Why We Buy Products Connected to Place, People, and Past*
It’s crazy how this hurt thousands of startup growth.
It’s how B2C sales have pervasively impacted how we sell Enterprise B2B deals = the B2BB2C paradigm.
- eCommerce behavior has accelerated the merging of B2C and B2B industries with few barriers between them.
- They co-exist even in selling $1M+ of tech to the Fortune 300.
- Tech buyers behave as if they’re in a hybrid B2C mode.
They do excessive self-service, research, social networking, reviews, trials, try & buy….all B2C buying traits.
In mass, they exclude Tech vendors from engaging, influencing & selling to them individually.
Now, whether selling SaaS, Cyber, AI, DevOps++ your Buyers, Recommenders, and Decision Makers act more like consumers.
It’s now how they “feel” and buy products that are connected to place people & the Past.”
“We think that customers buy o people, features & functions. In reality, it’s emotions, cognitive biases, & engagement experience”.
Bridget Kendrick, CMO, ICIS
How did this happen?
- We pulled ahead 5-7 years due to the pandemic into accelerated digitization isolation.
- Personal, social, & work lives have become progressively stressed virtual, fast-paced, & 98% mobile.
- More and more people, in B2C and now in B2B, have begun “feeling they have lost their emotional anchorage”.
Current B2B research has revealed that this trend springs from a growing need among “buyers” to feel grounded.
With B2B sales vendors cannot discount Tech buyers, both business and personally can be in a “state of flux” due to the world changes.
“The difference between epic and epic failure is customer experience”
Peter Bell, Marketing Director, Adobe
- They should consider how prospects and customers buy with a B2C mentality.
- Like “buying from a well-defined relationship, location, someone they can trust, someone they know…
The biggest impact is in selling into the U.S. as a foreign company
Startups should take advantage of these emotions by updating their sales & marketing messages.
They should better reach customer segments with a higher need for groundedness.
And this feeds directly into reducing the “risks & expense” when selling into the US from Australia, Israel, or ANY country.
Being able to relate to a U.S. enterprise and its people demands a deeper understanding of the business, process, and inter-relationships.
The B2C mentality sits on top of all that.
Industry data has shown that B2B buyers who are purchasing products that connect them to their place, people, and past will pay more.
This trend if managed can lead to better deal flow, larger pipelines, & ultimately more sales.
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