Today’s B2B buyers are taking longer to make purchase decisions, but they expect solution vendors to be timely. That dichotomy is particularly true when it comes to purchasing technology solutions: As most B2B companies’ tech stacks continue to expand, it’s more crucial than ever for new platforms and services to quickly and seamlessly integrate into existing systems.
That’s one of the key takeaways from the preliminary findings in Demand Gen Report’s 2016 B2B Buyer’s Survey Report, which asked over 200 buyers about their last major B2B buying decision. Findings from the report will be discussed in an upcoming webinar on June 29 at 1pm ET (10am PT).
Once respondents were at the point of evaluating a set list of solution providers, 83% said “deployment time/ease of use” was a “very important” variable. This is up significantly from 49% in 2015. It ranked as the second most important variable overall, only 1% behind “solved a pain point” (84%).
Not only did buyers want to be able to quickly and easily implement new solutions, but they also wanted snappy service when researching purchases. Almost three-quarters (70%) said “the timeliness of a vendor’s response to inquiries” was one of the reasons they selected the winning vendor, versus the other vendors they considered.
“As the stack of tech solutions gets higher and higher, the kneejerk reaction [from buyers] is that they need to find the quick win that will be easy to launch,” said Justin Gray, CEO of LeadMD, in an interview with Demand Gen Report. “It mainly comes from frustration with the day-to-day use of their [current] solutions, and aiming to prevent past problems with onboarding solutions.”
Gray added that he believes an easier deployment process is not what needs to change, but that providers need to be more accurate in describing the staff requirements involved in onboarding new technology. “Whenever the word ‘platform’ comes into play, you need to respect that there are people and processes running that technology,” he explained.
David Raab, Founder and Principal of Raab Associates, cautions that marketers should be wary of prioritizing ease of deployment so highly. “Our research shows that people who focus on fast and easy deployment are less satisfied in the long run because they didn’t take the time to pick a system that truly matched their feature/functionality needs,” he said.
Want to learn more? Save your seat for our upcoming webinar to gain deep insight into what is important for today’s B2B buyers.
