On Transparency: Your Cards are Showing and Your Chips Are on the Table

At the Flip My Funnel conference in August, I spoke a bit about what transparency means for sales and our customers in 2019 and how peer review and comparison websites have created a significant shift in B2B sales. These goldmines of information essentially have put all the cards on the table for us. 

For those of you who don’t know, websites like G2, TrustRadius, and Saas Genius are just a few of the dozen or so software review sites and comparison tools that are free to buyers. Some of these listings, we as companies own, but we don’t have control over our review ranks or competitor comparisons. 

If you are selling or buying software, I advise you to go spend a couple of hours on these sites. Online reviews influence the decision of 90% of our buyers, so you can’t afford not to. Eighty-nine percent of buyers also read a businesses’ responses to reviews, so please take advantage of the opportunities you have to respond.

How G2 Is Affecting Transparency

G2, in particular, is dominating transparency because they’re starting to own almost all of the comparison keywords. If you hop over to Google (not right now, but in about three minutes when you’re done here), and search for something like “best sales consulting firm” guess what the top organic result is? 

G...2...

We’ve been very lucky for a long time in the B2B space. Previously, we held all the cards tightly and buyers would have to come to us. We owned the data and the information. But now, with more and more buyers flocking to websites like G2, we have to realize buyers are getting to be pretty damn savvy about our products before ever talking to a salesperson and now expect sales to be more knowledgeable.

“G2’s traffic increased 2X from 2017 to 2018. It’s going to be 3X from 2018 to 2019” - G2 Crowd

How The B2C Mindset in B2B is Affecting Transparency

It’s true, we’ve been lucky in B2B, but now B2B buyers are acting more and more like B2C buyers. 

If you’ve bought a house or a call in the last three to four years, what was the first thing you remember doing after deciding purchase that house or that car? You likely asked Google.

Last year, 49 percent of homes in the U.S. were found by the buyer themselves, and 95 percent of home buyers used the internet continuously during their search. What about when you were looking at a new car? When you walked into the dealership did you feel like you knew slightly more than the car salesman? 

It’s because you, as a buyer, did your research before engaging in a sales conversation. 

You read reviews and you compared builders, neighborhood taxes and fees, dealerships, car makes and models. You came to the table more informed. And now that the information B2B buyers want to know is a Google or G2 search away, they are also coming to the table more informed.

A Warning on Transparency and the More Informed Buyer

Even if your company isn’t fully onboard with the trend in transparency, as the name of this article warns - your cards already are facing up and your chips are on the table.

Buyers are coming to meetings with competitor knowledge and comparison sheets that they were able to find on their own. If SDRs and sales reps lack the product and competitor knowledge, it easily will be exposed.

More often than not, buyers also will be able to highlight specific weak points in a software based on this competitor knowledge, and sales now has to be able to communicate how the service team will overcome it and lunge head first at the issues with solutions.

Embracing Transparency

But what does this trend in transparency really mean for sales? That buyers need and trust transparency. We already know buyer motivations have shifted from price to value. But what value can you bring to buyers that they don’t already know?

I’m not saying you have to take a cue from Buffer and be so transparent that you share the salary of every employee in a live Google sheet. But I am saying that B2B sales no longer has the luxury of bluffing. So how much time needs to pass until we start taking it seriously and embrace it?