Today’s buyers are rapidly changing. On an individual level and broadly throughout the market, buyers are are becoming more empowered with the influx of information that they receive on a minute-to-minute basis. Today we explore the empowered buyer and help to explain some of the challenges faced by sales reps in the face of this demand for information.
What is an Empowered Buyer
In the simplest terms, an empowered buyer is someone who chooses to conduct research prior to making a purchase. By definition then, buyers have likely been ‘empowered’ since the dawn of the sales relationship.
This past decade has seen the greatest changes as the availability of information has skyrocketed and the ease with which one can access information has steadily increased.
Enabled by the Internet and mobile technology, customers have taken control over the sales process. In the past, vendors were the primary source of information for buyers but this is certainly not the case today (Source: Harvard Business Review, 2014). As a result, an empowered buyer for the purposes of this discussion is defined as a customer who seizes control of the buying process and actively pulls information towards him/herself (Source: Mckinsey, 2009).
Mitigating the challenges of an empowered buyer is serious business. Click on this post to see our analysis: Executing an Effective Sales Process; Tactical Priorities for 2015,
Why are Buyers Empowered?
While we might be tempted to blame the internet and our reliance on technology technology, we are all guilty of being empowered buyers ourselves, whether we recognize it or not. From reading product information online, to reviews, blogs, videos, and other online research, buyers have access to all the information they could possibly need for making a buying decision right at their fingertips.
For any number of reasons, buyers are choosing to conduct their own research prior to contacting a sales rep. Research has shown that buyers will conduct an average of 12 searches prior to jumping on a specific brand’s site (Source: Kapost, 2015). It is evident therefore that buyers will choose to vet outside sources prior to committing to the brand itself. They may not directly trust vendor material, they may prefer to see an outside perspective before delving deeper, or they could just be trying to keep an open mind prior to tackling the later decision stages. Only 9% of buyers felt that content directly from vendors was among their most trusted (Source: CMO Council, 2013).
Today, the average buyer has progressed through 50-75% of their decision journey before they engage with sales reps (Source: Harvard Business Review, 2014). Unlike the past, it is evident that that buyers are entering the sales funnel later in the process and with that we have a new set of challenges.
Shocked by this stat? Want to learn more about creating enticing content? Click here to see our post about How to Tailor Digital Content to Purchase Decision Stages.
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What is the Challenge of an Empowered Buyer?
The challenge that sales reps now face is how to manage this shift in established practices with respect to the sales process. How does the content they show in a sales presentation need to change? How can they leverage sales analytics software for buyer insights?
An empowered buyer complicates the sales process in ways that many sales reps won’t be accustomed to. It was assumed that the buyer would enter the funnel at the beginning of the decision journey and needed the sales rep to assist them with understanding the way the product/service benefitted their company. This is no longer the case. The buyer enters the sales funnel at any time, and at any given point of their respective decision journey. They have consumed content that the sales rep cannot account for and have purchase requirements that differ greatly from one buyer to the next.
This means that a buyer will ask questions that the sales rep cannot foresee. Further, they will know things that could actually counter the sales rep's on-hand knowledge and they will demand more complex sales interactions that could hinder the sales cycle.
Putting Control Back in the Hands of Sales Reps
How do you combat these new customer expectations? In most cases, customers expect that sales reps are able to match their current expertise & knowledge. As a result, sales reps must add value to the discussion while avoiding restating things that they already know. (Source: Harvard Business Review, 2014). The objective is to help a buyer discover and understand how the solution will apply to their specific buying situation, rather than providing generic insights.
This is why digital content management software plays such an integral role in mitigating the challenges of an empowered buyer. Many sales reps keep their digital content organized via email attachments, hard drives, and cloud storage. This type of organization makes it very difficult to tailor your digital content offers to the buyer in question. It also makes it almost impossible to know which content is the most effective for any given scenario.
Customers demand that they receive more customized information which caters to their specific needs, and reflects exactly where they stand in their decision journey.
Using sales enablement software gives sales reps access to the most up to date marketing materials, enables customization of presentations to suit the buyer in question, and provide a faster response rate overall. With sales analytic software, marketing can use end-of-funnel consumption data to create stronger marketing campaigns, that in turn better relate to customers at all stages of their decision journey.
New to sales enablement? Visit this post we wrote explaining What is Sales Enablement, and a Sales Enablement Definition for 2015. Click here for more.
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