But striking the balance of casting the net while spearfishing might be your best bet to take Engagio’s analogy. If you feel the same way, you could juggle both lead and account approaches, but it’s far from easy and sucks you into more ops work than you might have bargained for. If you have a 3 or 4-figure average ACV, perhaps it’s easy to stick with a lead-centric orientation because your TAM is likely large and your buying group small, which lends itself more to a lead-based approach.īut if you have a 5-figure average ACV (the B2B software world I’m in), it can feel like there’s merit to both orientations. If you have a 6-figure average annual contract value (ACV), switching to an account-centric orientation is easy because your target addressable market (TAM) is likely to be small and your buying groups large and complicated which lends itself more to an account-based approach. Here’s my understanding of how a tech-first approach vs an outcome-first approach would look: Hypothetical Example: Different Approaches to Buying a Chatbot Solution: What The Buyer May Be Thinking In defence of chatbots, Forrester’s Tech Tide™: B2B Marketing Technologies, Q4 2020 put chatbots in their category of “invest,” meaning that it believes chatbots to be a “low maturity” product, but one with potential for “high business value.” Drift is renowned for its strong branding, positioning chatbots as a better way than forms, and has likely marketed their way into many B2B buyers’ consideration sets more from the movement that they’ve created than from the performance of their solution. I suspect this is partly due to how well chatbot vendors have marketed their category relative to other B2B software solutions for Marketers. TrustRadius found in its B2B Buying Disconnect Survey that, in general, B2B Marketers believe chatbots provide more value than B2B buyers get: only 10% of buyers are fairly or very likely to respond to a chatbot (when the message is relevant), but 42% of vendors believe they (chatbots) are an effective marketing strategy. One hypothetical example of a tech-driven approach is a B2B buyer purchasing a chatbot solution because the buyer has seen many of their peers talking about it. I find an example can go a long way to support a theory. In contrast, with a solution-first approach, buyers look for solutions that meet their business needs and fit into their process before deciding. With a technology-first approach, buyers review features and then try to fit the tool they bought into their process. In other words, following the hype and crowd into the latest product category and popular SaaS vendor. They can also be swayed by what their peers are buying, which brands appeal to them most, and other factors that aren’t based on their needs.įorrester highlighted one such common pitfall: a tech-first approach to buying software. There are many reasons why B2B buying is so difficult.ī2B buyers bring their emotions and preconceived notions into the buying process. In their session, Forrester Analysts Katie Linford and Seth Marrs shared that, “42% of B2B marketing decision-makers put having too much or not the right technologies in their top five challenges to achieving their marketing priorities.” they make the wrong choice.ī2B buying is difficult. They sometimes decide to buy a solution that will ultimately deliver less performance for them than alternative solutions, i.e. As B2B vendors, we know that leading with benefits or outcomes in messaging is best practice because it helps buyers make rational decisions based on their needs.īut we also know that B2B buyers aren’t purely rational decision-makers.
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