Too many cooks? Just how many folks does it take to make a B2B technology purchase decision
I was looking through an extract from Marketing Sherpa’s Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2007-2008, which is already yesterday’s news, since the 2008-2009 edition is now available.
One thing that struck me was their chart on how many people were involved in a technology marketing purchase of over $25K.
- For small companies (100-500 employees), the average was 6.8.
- For mid-sized companies (501-1000), the number scoots up to 13.5.
- And from larger companies (1001+ employees), the average was a whopping 21.0.
Now, “purchases above $25,000″ can mean anything from a handful of licenses for a tool, to a kabillion dollar SAP installation, but it does tell us that marketing really needs to think beyond “the techie,” “the boss,” and “the finance guy” when it comes to those we need to inform, support, convince, and worry about when it comes to making a sale.
Yes, there may be nice little groups that some of these 6.8, 13.5, and 21.0 breakdown into, with several people falling into the “end-user recommender/influencer” bucket, for instance. But even when those involved in the purchase process fall into neat categories, they’re still individuals that we have to reach and reach out to.
For that “end-user recommender/influencer” category alone, we need to look out for a few things.
For one thing, we need to find out how this group is divvying up the work.
Is everybody looking at every competitive possibility? Has one person been charged with doing the legwork, and will be reporting back to the rest of the team? Is everybody in the group taking one competitive possibility and getting all the info on behalf of the group? (In which case, you better hope you didn’t get Oscar the Grouch.)
Once we know how the group is going about their information gathering and evaluation work, we can make sure that - while still being respectful of the process and the company’s need to “shield” their employees from unneeded (and unwanted) contact with vendors - everyone who’s in the loop is somehow in our loop. Try to get the contact information for everyone. Don’t assault them with sales messages, but if you have a white paper or analyst report or something else of general interest, make sure that everyone gets a copy or access to it. Send everyone a link to the recording of that interesting webinar. Let them know that you’re at a trade show some of them may be attending. Again, you have to respect the gatekeeper, but you also want to make sure that all those who are potential recommenders/influencers have first-hand information if they want it, not just information that’s filtered for them by the gatekeeper.
It can’t hurt to walk through your intentions with the gatekeeper or the boss, letting them know that, in your experience, things work out for the best when xyz happens, and that you’d like to be able to provide information directly to the team. This doesn’t mean daily phone check-ins (or stalking), just “good to know” information passed on as needed.
The vast numbers reported above also tell us that we can’t just rely on finding an avenue into one person in a company, and then worrying about making sure we’ve got something in the goody bag for the other 5.8, 12.5, or 20.0 who will be jumping into the purchase decision, but that we need to be working multiple ropes simultaneously, and upfront. No more going after the C-Level and ignoring the worker bees until C-Level decides to let the worker bees know you’re in the house. No more just thinking about the worker bees, and forgetting that you don’t want the C-Level folks drawing a big, fat blank when they hear your company’s name mentioned.
Yes, I know that the Sherpa’s survey is not all that scientific, but it does reflect the experience of a lot of marketing professionals, so attention must be paid.
If you’re marketing B2B technology, there may be a lot more folks in on the deal than you can imagine.
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I read this guide and flagged these stats too. Very interesting and further confirms that we as B2B Marketers have to consider the entire decision making unit when building out our lead generation programs. We have to remember that each person in the decision making unit cares of about different things and possibly want to be communicated with in different ways.
At ReachForce, we build role-based contact lists and were focused on targeting the end user and presenting them with solutions to their data issues. We felt like we were missing opportunities.
Now that we have expanded our product line we’ve found that our message ressonates not only influencers and decison makers in the marketing dept. but also within the sales team. We’ve noticed an increase in hand raisers now that we are targeting additional influencers in the buying process. Remember when targeting different roles we must consider their individual pain points.
All of this seems really complex but it’s delivering the results we’ve been hoping for. I’m proud to say that 80% of our new customers have originated in marketing. We can’t take all the credit though…thank God for the automation systems (we use Eloqua), otherwise I have no idea how we would keep up with all of these different programs running at the same time!
Marketing Sherpa’s results are interesting, but certainly not news. This is precisely what makes B2B marketing so different from B2C. It’s not as easy as a glib ad or commercial that needs only to convince one person,as a rule. As a B2B marketing firm, we deal with this constantly. It is certainly true that different buyers care about different parts of the story, and can’t be lumped together (or worse yet, ignored.)
At the same time, it is important that the overall company’s position not be fragmented. You can’t simply talk enterprise-level “global” benefits to the CEO while peddling a “we’re actually cheaper” message to the financial buyer. Different emphasis, even different benefits, sure. But if you just tell each group what you think they want to hear with no consistency or link to your company’s dramatic difference in the marketplace, you’re compromising the only thing that makes a real difference in the long run.