Last year (and maybe the year before as well), did it seem like it took forever for prospects to negotiate the buyer’s journey and finally make a purchase and become your client? Rest assured, it may have felt like a nightmare, but it wasn’t a dream. Responses of more than 18,000 B2B buyers who participated in Forrester’s 2023 Global B2B Buyers’ Journey Survey, and who were also Forrester clients, confirm that B2B buyers globally have become mostly both risk averse and price sensitive as they contend with economic uncertainty. Approximately one third of B2B buyers in North America and Europe, and more than a quarter of their counterparts in Asia Pacific, reported that they are significantly influenced by price when making purchasing decisions. Additionally, the buying process has become more complex than ever and purchasing delays are now common.

Leaning into caution seems to have begun in 2022 in the B2B sector, when inflation weighed heavily on everyone’s mind, causing buyers to carefully evaluate purchases and avoid what could be considered over-paying. The practice is still trending and its influence is documented in Forrester’s global B2B buying survey. Another notable survey finding was the role of purchase-focused decision-making committees, that include “product experts” who have a growing influence on B2B buying.

Amy Hayes, vice president and research director at Forrester, a world-renowned business research and advisory firm based in Cambridge, MA and author of the survey, summed up the trend in a candid comment, “Due to budget constraints and continued economic uncertainty, buying decisions are getting delayed.” Not only are buyer journeys lasting longer, but more people are on the bus and purchasing decision-making committees have grown larger and increasingly risk-averse. Purchasing criteria are subjected to increased scrutiny and due diligence rituals have become more detailed. Needless to say, the New Normal protocols are doing Freelance consultants no favors. So now what?

As you keep in mind that an elephant is a mouse designed by a committee, our mission today is to devise a strategy that can help you to successfully navigate this potential impasse. To enhance the prospect’s confidence in your product or service and also help expedite decision-making, it could be advisable for B2B sellers to showcase their offerings’ return on investment throughout the buyer’s journey. Moreover, identifying an attribute of your product or service that can be convincingly described as uniquely useful to prospects may enable you to pacify decision committee naysayers, who would otherwise be delighted to shoot down your sales proposal if they think it will make themselves look shrewd and in control. Not only that, the attribute you showcase may do a great job of setting you apart from competitors.

Let’s look at the bright side—those decision-making committee members can green-light your sale if you attach a value they can’t resist to your service or product. To win their confidence, you’ll need to wrap your product or service in a bullet-proof business virtue for which you can create a compelling narrative. Oh, and although B2B purchasing-focused decision-making committees have been shown to be price-sensitive, be aware that you cannot compete on price because that is a race to the bottom and you can only lose.

A comprehensive and convincing accounting of the strengths of your service or product is likely to be helpful and perhaps best summed up by the Google algorithm EEAT—experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness—and could be the best recipe to win the consensus you’ll need. A good case study or two can demonstrate the ROI your service or product delivers to clients; a link to a webinar or podcast in which you are prominently featured can further demonstrate your expertise, showcase your thought leader status and convey your authenticity.

The Forrester survey also shows that in addition to spending conservatively, respondents made known the high value they place on an invaluable resource—time—and that this attribute can influence the outcome of buying decisions. This could be your silver bullet—how can you present time as a resource that your service or product brings to clients? Do that successfully and you will have discovered the secret sauce that helps you win more sales.

“How important is saving time to you and your team?”

Like marketing automation Software as a Service solutions enable businesses to devote less effort to routine tasks, B2B services or products that are developed with operational efficiency, user-friendly implementation and time reduction in mind deliver benefits that clients and prospects recognize and respond to. C-suite executives are keenly aware that increasing available time can, for example, allow the resource to be devoted to vital business functions such as business strategy assessment and development, innovation, scaling or expanding operations and/or examining the impact of the company’s customer experience or after-sale training and support. Enabling your clients’ success will, among other things, allow them to more efficiently respond and deliver value to their customers. You can position your clients to save their customers time and and also drive their satisfaction, loyalty, repeat business and referrals. When you make it known to prospects the potential of your product or service to increase the valuable resource that is time you may want to discuss:

• Clearly communicate how your service or product aligns with the client’s perception of time. C-suite execs understand the importance of time and its value when choosing to implement a product or service, but they may not share that concern with members of the purchasing decision-making committee—that responsibility may be up to you, the seller. When discussing the performance and benefits of your service or product, be certain that time-saving capabilities are always considered.
• Show that your product is easy to implement, install, learn and operate. Today’s companies compete on the basis of their ability to work in agile ways, innovate quickly and adopt new approaches in response to changing marketplace conditions. A product or service that enhances those capabilities by saving time is a unique benefit and valuable selling point that should be on the table when speaking with decision-making committee members.
• Reduce time spent on execution, increase time for other tasks. Consider every internal process, task and workflow that your service or product will simplify, streamline, automate, or accelerate and how those attributes and capabilities work to increase time that can be spent on other imperatives. If possible, bring in experts and give everyone involved in the purchasing decision a seat at the table.

While research has shown that B2B buyers are responding to economic uncertainty by becoming both cautious and price sensitive in many instances, clients are often willing to pay a premium for services or products that they can implement quickly and easily, so they can more quickly move the team on to the next project. Time is a resource that can add significant value to a service or product, allowing you to anticipate client needs and drive profitability.

When products and services consider time reduction on behalf of clients, your solution can therefore function as a partner that helps them receive the rare gift time that can be applied to building a better business innovation, providing seamless customer experiences and optimizing client relationships. Enabling your clients’ success allows them to respond to and deliver value to their customers faster, potentially by saving their customers’ time and driving satisfaction and loyalty. Time is always money and it is useful to present it as a selling point for you to leverage.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

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