It’s easy to take for granted just how seamless the consumer buying experience is today— take the term “retail therapy.” Retail leaders of our modern era have made the sheer experience of shopping so enjoyable that a healthy portion of consumers consider it healing in and of itself.
Consumers make purchases on Amazon so frequently and spontaneously that they’ve had to roll out new features to help consolidate these disparate purchases into cohesive shipments. If that doesn’t say something about how easy and pleasurable they’ve made the buying process, nothing does. Now, imagine if buying business software felt like this. Click to order Salesforce, next day-HubSpot, anyone? If you’ve ever worked in Software as a Service (SaaS) sales there’s a good chance you’re laughing right now. If you’ve ever tried to buy business software, there’s a good chance you’re crying right now.
But isn’t it interesting to consider that in a market where the purchase value is so much steeper than that pair of socks you added to your Amazon cart, the process to push it through is that much more difficult? With a higher incentive to please the buyer, the B2B world should be role-modeling a buyer-first experience, not the other way around.
The Stakeholder Dilemma
Let’s break down what’s really getting in the way of intuitive, self-guided buying when it comes to business software— especially knowing just how much is out there today – and how the process can be improved for everyone’s benefit.
Let’s be honest: if the Amazon model exactly applied for business software, it would already exist. There are a lot of challenges that make the experiences of buying for yourself and buying for your business very different, perhaps chief among them: the stakeholder dilemma. If you had to get written approval from every family member and a few distant cousins every time you wanted to make an Amazon purchase, their 8.84 million daily orders would quickly tumble. In the same breath, with 6-8 people often involved in a single B2B software sale, things get complex to say the least. Gartner recently found that 74% of B2B buyer teams demonstrate unhealthy conflict during the buying decision process.
Building the Perfect Seamless Experience
And it’s no wonder why. The end user department wants to quickly understand how the product works and whether it’ll fit their needs. IT wants to make sure it’ll integrate well within the company’s existing software stack and wider IT framework. Procurement, finance, legal and compliance all have their own priorities, too. It boils down to a key challenge: everyone wants a seamless experience getting the information they need, but they all need slightly different information.
This is where tech can be the perfect conduit, or the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and critically more isn’t better. Having a platform for demos, a platform for signing the NDA, a platform to host the sales materials, all leaves prospects drowning and discombobulated.
Cohesive deal rooms are in my opinion, the future of our category. Prospects can find everything they need in one click, mirroring the instant gratification of the Amazon shopping experience. Simultaneously personalization meets automation, meaning every party can get the exact information they’re interested in, and that can then be replicated for future deals.
A Data Lifeline
While retailers may only have to convince one buyer, they do have an added challenge: inventory. If you get to checkout and that pair of socks in your Amazon cart now says it actually can’t arrive for two weeks, chances are you’re abandoning the sale. Retailers rely on the smartest use of data to help them predict who will want what and when, so they know how much of it to stock, and where. It’s not a cherry on top, it’s critical to their success and sales.
Meanwhile, on the B2B side, data is often still an afterthought in the sales process. With so many tools flying around, getting measurable insights across the full funnel is nearly impossible. We’re working to change that, because we know data are the breadcrumbs to building the best buying experience.
What materials prospects are engaging most with, or how momentum is shifting throughout the deal stages are the clearest tells sales reps often get to understand what’s working and what’s not, what prospects are loving and where they’re stumbling and disengaging.
Try Before You Buy
A good sales experience, whether consumer or business-to-business, is about reducing friction. Every incremental delay, or step in the process weighs on the mental scale in the buyer’s mind that asks: do I really want this? This is the genius behind the ever-increasing merchandise found by the cash register at the store – by the time you second-guess whether you really want that pack of gum, it’s already paid for.
To buy business software, it sometimes feels like you’ve run an obstacle course before you’re allowed to see a demo. Schedule via my Calendly, fill out this form, attend this webinar! Every step weighs on that mental scale until the buyer decides that in fact, they don’t want it.
It’s clear in both the consumer and B2B realms, people want self-guided buying experiences today— 66% of consumers now prefer a self-service check out, while 75% of B2B buyers want a rep-free experience.
Demos should be easy to access without strings attached, and should be the first step in what feels like a buyer-led sales experience that never adds a moment of pause.
The Path Forward
In truth, buying B2B software will never be the completely self-service experience that buying on Amazon is, and for good reason. The stakes are high, choosing wrong doesn’t mean you’re left with a pair of socks you can easily return, but instead what might be a multi-million-dollar annual contract.
But we can still “consumerize” the B2B buying experience to its benefit. We can lean into platforms and hubs that allow us to streamline information, we can make data a core of our sales strategies, and we can let our products speak for themselves.
Eric Anderson is the CEO of Walnut, the platform that makes buying business software seamless and efficient. Anderson most recently served as President of Mindtickle where he oversaw all aspects of GTM Operations including Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Revenue Operations, Enablement, Partnerships and Corporate Development. He has also held CRO roles at Optimizely, Spredfast and ReturnPath.
