More Positive Signs - Diverse Buying Teams

Happy New Year. Late last year, I shared some commentary that are studies are showing some progress in terms of buying effectiveness. This is good for both buyers and vendors.

Today, I want to explore something that is more applicable to folks trying to make buying decisions (or any decision for that matter).

TL;DR Diverse Decision Teams Make Better Decisions.

For my primary audience, the tech community, there is nothing you can do to drive a prospect or customer to form a diverse buying team. Understanding that may help you prioritize and assess opportunities but that is about it.

But for everyone else, buyers or any decision team (including any team making a decision for a tech company), the evidence clearly shows the value of forming diverse teams and embracing that diversity with the right type of collaborative environment and empowerment.

In our latest (data just back from the field), business buyer study we explore buying team diversity. We did that by asking respondents if they felt their buying team lacked diversity in terms of:

• Age Differences;
• Cultural Backgrounds; and
• Work Experience.

We went down this path for two reasons. First, the increase in the millennial generation as the core of buying groups, the decline of baby boomers, and the near future with GenY has already had some interesting findings. Second, when my friend Erik Larson was in the early stages of building Cloverpop , he shared data with me on how team diversity improves decision making.

So I finally got a chance to test that myself. Here are a few charts that tell the story.

First, Diverse teams were more common than teams that were described as not diverse (excluding those that were neutral). Based on level of agreement with the statement, 47% of our 3068 respondents felt their teams were diverse.

But did that matter? Boy did it ever.

One of the paths we've been exploring is the level of unhealthy conflict within the buying team. Unhealthy conflict is a big contributor to regret, delays and frustrations. Lets look at it based on the diversity responses:

Wow! The jump from the diverse groups to even the neutral group is high, but look at the numbers for the teams lacking diversity.

Given, this I took a look at regret:

Same story (not unexpected with the conflict element). So why is this? A willingness to acknowledge and recognize diversity implies a higher level of maturity (at least in my mind). So, I expect teams that think this way don't just have diverse teams, they likely encourage diverse thinking: respectful challenging, openness to explore, encouraging alternative perspectives.

So for a final test, I went to our New Chasm Model and it proved this out.

The organizations that have the highest risk tolerance and value technology the most (which leads to them being more mature buyers) are significantly more likely to have a diverse team. The Agile Leaders led the way at 61%. The Fast Followers were at 46% (basically the same as the overall percentage

The second highest individual group was the Disciplined Followers that have with the similar levels of maturity, but lower risk tolerance, at 59%.

The Ambitious Leaders, our group with high risk tolerance that don't view technology as strategically. are down to 43%.

And finally there are the three groups that have low risk tolerance and don't view technology strategically. One of them, the Disinterested Laggards, was surprisingly high at 55%. This group, seems to know who they are and what they want (they aren't good prospects for most vendors given they are often the last to adopt, so keep that in mind. Then we see that Reluctant Followers at 36% and the Conflicted Laggards at 33%. These are the groups that show the most challenges in buying year after year after year.

What does this mean?

For my primary audience, the tech community, there is nothing you can do to drive a prospect or customer to form a diverse buying team. Understanding that may help you prioritize and assess opportunities but that is about it.

But for everyone else, buyers or any decision team (including any team making a decision for a tech company), the evidence clearly shows the value of forming diverse teams and embracing that diversity with the right type of collaborative environment and empowerment.

Go for it.