I came across a great blog post (and asset) by Seismic regarding how B2B buying has changed. Here are some highlights that you should be thinking about and, more importantly, planning for:

  1. Sales used to own the sales cycle. No more. Buyers have grabbed control. Gartner says that they get 57% of the information they need on their own before engaging with sales.
  2. When buyers come to salespeople, they expect sales to build off the research they’ve done, to provide them expertise, and give them what they think they need to make a decision.
  3. Buyers need to be guided by sales reps to a mutually favorable decision, but in a way that isn’t intrusive or excessive. This includes tailoring your sales pitch to each potential buyer and sharing contextually-appropriate sales content with buyers depending on where they are in the sales cycle.
  4. Sales organizations that understand the importance of sales effectiveness work with marketing to create the most relevant and helpful external-facing collateral. They also ensure that both sales and marketing have visibility into how that sales content is being used and consumed.

So how are you ensuring that your end-to-end Buyer Journey is designed and executed to fit this Modern Sales Cycle?

As you can imagine, aligning all your tactical marketing, sales, and content teams and platforms to execute this modern approach is absolutely critical. And that requires much more sophisticated planning than ever before. Yet, according to Altimeter, only 30% of companies do any kind of documented strategic planning at all. And those that do are still using antiquated tools like spreadsheets and flowcharts.

Let us help your company change that. It’s time to Modernize your Buyer Journey.