Understanding The Modern B2B Buyer

C-Suite Executives have always been considered the “Holy Grail” for B2B marketers. However, times have changed now. A study in 2014 proved that nearly 50% of all the B2B researchers are the millennials, which is a 70% increase from the 2012 study. These millennials are those modern buyers who are playing a very influencing role in the B2B buying decision. And these modern buyers are poles apart from their predecessors. They like to undertake their own research, use the latest technology, trust the quality more than price and believe in referrals more than the sales rep.

Understanding the modern B2B buyer’s behavior is very important to draft the right marketing strategy to convert them into successful quality leads. To help you through, we have enlisted 6 major qualities that a modern B2B buyer possesses that would help you understand them better and build the perfect B2B buyer persona for your marketing campaign.

Qualities of a Modern Buyer:

Information Seeker
The modern B2B buyer has become more aware than ever. They have started using various channels to gather more information about each and every product where they seek to invest their money. Before making any information, the modern buyer searches online for as much information as it can get about the product. They look out for online reviews, feedbacks, price and competitive comparisons before making the buying decision. So, the more information you offer online, the more they would be prone to trusting and doing business with you.

Researching Individual
The millennial or modern B2B buyer trusts their own, individual research the most when it comes to making buying decisions. As per the research conducted by Accenture, 94% of B2B buyers research online at some or the other point in their entire buying process. Another Forrester report says that 74% B2B buyers conduct more than half of their research online before they even talk to the sales rep.

Quality Trumps Brand Loyalty
Gone are the days when buyers blindly bought products because of their brand loyalty. It’s the time of the modern buyer, and he/she is more concerned about the quality and the price of the product rather than showing their loyalty towards a particular brand. They no longer rely on the brand name for the quality, rather they perform a stringent check and if they find that the quality is not meeting the expectations, they turn towards other sellers for better quality. Be more transparent in the process and offer the right price for best quality to gain the trust of the modern B2B buyer.

Tech – Savvy
There is no negating the fact that the modern B2B buyers have become more tech-savvy than ever. With each new technology that crops up, the B2B buyer becomes all the more technology reliant. According to a research, almost 42% of the B2B buyers use mobile devices at some time in their B2B buyer journey. In fact, the modern B2B buyer has become so tech savvy that the use of mobile phones throughout the buying process has increased by 91%.

Believes Referrals
While earlier, B2B buyers used to get influenced by the sales professionals or online testimonials presented by the supplier, now this place has been taken by direct customer referrals, reviews, influencer’s testimonials, testimonial videos etc. As a part of their research, these millennial buyers check out various online forums and read the reviews about the product as well as the seller to ensure credibility.

Uses Multichannel Communication
In the past, we saw sellers approaching buyers via phone calls or personal meetings cum interactions. However, in the present times, different types of modern B2B buyers different channels for communication. Most of the buyers have now become multichannel users that can be contacted by means of emails, social media chats, chatbots on websites, phone calls and other means.

The B2B buyer has certainly evolved from being passive throughout the buying journey to becoming exceedingly active now. These were some of the tips that would help you in understanding the modern buyer better. This understanding would take you a long way and ensure that you contact them at the right time and with the right content to get more sales.

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