-found-again great first impression, and they’ve moved on to someone that’s easier to work with.

CONCLUSION

The first two tenants in this list really help fuel this last one: if you can get insight into what customers want, you can be prepared for when they want it, which means you can add value at every interaction and make it a great customer experience. To do this you should be leveraging A.I. and algorithmic processes to your advantage: these are what help you gain the level of insight and understanding into the experiences described.

Your company might be beholden to tribal knowledge and say: "A salesperson should know their market well" and along with Tina Turner say, “What’s data got to do with it?” Of course you should hire highly-competent reps but also consider this: You might be a great driver and know how to get to the grocery store, but you still use Waze to navigate. Why? Because you couldn’t possibly account for every possible path to the grocery store while factoring in real-time, crowd-sourced traffic patterns for every possible route.

You should use a seamlessly bionic combination of man and machine to know what your customers want and when they want it, and make your company easy to work with.