Be easy to buy from
Emma Pownall
Commercial Marketer | Purposeful Creative | Customer Champion | Driver of Strategic Change
Being easy to buy from is a sales job, right? Think again.
With over 75% of a B2B buyer’s time spent not talking to suppliers, their experience of ‘buying’ from you needs to be easy. And that experience starts way before you know they are on the lookout for what you sell.
The experience of a buyer is often overlooked when marketers build funnels and sales build cycles. This leaves both teams disconnected from the process buyers actually go through to buy your products and services.
As B2C buyers we don’t follow linear paths, we don’t reach out to sales teams until we know we want to speak to them and we don’t click email links and wait to get the next piece of info a few hours/days later. If we don’t operate in that way ourselves, why do we expect B2B buyers to operate that way?
But, if we don’t have funnels and cycles in reality, how do we manage B2B marketing and sales engagements without a linear process to follow? And how do we show we are creating impactful interactions for buyers that drive business outcomes?
The answer is through taking a? approach that builds trust and adds value for them. And to do that, we need to see the process through their eyes.?
Forget the funnel as a sign of intent
The research tells us that buyers want to research alone for around three quarters of their time buying and they will do that predominantly digitally. They also don’t do that in a linear funnel fashion despite what we think (or build) as marketers. Engagement with the traditional sales funnel can happen at any time, in any order.??
Gone are the days when you could build ‘top of funnel’ (TOFU), ‘middle of funnel’ (MOFU) and ‘bottom of funnel’ (BOFU) content and expect people to see it in order because you’ve pushed them there.? (If the funnel ever existed in the first place.)
Having content that serves the different needs of a researching buyer is still highly important - don’t ditch this activity. But breaking away from assigning levels of intent to buyers based on whether they interact with content that 'builds awareness' or content that 'drives a sale' can force the wrong behaviour of what you do next.
Cumulative scoring of engagement with your digital content can be useful to identify buyers but there isn’t a magic number they’ll reach that means they’ll flip into wanting to talk to you. Every buyer is unique and every buying cycle is designed and executed by them, not you. Instead, aim to add value at every interaction and build trust along the way.
Plan to serve the buyer every time
Ensuring you have quality content that serves every stage of the buying journey in any order is absolutely paramount. It’s a way to build trust, show you are serving the buyer’s needs and adding value to their discovery. And you shouldn’t make buyers work hard for it by hiding it behind data capture so that you know who they are as early as possible.
If you do build in high-touch engagements based on digital engagements, such phone calls after downloads and form fills, build in the intention to listen. Understand where they are at, their timescales and their process. If they're at an early stage, have the confidence to leave them alone unless they ask for more. If your content is doing its job, you'll be front of mind when they get to the point they're ready to reach out. Check-ins designed to serve the buyer (not the sales cycle) can help to add additional value, providing you with the ability to offer insights and support thats relevant to them and what they’re up to.
A word of warning, you need to watch for signs of time-wasting behavior such as multiple conversations without project context, inconsistent engagement patterns, or vague project details. Filter these early through qualification questions in initial interactions. This helps focus resources on genuine buyers while maintaining a? approach for all.
Make it easy for them to get in touch
You can build confidence to leave buyers to reach out when they are ready by making it easy for them to do so.? Signposting how to get in touch, and what for, can make it easy for them and means you don’t miss opportunities.? A serious buyer will want human interaction when the time is right for them so enabling that is important.
Build to their process not yours
Sales and marketing alignment is nothing new. If you’re not aligned to sales, then marketing cannot serve the outcomes of the business or the buyer. Making that alignment happen should be for the benefit of the buyer’s experience, not the benefit of reaching targets.
As an aligned sales and marketing function, one approach is to build the process based on buyers needs rather than internal processes. And by that I mean remove the friction for the buyer. If there are points where you know sales won’t engage because the buyer hasn’t hit a certain criteria, or there is hesitation because sales and marketing disagree on what should happen next, lean in and optimise the transition points for the buyer.
Many sales teams feel marketing teams don't pass over enough good quality leads and many marketing teams feel sales don’t work the leads hard enough. Reframing the language to address ‘have we done the right thing for the buyer at this time?’ can disarm either side in an instant. It can also drive better decisions by either team based on the buyers unique needs, not their own.
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Blend continuous and burst activity
To be buyer-led, you’ll need a blend of both continuous ‘always on’ activity and bursts of ‘campaign’ activity. Your continuous marketing should focus on the buyer's journey and drawing high-intent-to-buy audience in your direction. This is the part buyers expect to see in an order that works for them and can be based on science (search volumes, paid advertising costs, number of clicks etc).?
Your burst activity sits on top, attracting the attention outside of search. It is designed to interrupt and bring you to the front of mind for buyers who know you and those that don’t. It’s why billboards, influencers, social media ads and podcasts guesting works so well in B2C. Find the places your buyer is and a way to engage with them there within your burst activity and aim to add value.
Work with your partners
Buyers are not just working their way through their buying cycle between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday. And they’re not just forming their buying decisions while they’re sitting at their desk, browsing your content.??
A lot of decisions about your company will be made on the edges of the core research. Peer recommendations, finding out about you whilst consuming content they regularly engage with and being reminded of your brand at another occasion can all enhance the buyer's decision making. Working closely with partners (suppliers, aligned brands, media relationships etc) will help your buyer to build a better picture of you and keep you front of mind.?
Add to the conversation and add value.? Don’t assume that engagement with others is a negative, especially if you are enhancing what they have to say.?
Measure what matters to buyers
Traditional funnel metrics like MQLs, SQLs and conversion rates don't tell the full story of a buyer's experience. Yes, they're useful internally but they don't show if you're actually easy to buy from.
Instead, look at metrics that show you're adding value:
The beauty of measuring buyer value is that it naturally improves traditional metrics too. Buyers who find value keep coming back, and buyers who keep coming back eventually buy. But crucially, they buy because you've earned their trust, not because you've pushed them through a funnel.
In summary
Being easy to buy from means putting buyers first - way before you know they're looking. With 75% of B2B buying happening without supplier contact, your presence needs to work harder and smarter.
Forget linear funnels - buyers research their own way, in their own time. Your job? Make sure quality content serves every stage of their journey, whenever they need it. Build trust by adding value, not pushing sales conversations before they're ready.
Success comes from removing friction. Align sales and marketing to the buyer's process, not yours. Blend 'always on' activity that captures high intent with burst campaigns that grab attention through targeted channels.
Make it easy to buy, easy to engage, and most importantly - easy to trust you're the right choice when they're ready.
Further reading:
Thanks for reading Make Marketing Matter.
I'm Emma, an in-house tech markerting leader passionate about elevating B2B marketing to deliver impact and business outcomes. Want to join the conversation? Share your thoughts and feedback below.
This is an informative and thoughtful guide. Thanks Emma Pownall .
I help leaders in finance and sales to transform and automate their processes with business applications built with Dynamics 365 and CoPilot AI
3 周Emma Pownall great post. I absolutely agree. Buyers don’t follow a predictable / linear path of engagement so expecting them to move through a predefined framework that's been planned out extensively is outdated - and that goes for sales and for marketing.