4 Ways B2B Buying Has Changed - And How Sales Must Adapt
Expertise provided by Alex Weitzel
Alex Weitzel is part of the GTM team at Omedym and is in his first year of enablement. His passion for empowering modern B2B buyers led him to join the Omedym team.
According to a recent index of 34,000 SaaS businesses by Paddle, over the last three years, growth has slowed by 50%, customer acquisition cost (CAC) has increased by 50%, and customer churn is up 29%. Unfortunately, these concerning trends are projected to continue in the foreseeable future. In short, SaaS companies are struggling to efficiently and effectively grow revenue.
Perhaps the biggest contributing factor to SaaS companies' struggles is that B2B buying has changed dramatically over the last five years and companies are still relying on decades-old sales strategies that no longer support a modern buying process.
In this post, we'll take a closer look at four significant changes in B2B buying, the problems each has created for Sales teams, and how Sales teams can adapt to generate revenue efficiently and effectively moving forward.
How has B2B buying changed?
Let's dive into the four most significant changes in B2B buying over the last five years.
1. Buying is no longer a linear process
Buying used to be a linear process, largely because the only source of information for the buyer was controlled by Sales, allowing Sales to manage the buyer’s journey. This linear structure made it easier for Sales to monitor the process, and widely adopted tools and playbooks were built around this linear design.
Today, however, the buying process is unavoidably chaotic and unique to each buyer. Buyers go forward and backward in the buying journey multiple times. According to Gartner, 80% of buyers go backward in the process at least once.
To make matters worse, buyers complete many of the steps outlined above outside of a domain owned by the business, giving Sales no visibility into the buyers' progress. More on that in change #2 below...
What problems does it present to Sales?
As mentioned previously, widely adopted Sales tools were created to follow a linear sales process. When asked to monitor today's convoluted buying process, where buyers frequently take steps forward and backward, traditional tools are unable to support it.
Without accurate monitoring of the buying process, two big problems arise.
Sales teams don't know what stage of the process buyers are in.
Pipeline forecasts are inaccurate
2. Buyers prefer a seller-free buying experience
According to Gartner, the desire for a seller-free buying experience has risen each year since 2020. For Millennials in particular, 72% of buyers preferred seller-free in 2022, and 75% of buyers preferred seller-free in 2023. That figure is predicted to increase to over 90% in the next three years. Buyers don’t want to interact with Sales until they’re well down the consideration path (75% according to most studies). Buyers explain that being forced to interact with Sales to receive information critical to their buying decision creates “annoyance and friction.”
What problems does it present to Sales?
Because buyers aren't engaging with Sales until it's necessary, Sales has less access to buyers than ever before. Sales have lost control over the buying process, leading to major problems:
Few/no opportunities to build value or mitigate risk
No idea what matters to buyers/what problem they're looking to solve
Deals stall or go silent and Sales doesn't know why
Sales reps' productivity is down
3. Buying committees are larger than ever
Ten years ago, the average buying committee included 5.4 members. Today, the average is 14 members and rising. In most cases, Sales likely won't interact with each member, yet still need to make sure each member has access to the information relevant to their role in the buying committee.
What problems does it present to Sales?
Each additional member of a buying committee adds to Sales teams' challenges:
Building consensus is more difficult
Potential repeat demos/meetings that draw out the sales cycle
4. Try-before-you-buy is now table stakes
Today's buyers expect transparency during their evaluation process. They want to know how the product works, see what it looks like, experience it in action, and understand the value the product will bring to their business before putting any dollars on the table. This desire to be 100% confident in their purchase is due to buyers having limited budgets and past experiences of buyer regret.
Note: "Try-before-you-buy" does not translate directly to offering a free version or trial period of your product. Not all products are suited (or businesses are ready) to use that GTM strategy. Instead, try-before-you-buy refers to demonstrating value and providing insight into the product early in the buying process using tools like interactive demos. Simply handing the keys to a product over to buyers without any guidance is 21% more likely to lead to buyer regret!
What problems does it present to Sales?
Buyers become skeptical when they're asked to "chat" or "meet" with Sales before getting even a glimpse into the product, and will navigate to a competitor that can answer their questions now. The data shows it -- 81% of request forms are abandoned. No one likes the feeling that someone is looking over their shoulder while they evaluate a purchase.
Simply put, not providing insight into your product early in the sales cycle will drive your buyers to your competition.
How Sales teams must adapt
The B2B marketplace has changed from seller-centric to buyer-centric. To adapt to a messy, non-linear buying process, driven by a larger buying committee that doesn't want to engage with Sales, yet demands insight into the product, what can Sales do?
The answer is to provide buyers with a channel Sales owns that:
allows buyers to engage digitally with your product and content
Is self-service in nature
Is on-demand, available 24/7
Helps buyers get the information they need immediately
By providing buyers with an asynchronous channel that matches how they prefer to buy, in an environment Sales controls, Sales receives insights into what each member of the buying committee is interested in / cares about and where buyers are in their learning/evaluation process. Detailed insight allows Sales to intervene when necessary to mitigate risk, build buyer confidence, and guide buyers down the decision journey.
