The notion that perceived risks influences purchasing behavior has been around for quite some time.  As we have seen an increase in the complexity of the buying process, we are seeing a correlating increase in Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© associated with purchase decisions.  Compounding perceived risks is the increase in choices as mentioned in my previous article as well as new social channels to explore.  This new mishmash of complexity, choices, and new channels causes a much higher degree of uncertainty on the part of buyers.

What does understanding choice have to do with Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)©?  It comes down to two general areas:

Buyers are dealing with the uncertainty and the risks of making a bad choice

Buyers are dealing with the unknown consequences resulting from a bad choice

These two general areas of perceived risks are not necessarily new however the degree of impact has expanded significantly as a result of the convergence of the Internet and Social Technologies.

Variables that are affecting the degree of impact include speed, awareness, chance, and reputation.  Put more simply:

The impact of a bad choice is happening much faster, more people as well as organizations are aware when they happen, there are fewer chances to recover, and more damage to individual as well as company reputation.  The end result being that buyers are perceiving risks to be greater than ever and making the right choice more challenging than ever. 

Previously, I had written about Buyer Perceived Values (BPV)© and the need to understand how buyers prioritize values.  The other side of the coin is to understand Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© and to understand how buyers see the degrees of consequences that can result from a bad choice.  This calls for senior executives and strategists to increase their understanding through what I call Buyerology© -  which represents a deeper qualitative level of buyer intelligence.  Gaining deep understanding of complex perceived values and risks provides a window into the mind of the buyer as well as the business culture of an organization.

What research with C-Suite executives has borne out is that this understanding arrives too late when it comes to new services, products, and strategies.  Oftentimes, learning the hard way why a new product launch, a new service capability, or a much hyped strategy implemented fell flat on its’ face – and both seller and buyer reputation bruised and battered.  To prevent their own consequences, selling organizations will need to improve their early-stage buyer intelligence capabilities and make the investment upfront as opposed to investing in post-failure debriefings.

Improving buyer intelligence in Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© can lead to being informed on important decisions related to:

Pre-Sales Content: Providing knowledge and information that instills confidence in choice and reducing perceived risks.

Sales Interaction: Enabling sales to engage in conversations and interactions that authentically confront perceived risks and brings them to the forefront of the sales process as opposed to last minute barriers.

Post-Sale Implementation: Content, implementation services, and interaction can all be used to enhance a buyer’s perception that adverse risk has been avoided and value gained.

There is a given in all this.  The given is that a selling organization truly has the quality and the confidence that it can deliver for the buyer and that it has assurances in place that they can reduce Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR)© significantly.  No amount of content, smooth talking, and excuses will make up for poor quality and capability of a product or service.

Understanding perceived risks today through deeper qualitative buyer intelligence (Buyerology©) can go a long way towards organizations standing out from the pack of options that can exists.  Insightful understanding leading to helping buyers to make choices that are made with more ease, confidence, authenticity, and affirmation that ultimately results in hard sought loyalty.

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When formulating marketing, sales, demand generation, and content strategies, an important factor is that of understanding the choices buyers make.  Oftentimes, strategies are crafted with a singular focus on the purchase decision.  However, increasingly evident today is that buyers make purchase decisions that are a summation of several choices.  In today’s social world, buyers are confronted with making choices in more areas than ever that directly influence the ultimate purchase or renewal decision.  Helping buyers to make choices in pre-purchase as well as post-purchase situations paves the way for influencing the purchase decision – hopefully in your favor.

At this moment in time, we are in an unusual paradoxical irony when it comes to choices and decisions.  While the increase in Internet and social technologies have made it easier for buyers to control their fate, the many choices available to them has made the buying process more complex for both sellers and buyers.  When there are more options and choices available, it can actually increase the complexity of decision-making.  This unique combination of an increase in buyer options and choices along with an increase in the complexity of the buying process is directly impacting buyer behaviors today.  One way of understanding changes in buyer behaviors is to understand buyer choices.

To gain such an understanding, we can look at several areas where buyers are confronted with choice:

Information

I want to refrain from using the word content in this context.  The word “content” is super hyped today and has taken on multiple meanings.  If we look at the root of what buyers are seeking, it gets us to information.  Buyers are making many choices on where to go for information, how to retrieve information, and identifying what information is relevant.  We are still very much in the infancy of understanding the buyer behaviors associated with information gathering and the impact of new Internet and social technologies.

Buyer Experience

What has transpired over the past few years is a wholesale change in the collective set of experiences buyers have available to them.  Preferences are beginning to settle into the minds of buyers and choices being made on the type of experiences they desire.  I have written much about buyer experience over the past year; especially as an area of innovation for companies.  Understanding how buyers are now choosing experiences they desire and how they impact the purchase decision is critical to informing future strategies.  As I have written previously about, understanding the concept of experiential buying is becoming more and more important.

Values

Buyers are confronted with choices on values they perceive as relevant.  In today’s hyper-connected environment, these values are constantly shifting.  Staying abreast of the choices buyers make on values they factor into decision-making can make a difference in discovering where your organization has the edge over competitors.  Gaining an understanding of what influences choices about values as well as how these values influence the purchase decision allows for making the nimble and even subtle adjustments to strategies that connects with buyers on where they are at that moment.  Having insight into choices and compromises on pre-purchase to post-purchase values can be a game changer.

Goals

Buyers are confronted more so today than ever on making choices about the goals they pursue.  This is happening on both an articulated and unarticulated level.  What do I mean by this?  The amount of variables as well as constraints introduced to buyers is directly affecting choices made about which goals to focus on accomplishing.  The shifting in goal priorities can make it difficult for buyers to articulate exactly what they are characterizing as a goal.  It is still relevant, in fact, more so today that we understand the obvious as well as the not-so-obvious choices buyers make about goals.  Qualitative as well as contextual inquiry based methods common to ethnography and anthropology are best suited to get at the unarticulated goal choices of buyers.

Buyerology© is a means for framing the need to understand buyer choices and changing buyer behaviors.  Understandings that is crucial to informing future strategies and organizational decisions on how to be relevant to the new day and age of the buyer.  What we do know today is that it is not business as usual.  If that is the case, then we best find out what exactly is considered business today by buyers.

(Note to readers and followers: I will be making a transition by the end of the year to a new blogging platform and new website to focus on Buyerology© and enhanced buyer understanding through Business Buyergraphics©.  Please visit www.buyerology.com for more information and to sign up for updates.   Stay tuned for more articles on Buyerology© and I hope for a smooth transition over the next few weeks.)

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As we’ve entered into a new decade with new web and social technologies continuing to advance at warp speed, new buyer behaviors continue to emerge.  Some new buyer behaviors, such as informational search, are no longer emerging but have crossed over into accepted reality.  With other new buyer behaviors, such as those related to social influence, we are only getting a glimpse of at this moment in time.  The given in the current state of B2B marketing and sales is that buyer behavior and complex buying processes have changed.

One of the toughest challenges in the past few years has been to figure out how to respond to these changes.  One place to start is for executives to ask a bold question: are we still selling like it’s 1999?  An especially valid question for companies that have traditionally been sales driven and the dominance of a sales culture has reigned for several decades.  Companies have changed and responded – but have the changes been more cosmetically enhancing or truly systemic in nature?  I think there is a big difference and let’s look at a few important areas:

Budgeting

Let’s start with the money trail.  Has the proportion of budgets devoted to sales and marketing changed?  Or are you still having the same ratio as far back as 1999?  I am mentioning this first because companies and people will tend to behave and adapt to how much budget they have and how they are paid.  If the ratio is still the same or the needle has moved marginally – might be good to think about changing.

Technology

Companies are implementing new marketing and sales automation technologies.  The real question is: are new technologies automating new systemic adaptations to changing buyer behaviors or are they simply automating existing sales processes that haven’t changed much since 1999?

Inbound versus Outbound

The inbound versus outbound reflection is fraught with real cultural issues.  Let’s not pretend that there has not been for several decades a kind of power play and power struggle between inside and outside.  For years, most prominently in sales driven cultures, the inside sales teams and inbound marketers have been relegated to the second tier in terms of budget, talent, perception, and support.  If your culture is still a reflection of 1999 where there is top heavy dominance for outbound activities and strategies, then you might want to get past the idea that you have new web site as being your big change.  Inbound marketing and the support of highly skilled inside sales teams are here to stay.

Talent and Hiring Criteria

Are your hiring criteria’s the same as 1999?  If you haven’t worked with human resources for several years to examine new talent requirements for true systemic changes, then this could be a good starting point.  Does the majority of your sales teams still look like and possess the same talent like it’s 1999?  If so, the attribute and skill levels may prove to be a mismatch to new changing buyer behaviors and having buyers heading towards competitors.  Buyers will want to work with advisors good at orienteering versus sellers good at presenting.

Sales Training and Processes

When was the last time you examined sales training and sales processes?  Are sales people still going through the same or similar sales training that sales teams went through in 1999?  Do your sales processes, despite the addition of new technologies, represent the same 4, 5, 6, or however many stages you had in 1999?  To adapt to new changing buyer behaviors calls for systemic changes to training and sales processes.  Not doing so in today’s evolving buyer driven world will alienate your company from buyers.

The world of buyers and sellers has literally been turned upside down since 1999.  If your organization hasn’t made transformational changes yet, it’s not too late.  The first step to doing so is to take a hard look in your boardroom mirror and ask perhaps one of the most profound question you can ask: are we still selling like it’s 1999?

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We are living in a world that is fraught with uncertainty.  The degree of uncertainty for businesses today probably is at the highest level in decades.  Resulting in a chaotic world for sellers and buyers looking to make sense of what the future may hold.

This high degree of uncertainty and chaotic environment is showing up in many forms for both buyers and sellers.  Whether it is sellers suffering from significant skill gaps as recently pointed out in surveys completed by DemandGen Report and Sirius Decisions or buyers in recent compiled reports indicating lack of knowledge and information that helps them to make purchasing decisions – uncertainty and chaos reigns at the moment.  This perfect storm of uncertainty and chaos making the ability of marketer’s to communicate with buyers extremely challenging and causing sales organizations to struggle in being relevant to the buying process.  So how does an organization get a hold of itself in such times?

Adaptation Begets Patterns

Organizations and buyers are highly adptable albeit some adapt quicker while others lag.  Oftentimes, those who do lag are left off the train with some just barely grabbing a hold of the last caboose that is pulling way.  When adaptation in industries and markets occur, patterns begin to emerge as we have seen during the past three years – such as in how buyers search for information.  A key to being relevant to buyers is an organization’s willingness to invest in staying abreast of patterns and then adjusting.  This is much easier said than done.  Buyer behavior patterns can be tricky indeed for it can be like shifting sand on a beach that on the surface looks flat but the moment a disturbance occurs -  a crater is revealed.  Caught unaware of the underlying shifts in buyer as well as market behaviors, an organization can find itself falling into a crater that could be difficult to climb out of.

Buyer Behavior Research and Analysis

Previously I have written about the use of multiple qualitative approaches that relates to Buyerology© and the understanding of buyer behaviors.  Investing in a collective use of qualitative approaches, which I called Buyerography recently, helps organizations to get the deep insights needed to be relevant to buyers.  They offer a window into identifying emerging patterns that provides nimbleness in terms of responding to the shifts in buying behaviors and processes.  Buyer behavior research and analysis is becoming an important means for organizations to recognize emerging patterns on the part of buyers and buying organizations.  Understanding buyer behavior is a qualitative social science in particular thus an overemphasis on quantitative analysis will make it difficult to reveal the underlying patterns that are emerging.  Quantitative tells organizations plenty about what and who whereas qualitative efforts in buyer behavior research can reveal much about why and how – important to understanding the story behind buying decisions.

Bringing Order To Uncertainty And Chaos

Once patterns can be discovered, bringing order to chaos and uncertainty lays in understanding buyer priorities and goals.  An essential point and the reason buyer behavior research is a primer for this understanding is that buyers themselves are dealing with a high degree of uncertainty and chaos.  They are having their own degree of difficulty in clearly being able to express priorities and goals in precise ways.  Given that premise, then organizations must develop a means for identifying patterns as well as being able to interpret patterns into an actionable understanding of buyer priorities and goals.

The path to gaining a deep understanding of buyer priorities and goals is through buyer behavior research and analysis.  The high degree of uncertainty and chaos in today’s marketplaces makes a presumed understanding one that can be filled with many craters.  Craters that can be littered with failed product launches, content marketing efforts, demand generation initiatives, and a smoldering fire of bad reputation.

Is it time for organizations to take a hard look at their efforts in understanding emerging buyer behavior patterns and how they reveal why and how buyers are making purchasing decisions today?  I know my answer – what is yours?

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As a follow-up to the article Influence of Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) on Buyer Behaviors and Decisions, offered is a perspective on how to implement a scorecard approach.  The Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) Scorecard combines both a qualitative as well as a quantitative approach to understanding the influence of buyer values.  An important disclaimer here is that there have been many scorecard approaches for measuring customer value over the past two decades.  My point is not to endorse any particular one but to endorse the notion that values are rapidly changing and that buyer perceived value is critical to understanding buyer behavior.  The understanding of buyer behavior is the central focal point of Buyerology© and understanding Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) is one key aspect.

Before jumping into a quantitative approach, it is important to emphasize the need for reaching an understanding of Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) qualitatively.  Perceived values are changing rapidly and will continue to do so as new buyer behaviors are formed – changes driven by the introduction of new technologies and business models.  Multiple and varietal forms of qualitative methods help to provide a unique articulation of value criteria that buyers may formalize or internalize for decisions.  Qualitative understanding is essential due to buyers, common to human behavior, having difficulty in offering a clean series of statements that accurately reflect their value sentiments.  Multiple qualitative methods assist in identifying un-articulated patterns of thinking and behaviors that can be translated into value attributes unique to your industry, markets, and organization.  Basing a scorecard approach on a generalized and presumed sense of buyer perceived value attributes mitigates the usefulness of a Buyer Perceived Value Scorecard severely for informing buyer strategies.   Now let’s take the academic speak out of the above and simply say that if you base the scorecard on what you think buyer’s value versus actually going out to talk to buyers and using qualitative methods to uncover values – it will be of no particular use.

As mentioned in the previous article on Buyer Perceived Value (BPV), value has been viewed conventionally around product and service.  The convergence of the Internet and the Social Age is resulting in new as well as evolving values that we may not fully understand at the moment.  Calling for qualitative means of discovering exactly what these values are and the meaning behind them.  This is the primary reason why I advocate strongly the need for qualitative research to understand Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) meaningfully.

Once value attributes have been identified, monitoring and using a scorecard approach can help to inform how an organization can improve as well as build new strategies to better align with buyers.  To make a scorecard purposeful for informing strategies, there are several key elements to incorporate:

Priority: Not all values are perceived equally.  Determining through qualitative means how much weight buyers place on certain value attributes is essential.

Ideal: After values are weighted, what do the values look like in a perfect world to buyers?  The goal becoming how to score a perfect 10 on all value attributes.

Perceived: Once value attributes have been identified and established, a combination of qualitative and survey methods can help in discovering how buyers perceive the organization abilities in measuring up to the ideal.

Differential: Using the scorecard approach can help in identifying the largest differentials between what buyers consider of high value and where the organization is falling short in the minds of buyers.

Below is a simplified version of such a scorecard:

In the example below, you will see a red flag around implementation support suggesting improvement.  You will also note that 24 hour turnaround is prioritized highly and this can include the use of social networks.  The meaning behind each value attribute listed should be supported by qualitative interpretation.  For example, what exactly do buyers’ value in implementation support?  How much of a factor is social engagement behind 24 hour turnaround perception?

By combining the use of multiple qualitative research methods and quantitative analysis, an organization can begin to get a realistic handle on how well they measure up to the perceived values buyers base decision-making criteria’s on.  We are at a point in marketplace history where uncertainty reigns.  The importance of refreshing, qualitatively, the understanding of exactly what buyers perceive as values and how much weight is put on each is critical to being on the buyer’s radar of choice.  What we can count on is that new technologies, services, and business models will cause shifts in what buyer’s value.

How do you plan to stay informed of these shifts in buyer perceived values?

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Buyerology by Tony Zambito is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.goalcentric.com.

Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) Scorecard by Tony Zambito is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.goalcentric.com.

In my recent article, Buyerology: The New Science of Understanding Buyer Behavior, I introduced the concept of Buyerology and the need for a renewed focus on understanding buyer behavior in the Social Age.  A key component of understanding buyer behaviors and decisions is gaining a reality check on Buyer Perceived Values (BPV).  How well organizations; in relations to products, service, and brand; maps to Buyer Perceived Values will serve as the one of the primary influences that shapes buyer behaviors and purchase decisions.

Buyer behavior research, performed through qualitative means, can reveal many aspects of what comprises Buyer Perceived Values (BPV).  Buyer experience is now becoming one of the most important factors that contributes to and influences these values.  The convergence of the Internet and the Social Age, in fact, is introducing many new variables and factors that influence Buyer Perceived Values.  Some of the new variables include:

Buyer Experience: previous as well as in process buyer experience can have an enormous impact on how buyers perceive the value that organizations can bring to their challenges and environments.  This correlation is becoming stronger as more self-directed experiences by buyers evolve.

Engagement: I have written recently about social engagement as well as how buyers are internalizing their own Social Engagement Index.  Evidence is building that how involved and how engaged buyers are is shaping the buyer’s perceived value of making a decision to enter into a relationship as well as make a purchase decision.

Knowledge: shared knowledge related to informative problem solving can help influence positively buyer’s perceived values.  This is an area of improvement for the evolving areas of content strategy and content marketing.  Just as social media fatigue may be setting in, I am beginning to see signs of content fatigue also.  Content creation for the sake of content, especially with dramatic self-promoting marketing flair, is now getting filtered by buyers.  The old adage that too much of good thing can actually hurt you can be true in this case.

Network: a new evolving factor is the growing influence of social networks that extends well beyond peer influence.  A new dynamic that associates peer recommendations with something we can refer to as network buzz.  It is proving to be a tricky formula.  A formula that needs to be organic as opposed to imposed upon.

These are just four new and evolving, of sure to be more variables, that influence Buyer Perceived Values.  Dramatically calling for the need for further buyer behavior research that can help organizations today understand why and how buyers are making decisions today.  This does not minimize nor excludes other conventional type variables such as:

Brand: a strong brand is also a strong leverage point in influencing Buyer Perceived Values (BPV)

Loyalty: the cumulative value of previous buyer experiences and relationships can translate into strong customer loyalty

Quality: no amount of new efforts in social business and content marketing can make up for poor quality and service.  Another old adage applies here: make sure your house is in order before you move on.

Risks:  let’s face it – changing products or services in a B2B market can turn into an agonizing experience for buyers.  Buyers have to see the risks of changing mitigated in order to make a switch.  The degree of risks involved has a direct influence on Buyer Perceived Value.

Price: competitive pricing will always remain a significant variable in determining a Buyer’s Perceived Value.  The positive or negative impact of other variables can influence the tolerance level on pricing and how it directly influences a Buyer’s Perceived Value.

What we do know is that the above mentioned variables or factors, both new and conventional, translate into Buyer Perceived Values which directly affect the buyer’s behavior and decision-making.  How buyers experience these variables or factors throughout the buying process not only will shape their internalized Buyer Perceived Values but also determine how long they choose to stay in the buying process specifically with one organization versus another.

Understanding Buyer Perceived Values requires qualitative research means and constant monitoring as we now live in a hyper-connected and social world.  Not only will values shift over time, but we are bound to witness new factors or variables that evolve and further change the buyer landscape.

One place senior executives can start thinking about Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) in general is by asking: do I have any idea what our buyer’s perceived values are?

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Over the course of the past two years, we’ve seen a marked shift in buyer behavior and buying choices.  So much so that the degree of uncertainty of why and how both individual buyers and organizational buyers make buying decisions has also markedly increased.  There is a direct correlation occurring whereby as buyers continue to increase their share of self-directing the buying decision without any direct interactions from sellers, the degree of uncertainty grows.  While quantitatively as well as statistically we have a sense of what buyers are doing, as survey reports by Baseone and DemandGen indicate, we still lack in-depth qualitative awareness on why and how certain buying choices are made.

This is awakening a renewed reality among business today that understanding shifts in buying behavior is becoming paramount to planning marketing and selling strategies that will succeed.  Buyer behavior understanding began to surface more prominently in the mid-1970’s but remained on the fringes of planning and strategies as product-centricity was entrenched in much of business as we knew it through the ‘80’s and ‘90’s.  During the past three decades we have seen a growth in customer and buyer-centric thinking however buyer behavior analysis remained somewhat a small component of marketing and sales thinking as well as planning.  Fast forward to the last five years and the explosive convergence of the Internet and the Social Age; we are seeing recognition that buyer behavior understanding is moving towards being the centerpiece linchpin of planning and strategy.  Companies today are attempting to make themselves relevant to buyers who are radically evolving their buying behaviors and have more buying choices than they ever dreamed of in just a few short years.  The relevancy mystery can only be solved by understanding buyer behaviors and the shifts in buying choices that are occurring.

We are witnessing another awakening as a result of new and rapidly evolving buyer behaviors; organizations today needing to approach marketing and selling interactions as more science and less art.  These monumental awakenings call for a new approach and concept I call Buyerology.  Buyerology is a means to introduce more science into understanding, both quantitatively and qualitatively, buyer behaviors and buying choices.  The convergence of the Internet and the Social Age requires new approaches to tools that are used to reach in-depth understanding as well as to monitor rapid shifts in buyer behaviors.  Buyerology must offer approaches and tools that help to translate buyer behavior understanding and insights into meaningful strategies that accomplish the relevancy that remains elusive for many companies today.

My own shift in thinking about buyer behavior began with a series of articles on Social Buyerology.  The articles tapped into the recognition and movement towards more science and less art in the spheres of marketing and sales as well as in overall social strategy.  Reflecting back on ten years since originating buyer persona development, much of the analysis performed via buyer persona development was in essence about buyer behavior.  Recently, I have written about how buyer persona development must indeed undergo its own transformation at this juncture in modern business history.

This article marks a turning point for me personally and professionally.  I have been thinking about something – in fact a lot – Tom Peters use to bellow loudly in many of his presentations years ago – that if you’ve been doing the same thing or staying with the same company for ten years or more you’ve become institutionalized.  In similar ways, buyer personas as an idea has become institutionalized in various circles; defined rightly and wrongly, and indeed no longer can suffice on its own.  Adapting to the new social world and taking a leap of faith, I will be devoting the next twelve weeks to elaborating on the new science of understanding buyer behaviors I call Buyerology.  I will be sharing new approaches and tools that address the many challenges faced by organizations in marketing, sales, social business, and content strategy planning.

My hope over the next twelve weeks is to accomplish two things.  First, to avoid becoming institutionalized as Tom Peters ingrained in me many years ago.  Whether he meant mentally or physically, I am not sure but it has felt like a few times, like many of us, I was losing my mind while I attempted to understand the many changes occurring!  The second is to make a contribution towards advancing buyer behavior understanding through the social science of Buyerology.

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Related articles

• Buyerology: Understanding Buyer Choice (buyerpersonainsights.com)
• Buyerology: The New Science of Understanding Buyer Behavior (buyerpersonainsights.com)
• How Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR) Affects Buyer Behavior and Purchase Decisions (buyerpersonainsights.com)
• Buyerology: The New Science of Understanding Buyer Behavior (customerthink.com)
• Influence of Buyer Perceived Value (BPV) on Buyer Behavior and Decisions (buyerpersonainsights.com)
• Buyerology: Understanding Buyer Choice (customerthink.com)
• Social Buyerology: Understanding Buyers in the Social Age (buyerpersonaplaybook.com)
• The Research Methods of Social Buyerology (buyerpersonaplaybook.com)
• Social Buyerology: Turning Insight Into Influence (buyerpersonainsights.com)
• Understanding Buyer Priorities and Goals in an Uncertain and Chaotic World (buyerpersonainsights.com)

In my previous article, Enhance the Buyer Experience with Intelligent Engagement, I referenced a trend I called Experiential Buying.  Buyer behaviors in B2B marketplaces are shifting tremendously towards more holistic experiential expectations that defy the conventional straight re-buy, modified re-buy, and new buy behaviors of the past.  Buyer expectations have increased with regards to the experiences they undergo as well as desire.

In simplistic generalities, we can take a view of two experience categories that B2B buyers may seek:

Self-Enabled Buying

In this situation, a buyer may want to experience a re-buy that reaffirms his or her decision to continue a relationship.  Even in modified re-buy situations, the buyer may be looking for an experience where they can perform the modifications themselves.  The difference in the modern social age is that buyer expectations have changed.  If companies have not adapted their businesses to enhanced online and social capabilities, they may very well be placing artificial barriers in front of their buyers who are seeking an entirely different straight re-buy or modified re-buy experience than in the past.  As consumer-like experiences become more desired in business marketplaces, companies will need to rethink many aspects of their sales and service capabilities as well as interactions.  This includes taking a hard look at barriers they may be putting up in front of their buyers unintentionally.

Assist-Enabled Buying

In those situations where buyers are actively seeking assistance, the cumulative experiences of the assistance they receive are becoming important factors in their decisions.  In situations of modified re-buy and new buy, organizations today must look not only towards Intelligent Engagement as mention in my previous article, but they must examine and establish a balance between assistance and empowerment.  Plainly speaking, what companies have to be careful about is how long-ago established internal processes may not be fulfilling buyer expectations for an experience.  It seems to me, as observed in recent qualitative research, that buyers wanting assistance also want to feel empowered to act on their own on different levels without the excessive “hand-holding” companies feel they’ve gain permission to exercise.

What is becoming more apparent is that companies in the near future will need to build adaptive capabilities for enabling experiential buying.  In such a way that it allows for buyers themselves to create their own adaptive differentiated experiences.  Buyers enabled to create their experiences of finding the right knowledge at the right time at the right place at the right interaction level and at the right solution.  Companies that can figure out how to get this experiential buying formula right – will have the competitive advantage going forward.

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One particular trend I have noticed this year, in participant observations with B2B buyers, is the movement towards what I would label Intelligent Engagement.  I referenced this in my previous article whereby I questioned the phrase Reach and Engage in contrast to Listen and Engage.  Simply stated, B2B buyers are learning at an increasing rate how to decipher meaningful, relevant, intelligent, and engaging content from the fire hose that is now marketed to them.  What we are seeing is a shift in buyer behavior from that of trying to drink from the fire hose to that of selectively choosing Intelligent Engagement.  Closely correlated to social media fatigue, B2B buyers are looking for a garden hose and not a fire hose.

The field of content strategy and content marketing is still relatively new.  However, it faces significant challenges just as it begins to solidify into a publisher mode of practice.  The challenge is that B2B buyer behavior may already be moving beyond the publishing context to a new expectation of Intelligent Engagement.  This is presenting an enormous challenge for strategists and marketers to learn how to establish “built-in” engagement that is intelligent as opposed to being the mere presence of a document which can be printed.  Also, this movement compels content strategists and marketers to think well beyond content alone.

Moving beyond content alone is becoming the prerequisite to enhancing the buyer experience.  Intelligent Engagement begins to define the buyer’s real-time and social experience with what a company has to offer.  By the term “offer”, I do not mean just a service or product they are marketing and selling.  The buyer experience has wrapped up in it all the components of what constitutes a rewarding, intelligent, social, and engaging experience.  Also, content strategists and marketers will need to see how what they produce contributes to the totality of the buyer experience as well as how it rewards buyers with Intelligent Engagement.

The social age is ushering a new era of what I would call Experiential Buying.  Buyer behavior and expectations are changing indeed.  No longer is it a straight buy or re-buy that a B2B buyer may be seeking.  The demand for Intelligent Engagement and Experiential Buying, in my opinion, will become essential components of a post-social media frenzy that seems to be showing signs of fatigue. I recently touched upon this concept whereby social buyers were establishing their own Social Buyer Engagement Index that assessed a company’s engagement capabiltities.

Companies today though can begin to re-examine their current buyer experience and content strategy efforts by looking at two questions in particular:

1. How much built-in Intelligent Engagement do they have in their content strategy as well as overall touch strategies with buyers?
2. Do their current content marketing, sales interactions, and service interactions contribute to enhancing the overall buyer experience?

These are good starting point questions that may cause reflections on existing efforts.  They offer a chance to take a deep breath amidst the social media and content marketing frenzy that has taken place in the last couple of years.  I am willing to bet there will be a few pauses like: “did we really do that?”

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I have been thinking about this question for some time.  I have been thinking that there is something wrong with all the titles I see that begin with Reach and Engage for numerous articles and blog posts.  To me at least, it seems that in the social age the terms Reach and Engage cancel each other out.  One can make an educated argument that reach belongs in the push column of marketing.  Whereby engage can be placed in the pull column.

Therein lays, perhaps, the problem with this expression of reach and engage.  Organizations and marketers have been wired for decades in reach and push strategies.  The structure of businesses has remained surprisingly constant despite significant transformative changes occurring during the past two decades.  There is a built-in inertia and interwoven into corporate DNA is the push mentality.  It has always been about pushing, reaching, and “going to” a segment or a market.  In several recent articles, I have discussed this notion of buyer behaviors that reject reach and push and how organizations today must become listening organizations that foster engagement.

Brian Solis published an article entitled The End of Social Media 1.0.  While the focus is on social media and consumers, some points apply to buyer behavior and this question.  Brian notes that organizations today must learn to listen with social media and consumers want to be heard.  He further states that social media must become an extension of active listening and engagement.  Currently social media is in the grips of marketing which has always been, along with sales, the beholders of reach and push.  Brian makes a case for social media belonging to an active listening social enterprise.   We are dealing with a century of organizations that are built on the silos that support the reach, push, and got-to pillars.  Redesigning organizations to become a social enterprise is definitely going to be no small feat.

A funny thing happened on the way to the social media forum.  It is no longer about tweets, likes, and constancy of social media which is resulting in social media fatigue.  We may be seeing the beginnings of the next evolution in the social age – the evolution becoming about buyer behavior orienting towards wanting to be heard and wanting intelligent engagement.   If so, this has some serious ramifications for organizations and their relationships with buyers.  It flips the enterprise upside down, flattens it, and forces the enterprise to listen.  The competitive advantage may very well come from those organizations willing to stomach such a transformation earlier than most.

Companies today will need to examine what is meant by reach and engage and whether it fits new buyer behaviors that want listen and engage.  Do their efforts in content marketing and sales, for example, mirror conventional reach and push through the different channels of social networks?  Are their efforts just about maintaining a presence?  Is their presence merely an extension of reach and push – or – are they truly listening and engaging?  It looks like organizations today are faced with some profound questions.  To answer such questions, organizations and their leaders will need to undergo the deepest self-examination they’ve had to do in quite some time.

What do you think?  Engage.

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Related articles

• The End of Social Media 1.0 (briansolis.com)
• Is It Reach and Engage or Listen and Engage? (buyerpersonainsights.com)
• How Buyer Perceived Risks (BPR) Affects Buyer Behavior and Purchase Decisions (buyerpersonainsights.com)
• Is It Reach and Engage or Listen and Engage? (customerthink.com)