Differentiation and Consideration
Hank Barnes
Chief of Research-Tech Buying Behavior, Gartner - Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities Surrounding Tech Buying Decisions
Recently, Dale W. Harrison has been sharing some excellent material discussing differentiation and distinction (with distinctive brand assets as a key theme). In his work, the differentiation focus is on product differentiation--which is where most tech vendors start.
I have a slightly different take were I contract differentiation with consideration--things you have to do to be considered. Now distinctive brand assets can definitely help with consideration and in well established categories much of the technical considerations factors would be almost assumed to be there for you, so there is that.
But then I remembered our new Business Buyer Survey. We surveyed 3068 people involved in a software purchase to support their functional area. As part of the survey, we asked what ultimately differentiated the product and the provider. So this is after the fact differentiation with prompting for a number of possibilities. One of which was "nothing."
Well in this mode, 96% identified at least one differentiating element.
Now, this should not be unexpected and it is a bit of a different take on differentiation (where you are trying to be noticed. Also, many of the forms of differentiation were things you can only discover through deep engagement and exploration. But that is all fine.)
With that, I didn't think I had a story to tell. But then I looked at the frequency of no regret by these 4 groupings. (Reminder: No Regret for us means buyers feel their expectations have been met and they did not settle.) Well that got more interesting:
Wow, the buyers who determined there were no significant differentiators (so other factors drove the decision) are significantly more likely to experience no regret. That was a surprise.
But then after reflecting it wasn't. Perhaps these buyers were looking at everything that surrounds the product and other intangibles. Many of them might have been buying in very mature categories where the options are similar on both the product and provider front.
So I dug a little bit deeper into our psychographic bag of tricks. It turns out the the psychographic groups that we call Disinterested Laggards (part of our Enterprise Technology Adoption profile set) are significantly more likely to cite no differentiation than other profiles. These are orgs whose technology choices are almost always highly proven, low risk options. And with that, the picture was fully formed for me.
Net: Understand your market stage to determine if you focus on short term product differentiation or pivot to other forms of differentiation. Couple those efforts with distinctive brand assets (something that is largely underinvested in) regardless of market stage.
No one can notice differences if you don't get noticed.
The articles in this newsletter do not follow Gartner's standard editorial review. All comments or opinions expressed here are mine and do not represent the views of Gartner, Inc. or its management.
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4 天前Very helpful! In a B2B environment, it’s rare to sell at into a unified group of stakeholders. I love the survey on business buyer data. Just to clarify, does this data pertain only to end users involved in the buying process?
Commercial Strategy & Marketing Effectiveness
5 天前But we know that almost all buyers are "undifferentiated category buyers" who only get value from the core feature-set that's shared across all products within the category. The other assumption here is that this data is about the product. That may be true, but it's FAR more likely that this data is about the cognitive adaptation of the buyer to ex-post facto purchase. No one wants to feel like an idiot after a purchase, so they tell themselves (and survey takers) stories that are made up to make themselves feel better about the choices they've made. I've run these exact same surveys in FULLY commoditized categories where the delivered product was indistinguishable down to the moleclular level (literally). What did I find: that buyer would claim to have bound based on differentiation and they would literally invent differences that we KNEW did not exist to justify their buying choices. So this approach can become a hall-of-mirrors that says more about buyer rationalization than anything that's actually happening in the real world.
?B2B Start-Up Growth Marketer | GTM, Demand Gen & Messaging | AI & Buyer Enablement | 23 Start-Ups, 5 Public Companies, 60+ Recommendations. ?? Fractional | Interim | Advisory | Special Projects
5 天前If I'm getting this right then you're saying that early adopters are willing to focus on the product differentiation - indeed, those differentiators may be driving their agenda - whereas laggards are focused on other aspects of the buying equation.