Forrester survey finds 92% of B2B prospects start evaluation solutions with one vendor in mind; 41% have a single preference; Gartner says 61% B2B buyers want to avoid talking to sales
Technology is changing buying behavior, but that’s not the only change agent currently in play.
Some of the changes are a response to the environment: vendors put too much pressure on prospects to buy before giving them the reason – information – to buy.
Most marketing campaigns begin with scarcity, urgency and FOMO. Right out of the gate,the pressure is on. “Buy now!” or “Get yours before it’s too late!” or “Supplies limited!” Generally, marketing is considered effective if it leads to a sales conversation, which inevitably comes with more pressure to close a deal.
Over the long term, these actions seem to spark the opposite of the desired result. Each time sales and marketing step up the pressure to move things along faster, the market has responded in kind to slow things down: Prolonged sales cycles have been getting longer, involve more people and require more “interactions” to convert a buyer.
B2B buyers don’t want to talk to sellers
A 2024 survey, of “632 B2B buyers” by Gartner, that’s been doing the rounds online again recently, brings this into focus: 61% of B2B buyers prefer an overall rep-free buying experience.
That’s an amazing statistic: 6 in 10 B2B prospects never want to talk to a salesperson.
Why? The survey offers an educated guess:
“69% of B2B buyers report inconsistencies between information on the sales organization’s website and that provided by sellers.”
That speaks to trust. Buyers don’t trust what sellers have to say. That’s not an indictment of salespeople; it’s an indictment of messaging, marketing and perhaps business itself.
What’s the typical business response to this? Sell harder, despite the likely ramifications, which Robert Blaisdell, an analyst with the firm, characterizes in a press release announcing the Gartner survey:
“Many B2B buyers feel overwhelmed and frustrated by the outreach they receive from sellers and the seller’s organization. Bad prospecting actively damages relationships with potential customers.”
Marketing has a new problem, too
If the challenge for sales is that B2B prospects are putting off conversations longer, the challenge for marketing is the exact opposite: buyers are forming preferences for brands and products sooner.
That’s according to Forrester, which surveyed 11,352 buyers around the world for its 2024 Buyers Journey Survey. That survey has also been in the spotlight of late with this finding:
“92% of buyers start with at least one vendor in mind, and 41% already have a single preferred vendor selected before formal evaluation begins.”
The preferences are even stronger among first-time buyers:
48% “report entering the process with a preferred vendor in mind.”
In other words, buyers aren’t starting from scratch when they begin to consider buying a product. Instead:
“They are informed, opinionated, and heavily influenced by peers, digital content, analyst insights, and previous vendor experiences.”
The findings were true across the board – in every region and deal size, for example:
“In deals under $10 million, 42% of buyers report the same. Preference is particularly pronounced at the executive level, with 47% of C-suite buyers expressing early loyalty, compared to 34% of individual contributors.”
The analyst firm sums up the meaning this way:
“B2B buying today is a process of confirmation, not selection. Decisive buyers already know who they want to work with before they start gathering requirements or talking to vendors.”
Marketing has to start sooner
How do you convince a buyer to give your solution a shot when they’ve already made up their mind before the search and refuse to talk to sales? The answer is simple: Marketing has to work to shape preferences sooner.
Forrester calls this “preference marketing” by “proactively shaping buyer perception before active demand even surfaces.”
That sure sounds to me like a problem that is better solved with public relations than with marketing. Better thought leadership, educational content and a return to that consultative approach that lands with right-fit customers.
That will help solve the downstream problem with sales, too.
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Image credit: Google Gemini
