Is Preference for Digital Even a Useful Question?

At Gartner (and I'm sure we are not alone), we often ask B2B buyers whether they have a preference for a digital buying experience vs. working with a sales rep.

Consistently, the answers lean very heavily toward a digital preference. Now, we also see that those customers that rely more on digital experience are more likely to experience purchase regret, but that fact is often ignored.

Instead, we lament (yet again), the death of sales.

As I think about this more and more, I am leaning heavily toward this being a worthless question. For three reasons:

1. Absent additional situational context, the preference for digital experiences seems pretty obvious. You are in control. You're not being pushed. You can research on your own time.
2. The comparison is always digital experiences vs. a sales rep. Unfortunately, that term (sales rep) generally is associated with negative stereotypes. The comparison is rarely made to a sales team. When you think about a great sales team, there are often roles like industry specialist, sales engineer, or systems architect involved. When we ask people what resource they value most to get deeper insight, it is usually those type of roles. Change the frame, and the answer likely changes.
3. Finally, the term digital. Sure everyone is choosing that option, but many may not know what is actually meant by it. We did some qualitative research with 30 people in the middle of a complex buying process. When we asked about their digital experiences, they struggled to answer or describe them. When we reframed as online or self-service, they could answer. Digital was meaningless.

But given this what should we do, here are some ideas:

1. Create better online experiences. This is a strongly desired path for much for the work buyers do, but online experiences rarely deliver what buyers want. They struggle to find information that they feel should obviously available and have to work to hard in the first place. We heard this over and over in those interviews.
2. Offer off-ramps to connect with people. But not just anyone and not just a sales rep. Given the context of the buyer, offer a more powerful connection. Wondering about integration? Offer and architect or an engineer. Concerns about security? Connect with a security specialist from your team. Dave Brock often questions why we would staff BDR teams with less experienced people when, often, if someone reaches out, they want more than they can find on their own.
3. Stop blaming reps or calling for the death of sales. In some situations, you truly don't need reps or sales teams. But in other they are vital. Beyond that, the reasons for the preference is not really on the profession. It is just an obvious answer to a broadly framed question.

Largely, we continue to mimic the way we have always done things with an added element of online. Instead, if we reimagined things based on the jobs the buying needs to get done and the questions they need to answer, we could choose the best paths (options are good) to helping them progress. Default to online as one option, but always look for situations when people can help more.

While buyers may say they prefer digital, ahem online, the reality may be different. Our interviews consistently talked about the people connections as adding more value, more clarity and more trust. The full context can rarely be revealed without a human connection.

Buyers prefer digital? Who cares.

Buyers want better experiences? We can do more.

I can tell you that without any statistics.

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.