In Modern B2B Sales, What Does "Buyer-Centric" Really Mean?

Hey, Enablers, Happy Friday. Mike Kunkle here. Welcome to this week's edition of Sales Enablement Straight Talk!

This week, I want to answer the question:

"In modern B2B sales, what does 'buyer-centric' really mean?"

Let's dig in.

Introduction

In the ever-evolving landscape of B2B sales, the term “buyer-centric” has become a buzzword. I hear it spoken or see it written frequently. What I don't hear or see nearly as often is actual evidence that we've become more buyer centric.

So, what does it truly mean to be buyer-centric in today’s market? Is it just another trendy phrase, or does it hold substantial value for sales professionals and organizations?

Let’s explore the depths of buyer-centricity and uncover its real impact on modern B2B sales.

The Essence of Buyer-Centricity

At its core, being buyer-centric means operating in your buyers’ best interest.

It’s about understanding and addressing the unique needs, challenges, and goals of each buyer to build trust, solve problems, and foster long-term relationships. This approach goes beyond merely selling a product or service; it’s about creating value and delivering solutions that resonate with the buyer’s specific context.

Why Buyer-Centricity Matters

In a world where buyers are more informed and empowered than ever, the control of the buying process has shifted dramatically. Buyers now conduct extensive research, compare options, and seek peer recommendations before engaging with sales representatives. This shift necessitates a change in how sales teams operate. A buyer-centric approach is no longer optional; it’s essential for survival and success in the competitive B2B landscape.

In B2B buying research, buyers consistently tell us they want to work with sellers who understand them and their business, who can communicate effectively with them and their executive decision makers, who are trustworthy with integrity, and who can provide insights and perspective. Unfortunately, in many of these same studies, buyers rate the average seller very low in these key areas.

Research by Deloitte found that buyer-centric companies are 60% more profitable compared to those that are not. This profitability stems from increased buyer loyalty, higher sales, and improved customer satisfaction. By prioritizing the buyer’s needs and delivering tailored solutions, businesses can differentiate themselves and create a unique selling proposition.

Our mindsets, beliefs, and how we speak all influence the way we behave, so getting your sales methodology and related training materials right influences your sellers’ behavior and helps you project the best-possible image to your buyers and customers.

Key Components of Buyer-Centric Selling

To truly embrace buyer-centricity, sales teams must focus on several key components:

Deep Understanding of Buyer Personas and Buyer’s Journey

Creating detailed buyer personas is the foundation of a buyer-centric strategy. These personas should encompass demographic information, roles, goals, and COIN-OP (Challenges, Opportunities, Impacts, Needs, Outcomes, and Priorities). Additionally, understanding the buyer’s journey and the exit criteria for each persona in each process stage is crucial. By understanding who the buyers are, what drives their decisions, and their journey, sales teams can tailor their approach to meet specific needs.

Servant Leadership

Buyer-centric selling and servant leadership share a common philosophy: prioritizing the needs and well-being of others. In buyer-centric selling, the focus is on understanding and addressing the buyer’s needs, preferences, and challenges, ensuring that the solutions offered genuinely benefit the customer (I often refer to this as having "need and solution alignment").

Similarly, servant leadership emphasizes the leader’s role in supporting and empowering their team, prioritizing their growth, development, and well-being. Both approaches foster trust, collaboration, and long-term relationships by putting others first and creating value through empathy, active listening, and a commitment to service. This alignment of values not only enhances satisfaction and loyalty but also drives sustainable success.

Personalized Engagement

Personalization is at the heart of buyer-centric selling. It’s about making each buyer feel unique and valued. This involves customizing communication, content, and solutions to align with the buyer’s preferences and requirements. Personalized engagement builds trust and demonstrates a genuine commitment to solving the buyer’s problems.

When prospecting, this starts with uncovering and adapting to where your buyers are in their life cycle (pre-buying or status quo, buying or seeking a solution to a problem, or post-buying), and by taking a problem-centric versus a product-centric approach.

From those foundations, it then becomes about how they define value and what outcomes they are seeking.

Value-Driven Conversations

In a buyer-centric approach, conversations should focus on delivering value, from the buyers' perspective. Sellers must listen actively, ask insightful questions, and provide relevant insights that address the buyer’s challenges, enable opportunities, and help them achieve the outcomes they seek, in whatever ways they define value. Understanding what "value" means to each buyer is crucial. This value could be:

• Business Value: Financial or operational performance and metrics.
• Experiential Value: Improving a process or experience.
• Aspirational Value: Aligned with mission, vision, or values.
• Personal Value: Something that impacts the individual.

Sellers must understand what each buyer considers "value" and the specific outcomes they seek. They need to become "multilingual" sellers. And by this, I don't mean speaking various languages, but learning to message and personalize value appropriately to each individual buyer, to resonate with their perspective and satisfy their buying process exit criteria. This nuanced understanding and approach builds trust and demonstrates a genuine commitment to solving the buyer’s problems.

Counterintuitively, "problems" in this context does not always mean moving away from something negative. The buyer might be having difficulty enabling a strategic opportunity before its window closes. They want to move toward something positive but need help getting there. You may be able to remove an obstacle that allows them to move forward.

Just keep in mind that research shows that more people are motivated to move away from something negative or painful than are motivated to take action to move toward something positive. Senior executive buyers are sometimes more motivated to move toward something, but the average person tends to be more compelled to move away from something negative.

In a similar token, it can also be tricky to get people to take action to avoid risk or something negative, before that pain is present. This is why understanding context is so important, as is understanding the COIN-OP, how they perceive value, and the outcomes they seek, which will allow you to develop a business case, from their perspective.

Seamless Buyer Experience

The buyer’s journey should be smooth and as frictionless as possible. This means providing easy access to information, simplifying the buying process, and ensuring consistent communication across all touchpoints. As much as possible, make buying easy. A seamless buyer experience enhances satisfaction and increases the likelihood of conversion.

• SIDEBAR: On the topic of friction, it can be a good tool. If you see a buyer who is about to do something that you know from experience will be detrimental, you may need to purposefully slow them down (apply friction) to get them to see something they currently don't, have an Aha Moment, or consider a new course of action. This is also true if the buyers are engaged in a purchase pursuit for something you sell but are not currently considering your company or solution. In the moment, your efforts to slow them down or share insights will feel like friction to them, but if you're doing it in their best interest, it is consultative and a positive application of friction.

Data-Driven Insights

Leveraging data and analytics is crucial for understanding buyer behavior and optimizing sales strategies. By analyzing buyer interactions, preferences, and feedback, sales teams can make informed decisions and continuously improve their approach. Data-driven insights enable proactive engagement and personalized recommendations.

Reality Check on Your Semantics

Kidding aside on semantics, it's an important and often overlooked aspect of creating a buyer-centric sales culture.

If your sales training materials accidentally fell into the hands of your best customers and target buyers, would you be proud or mortified?

Our mindsets, beliefs, and how we speak, all influence the way we behave, so getting your sales methodology and related training materials right will influence your sellers’ behavior and help you project the best-possible image to your buyers and customers.

Consider a few reality checks as you assess your current and desired future state of buyer centricity and your sales training that supports it.

“Handling” and “Overcoming Objections”

Do you use the phrase “overcoming objections?” Do buyers think about the concerns they raise as objections? (Reminds me of a courtroom drama: I object, your honor! Sustained!) Even if they object, do they want to have their concerns overcome? Even “handling” is odd, isn’t it? Do people want to be “handled?” We can do better. Why not just resolve their concerns?

Closing

This word has been used for years in sales and for many, it invokes the "techniques" that were once taught to close a sale: The Alternative Choice Close, The Time Pressure Close, The Takeaway, The Puppy Dog, The Ben Franklin Close, and I could go on. Remember "He who speaks first, loses?" What if we just summarized the discussion so far and recommended a logical next step?

Military Language

Do you discuss sales in military or war terms? For example: War room; Flank ’em; Lost the battle but not the war; Bring out the big guns. If customers heard that language, what would they think of you and your company? First, do we really need to refer to violent metaphors in business? Secondly, this doesn’t foster the empathetic, “we’re on the same-side-of-the-table” servant leadership and problem-solving that will deliver what modern buyers seek: a true partner that operates in their best interest. What if we worked with our buyers and customers and supported them, instead of trying to "win?"

Negotiating Approach

Do you use negotiating gambits and tactics in hopes of getting a better deal and “winning” the negotiation? Yes, sellers need to be aware of what buyers are being taught, so they can identify tactics, deflect them, and redirect the conversation to be about value and mutually beneficial outcomes.

LinkedIn Profiles

Do your sellers’ LinkedIn profiles emphasize their selling prowess (quota crushers, President’s club attainment, the number of sales methodologies learned, the VC-funding rounds obtained, etc.) as if it’s positioned for recruiters, more so than buyers? Buyers don’t care about any of this. They want to work with someone who wants to help them - someone who operates in their best interest.

Prospecting Approach

When you first interact with prospects, do you pitch or lead with your products, what you do, what you want, and about your company? Do you make it all about you? This is a great opportunity to flip-the-script and make it all about your buyer. Problem-based prospecting works far better than product-based prospecting.

Voice-Of-The-Customer (VOC)

Did you develop buyer personas solely based on internal perspective? Do you build products with cool features you like or something that interests you, versus to solve a major problem in the market? Are you simply selling versus helping your buyers buy and customers succeed? This is like gathering a group of men in their twenties to determine what women want in a relationship. Research your market. Study your customers and others like them. Or better yet, hire a third-party expert to do it, so you get their unvarnished perspective. Then layer ongoing Win/Loss Analysis on top of that foundation.

Sales Process

Is your sales process completely seller-centric and only about what your sellers need to do, void of buyer perspective? If it’s only about things like appointments set, qualification, discovery meetings, and product demos delivered, you’re missing the true point of sales process management. It should be about guiding the buyers to make a great purchase decision, versus a checklist of steps that you take. Aligning your sales process to the buying process from your persona and VOC work is a great first step.

Implementing Buyer-Centric Strategies

Transitioning to a buyer-centric approach requires a cultural shift within the organization. Here are some practical steps to get started:

Foster a Buyer-Centric Culture

Leadership must champion the importance of buyer and customer centricity and embed it into the company’s values and mission. This involves training and empowering sales teams to prioritize the buyer’s needs and adopt a consultative selling approach that is value based and outcome oriented.

Collaborate Across Departments

Buyer-centricity is not limited to the sales team; it requires collaboration across all departments. Marketing, customer service, and product development especially must work together to ensure a consistent and cohesive buyer experience. Sharing insights and aligning strategies can lead to better outcomes.

Common Language | Common Skills

As an example of this cross-functional collaboration, aligning around a common language and developing shared skills is crucial for achieving high levels of buyer-centric sales performance. A unified language ensures that all team members, from marketing to sales to customer service, are on the same page, can speak in shorthand with each other, fostering clear communication and collaboration in support of buyers and customers.

• This alignment helps in creating a seamless buyer experience, as everyone understands and uses the same terminology, processes, and strategies.
• Developing common skills across these departments ensures that every interaction with the buyer is consistent and value driven.

For instance, training in active listening, empathy, and consultative selling techniques can empower teams to better understand and address buyer needs. When sales, marketing, and customer success teams are aligned in their approach and skills, they can collectively deliver a cohesive and compelling buyer journey, ultimately driving higher satisfaction and loyalty. This integrated approach not only enhances internal efficiency but also positions the organization as a trusted partner in the eyes of the buyer.

Imagine a marketing team using the POSE value Story format (Problem, Outcome, Solution, Explore) to garner interest. Then imagine a product marketing team using POSE and other buyer-centric frameworks and models to teach sellers how to message appropriately. Then, when the seller engages with the interested buyer, they use the same framework in their dialogue, that marketing used to generate interest. Later, the customer success team follows through to ensure the solution will deliver the outcomes they buyer expects. Four departments, in this case, all aligned around the customer. That's powerful. And of course, it started back even further when the R&D/product development team crafted solutions that would resonate with the market, based on research, focus groups, VOC work, and/or Win/Loss Analysis. Now, it's 5 departments. You get the point.

Invest in Technology, Intelligently

Technology plays a vital role in enabling buyer-centric selling. Customer relationship management (CRM) systems, marketing automation tools, and data analytics platforms can provide valuable insights and streamline processes. Investing in the right technology can enhance personalization and improve overall efficiency. Just remember to focus on effectiveness first, then optimizing efficiency through technology. Otherwise, as a friend of mine says, you'll be doing a lot more of the dumb stuff even faster.

Continuously Measure and Improve

Buyer-centricity is an ongoing journey. Regularly measure key performance indicators (KPIs) such as buyer experience satisfaction, CSAT, NPS, conversion rates, win rates, customer lifetime value, and customer retention. Gather feedback from buyers and use it to refine strategies and address any pain points. Continuous improvement ensures that the buyer-centric approach remains effective and relevant.

• SIDEBAR: This is one of the many reasons that coaching, especially formal sales coaching, is so important. Create a coaching culture and get into a regular cadence of continuous improvement.

Closing Thoughts: The Future of Buyer-Centric Selling

As the B2B sales landscape continues to evolve, buyer-centricity will remain a critical factor for success. Buyers will continue to demand personalized experiences, value-driven interactions, and seamless journeys. Sales teams that embrace buyer-centricity and adapt to changing buyer behaviors will thrive in this dynamic environment. There is more you can do, but this is an important foundation to future-proof your sales force.

In conclusion, being buyer-centric is not just a trend; it’s a fundamental shift in how B2B sales operate. By putting the buyer at the center of every decision and action, sales professionals can build trust, foster long-term relationships, and drive sustainable growth. Embrace buyer-centricity, and you’ll not only meet the demands of modern buyers but also position your organization for success in the ever-changing B2B landscape.

RESOURCES

• Article: How Buyer Centric is your Sales Organization? | Mike Kunkle on SPARXiQ
• Article: Rethinking the Sales Approach to Objections: A Buyer-Centric Perspective?| Mike Kunkle on SPARXiQ
• Article: Make the Shift to Buyer-Centric Selling | Mike Kunkle on SPARXiQ
• Article: The Other-Centric Pass-Through: Empowering Growth Through Mutual Success | Distribution Strategy Group
• Course: Modern Sales Foundations Course Preview

Well, that's it for this week, Enablers! Did you learn something new reading this newsletter? If you did, or if it just made you think (and maybe chuckle from time to time - bonus points if you snorted), share it with your favorite enablement colleague, subscribe right here on LinkedIn, and check out The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement Learning Experience. For other courses and content from Mike, see: https://linktr.ee/mikekunkle

Until next time, stay the course, Enablers, and #MakeAnImpact With #Enablement!