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Making sense of the buyer’s journey stats

The mother of all buyers-ready-to-talk-to-sales stats comes from a study by the CEB Marketing Leadership Council and Google back in 2011. It declared that ‘customers are choosing to delay commercial conversations with suppliers’ and included a nifty graphic saying that these are now most likely to happen 57% of the way through the buying process. But how exactly did CEB and Google come up with this figure?

The report is based on a study of 1,500 decision makers and influencers in 22 major B2B companies who had recently been involved in purchasing decisions. For each of these organisations, the study asked people to nominate how far through the process they had travelled before engaging a supplier sales rep directly. When those responses were averaged out, the answer came to 57%. In fact, no business engaged with a supplier sales rep directly before they were 45% of the way through the process.

So far so good – but there’s an important point to bear in mind here. Although the study spoke to a lot of people, they represented only a relatively small number of businesses. The sample size that we’re effectively dealing with for this study is only 22. When people quote this research as showing that buyers can be ‘up to 65%’ of the way through a purchase before they reach out to sales, they’re technically correct – but actually only two businesses waited that long.

In fact, people who claim that the magic point in the purchase journey comes around the 65% mark are usually referring to a different study – one carried out by SiriusDecisions in 2013. This showed that buyers tend to carry out 67% of their buying journey digitally, taking control of finding information online rather than just picking up the phone to their potential suppliers and listening to what they have to say. Given that this study came out two years after the CEB/Google one, it’s tempting to interpret it as showing that buyers are waiting longer and longer before talking to sales. However, that’s definitely not how SiriusDecisions themselves interpret the data.

In a blog post entitled ‘Three myths of the 67% statistic’, SiriusDecisions’ VP Research, Megan Heuer, wrote “The 67 percent statistic in no way says that no one talks to a salesperson before getting halfway through the buying cycle, but this is how some have interpreted it. Just because buyers spend time online doesn’t mean sales is not involved at all stages of the buyer’s journey, including the early and late stages.”

In other words, although 67% of the buyer’s journey may involve self-directed research – including a huge amount on social media – that doesn’t mean sales teams have to be locked out of the process. They just have to establish a credible reason why they should be involved – and that involves having tangible value to add. “It is true that the standard is now higher for sales to add value to the conversation, because so much information can be found online,” wrote Heuer in the same post. “Marketers, your mission is to help sellers get engaged early with customers and prospects.”

Perhaps the most striking buyer’s journey stat is the fact that buyers can get anywhere up to 90% of the way through their journey before a conversation with sales happens. Does this mean that the role of sales is being pushed to later and later in the process?

The 90% stat comes from a Forrester analyst, Lori Wizdo, who first used it in a blog post in 2013 – the same year the SiriusDecisions research came out. However, Wizdo wasn’t quoting from a specific piece of research – and she wasn’t claiming that a high proportion of buyers conduct virtually the entire purchase journey by themselves – just that some do. The way she puts it is: “Although it varies with product complexity and market maturity, today’s buyers might be anywhere from two-thirds to 90% of the way through their journey before they reach out for a sales person.” In other words – there are a lot of different buyer journeys out there, and you’ve got to be prepared for all of them. More specifically, you’ve got to work to earn the right to engage.

It’s been suggested that these different buyer’s journey stats mean that, for most of the time, B2B decision-makers aren’t interested in talking to sales at all. However, this is the wrong way of looking at it. None of the studies involved buyers telling researchers that they actively avoided making contact with sales – or that they were antagonised by having to deal with sales people. They responded to questions about when they ended up reaching out to sales teams. As digital research plays an increasingly important role for buyers, they’re less likely to be dependent on sales reps for information, which explains why this moment is more likely to take place later in the process. However, that’s not to say that sales teams don’t have an influential role to play when they do get involved.

Social selling is such a powerful strategy because of the emphasis it puts on sales reps engaging buyers with relevant insights – and making themselves a part of the digital research process. It provides a natural segue between the self-directed portion of the buyer’s journey and the more focused, later stages, when buyers reach out for expert advice – and more tailored proposals and recommendations. And sales reps from a trusted brand, who are supported with relevant, value-adding content on social platforms, are far more likely to find buyers ready to engage with them at these moments.

Better aligning sales and marketing isn’t a case of trying to pick the best possible hand-over point, that magic moment when leads are warmed up enough to accept a phone call. It comes down to recognising the interdependence of sales and marketing throughout the buyer’s journey – and equipping sales teams to start more compelling conversations at each of these points.

LinkedIn has just completed a fascinating piece of research into the impact that marketing support has on sales teams’ ability to engage buyers. We found that prospects who had been exposed to Sponsored Content from a sales rep’s brand were 25% more likely to respond to an InMail from that rep – and they were 10% more likely to connect with them on LinkedIn, initiating a conversation and securing a role for that sales rep in the consideration process.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter when the average buyer typically engages with the average sales rep in your category. What matters most is how early your own sales reps can establish permission to engage. After all, if most sales teams aren’t getting to engage with buyers until the closing stages of their decision process, there’s a huge advantage to equipping yours to get involved earlier. Watch this space for our upcoming eBook on better aligning sales and marketing that will help you to do exactly that.