B2B buying isn’t linear or predictable. But brands can grasp the nuances by dissecting consuming decision-making. Decode the nitty-gritty.
Studying consumer behavior, especially the psychological factors behind a purchase, is crucial to a business’s success. Selling to potential customers isn’t as easy as exposing them to products and services and hoping this ends in a purchase.
Businesses need to know how and why consumers buy particular solutions against others. While psychological factors are inherent in B2C and B2B buying structures, the motivations significantly differ. B2B buying decisions comprise companies with groups of individuals (buying committees) from different backgrounds and motivations.
However, understanding fundamental factors that drive decisions in the buying landscape can offer a better base for exploring purchasing motivations.
According to a Gartner study, over 75% of buyers prefer a sales-free experience. These are the new-age consumers – highly aware and self-driven. But, Gartner’s research also asserts that self-service purchases online are also most likely to turn into regrets.
So, what is the actual root cause? A hiccup on the sellers’ part or the buyer’s difficulty in making a purchase?
“As hard as it has become to sell in today’s world, it has become that much more difficult to buy. The single biggest challenge of selling today is not selling, it’s actually our customers’ struggle to buy,” states Brent Adamson, the Distinguished VP at Advisory, Gartner.
The underlying motivation for a purchasing decision is – buyers want value.
However, complex and lengthy buying processes, uncertainty, and other disruptions overshadow potential customers from seeing it. These end up undermining buyers’ confidence and clarity.
And in B2B, marketers sell to a whole group of decision-makers rather than individuals. There are so many layers to break down here. Even the group of decision-makers entails distinct levels of expertise, influence, and authority.
Thus, they influence the purchasing process differently. B2B buyers reflect a complex set of needs as compared to B2C ones. There are emotional and rational requirements that operate on two different levels – personal and organizational.
Even the alternatives available that buying committees can consider are increasing, owing to the fast pace with which the market is expanding. From new tech and startups to suppliers and services – the market has become an overflowing basket saturated with options.
How can a buying decision be simple when the choices aren’t?
As humans, we make conscious choices every step of our lives. We intuitively understand that we are making a choice, but psychologically, it’s not a straight road. It’s a cluster of decisions.
Making a decision or a choice is an amalgamation of alternative courses of action – ones preceding the final choice and carrying a sense of conflict and uncertainty.
This is prevalent in B2B buying processes.
Meanwhile, for B2B buyers, this decision-making process is a loop where they revisit certain decisions again. It comprises a lot of back-and-forth discussions, convincing decision-makers, re-strategizing, etc.
So, to say it’s unidirectional would be untrue.
According to Gartner, there are six buying “jobs” in a decision-making process. Unlike “stages,” these don’t need a sequence or a fixed order.
Source: https://www.gartner.com.au/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
Gartner uses the term “jobs” to demonstrate the B2B buying process where each job has to be completed before moving on to the next one, irrespective of the order.
- Identifying the problem: The buying committee recognizes the pain points that lead to several online searches. During independent research, it’s easy to disagree on the actual concerns. Hence, regrouping and discussions become necessary.
- Exploring different solutions: What could be the possible solutions? The buying group then surfs the net for whitepaper downloads, supplier website visits, form fill-ups, outreach, etc. During this stage, buyers may also consult external experts.
- Building requirements: What would the ideal solution look like? Here, the buying committee aligns its expectations and develops criteria for the solutions it seeks. From requesting proposals to scheduling meetings with potential suppliers, data is integral to deciding on a solution.
- Selecting the solution: Evaluating between sellers that ideally fit their defined criteria. It often includes buying committee discussions, requests for more sales information (such as case studies), legal flats, and capital review boards.
- Validation or confirmation: Is this the right choice for our business?
- Creating a consensus: A buying group has different stakeholders with their own expectations. Hence, an alignment between them is vital to finalize a decision. This is requisite at all stages because every decision requires approvals.
Decision-making is non-sequential and complex. So, the sequence of these six “buying jobs” isn’t set in stone. As disagreements or new information arises, the decision-makers visit each job numerous times.
It highly depends on the buyer’s satisfaction in completing each job so that they can move closer to making a purchase.
Overall, consumer decision-making isn’t about choosing between objects but specific behaviors or attitudes. From selecting a particular information source in their research phase and “when to make the purchase” to “from which business” and payment channels – every decision involves choice alternatives, as mentioned before.
These choice alternatives have transformed into a dizzying array. Market congestion has coerced buyers into extensive research and information processing so they could make informed decisions.
Decision-making is a paradox.
On one hand, buyers wish for control over their challenges, but they also want simplicity. In the age of tech paralysis, these two rarely go hand-in-hand. Every option is an added benefit to the buyers – if one doesn’t meet their requirements, the other might.
It’s still another choice buyers have to consider making. But how often do buyers know what they want?
Every decision is a series of behaviors that rely on contextual influences, such as economic factors, peer pressure, social roles, or cultural attributes. This underlying theory mirrors how every marketing strategy is a chain of actions intended toward a specific outcome.
In short, the choices are directly reliant on the context within which it takes place.
The ‘context’
The psychoanalytical consumer decision-making model asserts that buyers have underlying motives for a purchase – unconscious and conscious. They are driven by a mix of conscious and subconscious desires, which is why buyers might be drawn to specific products or brands without entirely understanding why.
Decision-making is rudimentarily influenced by external factors known as contextual influences. They highlight the information available to consumers and how they process it to make decisions.
In B2B, one of the crucial contexts required for purchasing decisions is collating necessary information.
Think of whitepaper downloads or case studies. Why are case studies such a vital step in sales? It’s value-proof, detailing how reliable, authentic, or an ideal fit a brand’s solution is. Additionally, such pieces of information are a support for decision-making.
Information is crucial at every step of B2B decision-making. This varies from tangible ones, such as pricing structure and meeting ethical standards, to intangible ones, such as brand awareness and reputation.
More often, a brand’s reputation is likely to take priority over price in high-risk purchasing situations. But if a decision is low-risk, cost and convenience take the front seat.
The ‘risk’ factor
In the B2B landscape, buyers are assumed to be more objective and focus on the purchase risk before making any decisions. Risk is a crucial determinant in choice decisions.
What will the business risk losing (adverse consequences) if it makes an incorrect decision?
Predicting the outcome of a decision or a choice is not easy – it’s never accurate. So, how can the buying committee navigate significant purchasing risks?
They focus on the importance and complexity of a purchase. Mapping the importance of a purchase for the organization helps ascertain its impact on the business goals. This facilitates buyers to focus on the brand with a positive reputation in sailing through potential problems.
Whereas, with the lesser complexity and higher sophistication of the purchasing process, the decision-makers are likely to oblige. In complex or excruciatingly long sales cycles, buyers find it tasking to weigh the choices or even predict the offerings’ performance.
This increase in ambiguity might also lead to significant risks, compelling the buyers to move on.
Today, B2B is commoditized. This has embedded specific tangible (price and scalability) and intangible (cultural fit and aesthetics) elements in brand offerings, fostering choice paralysis.
Thus, B2B buyers must engage in complex decision-making processes to grasp brand offerings. Subsequently, it’s the brand’s responsibility to offer sufficient cues that highlight the intangible attributes.
In simpler terms, decision-making crucially depends on the brand information communicated to the buying centers. It permeates the overall process, but to what extent? This is questionable.
With market saturation, complexity in decision-making has become the norm.
It’s about predicting what, as buyers, we truly want from weighing the choice alternatives and evaluating the information in our hands.
But, the truth of organizational buying is that even the most thought-out decision-making processes are susceptible to errors.
For example, too much information can derail the purchase, overwhelming the decision-makers. This overload could result in poorer decisions or purchases by increasing deliberation, complicating the processes further.
In B2B, every decision-making process involves six to 10 decision-makers. These hold their own sets of information and contextual cues for the different solutions available in the market.
While the modern buyer is self-driven, they still require brand support. Instead, this disjointed and fragmented buying environment demands a shift to a more relationship-focused alignment between prospective buyers, sales, and marketing.
Organizations need to keep up with the times. Adopt parallel and channel-agnostic roadmaps and execute buyer enablement strategies.
