Is Your Brand in Crisis Mode? Key Insights from the 2024 B2B Buying Disconnect Report

We’ve got some new research
on how B2B buyers journeys are continuing to buck the norm.
Let’s talk about it in this episode of Closing Time.
Thanks for tuning into Closing Time the show for Go to Market leaders.
I’m Val Riley, head of Content and digital marketing at Insightly CRM.
Today, I’m joined by Allyson Havener.
She is senior VP of Marketing and Community at TrustRadius.
Allyson, welcome to the show. Hi, Val.
It’s so great to be here.. Thanks for having me.
So TrustRadius and Pavillion jointly released
a report called the 2024. B2B Buying Disconnect.
And, well, I think the use of the word disconnect stands out to me.
So we’ll talk about it.
But first, can you talk me through the methodology behind the report?
Yeah.
So it actually really starts with the disconnect.
What we see a lot is that there’s a big disconnect into the way
buyers are evolving and how they want to actually interact with vendors
and the way vendors go to market.
And so our methodology is to
we build a survey of like how do we really want to understand
buyers, What are the questions that we want to be asking?
We have an internal research team which is amazing,
and they help us craft that survey and then we reach out to buyers
in our community and then we also do the same thing on the vendor side.
And essentially we like to look at the different questions of, Hey,
what makes you more likely to buy or what are the most influential resources
that you find out there?
And then we asked
vendor specific questions about their go to market
and we find the disconnect between the two.
And that’s really kind of the methodology and impetus for the report.
So that’s super insightful
because you guys have both sides of the equation, right?
You have the buyers and then you have the vendor.
So I love that.
So out of the gate, the report starts by discussing short lists
and we call that sometimes the initial consideration set.
What did the data show?
Because I think that that is particularly of interest.
Yeah.
So the infamous short list,. I think that a couple of things
before we probably jump into some of the data,
but I think people have to know kind of the buyer mindset
given where we’ve come over the last five, ten years.
One thing is, is that most of the buying power out there
today, over 75% recognize themselves
or identify themselves as millennials and Gen Z.
So these are digitally native people.
They have grown up in the B2C world where they’ve had reviews.
They had all this important product
information at their fingertips from the consumer side of the house.
And now those expectations have been transcending into the B2B world.
And that’s something that we’ve been reporting on for a really long time.
This is our eighth annual report.
And that trend is our reality at this point.
And so when you think about the short list and how somebody would build that,
they are already skeptical, they’re super risk adverse
and people are really adhering to the status quo
because they fear messing up more than missing out.
And so I’m not going to kind of push the edge of innovation
if my job could possibly be on the line for picking the wrong technology.
I’m going to go with something either. I know, I’ve used before
or that my peers are using.
And I think this is kind of this collective confidence that vendors
should be really thinking about and how they go to market
and how they’re talking to their buyers is really building this confidence.
And so if you think about the
short list, it is actually shrinking.
At the height,
there are around five products and they’ve been shrinking down
to more like three, which is super competitive.
If you think about how oversaturated technology categories are these days.
And so 75% of buyers said
that they usually go with their top choice.
And so and then all that other research that they do is just
to build that collective confidence with the rest of the buying group.
And that number actually gets higher as you look at enterprise buyers.
So 86% say that they already go
with somebody that they’ve heard of, and that was probably their first choice.
And when they even before they started their research.
So it’s really interesting that people are going with top of mind
and something that’s proven, which makes it really harder for smaller
brands or Challenger brands that are trying to enter the market.
Yeah, that kind of hits close to home because when I wear my Insightly CRM
hat, you know, there are like 1500 CRMs available on the market
and it’s really heavily dominated by a handful of brands.
And so we are a Challenger brand and gosh,
that just feels like the tide is turning a little bit against them with,
I think, what you just identified as sort of a generational shift, right?
So I technically consider myself Gen X and. I think some of the attributes of Gen X
are very interested in bucking the status quo or going with a Challenger brand.
And it sounds like that is on its way out, which is super interesting
from this report.
Yeah.
And I think you can really you know, when I look at Challenger Brands
and not to get into too much solutioning but like
if you think
about the CRM category to your point
there’s different types of buyers that are going to be your ICP.
And so I think one piece and what we see a lot of people doing is
how are you aligning to those people?
How are you making sure that your customers, because your customers
that are truly finding the value of that, their peers are out in the market.
And again, like. I want to know what my peers are doing,
so maybe they’re not a leader in the category per se, but
maybe they’re in a leader in a category for the type of world I’m in,
the size company and maturity that I’m at, maybe that makes the most sense.
And so I think when you start thinking about your go to market and your ICP
and then how you’re using your customers, so they’re kind of that mouthpiece
for you and then their peers are like,. Oh, that makes sense.
Like somebody at the same size company is using Insightly like,
Why wouldn’t I be as well? Right.
Yeah, that’s super insightful.
So keeping on going with the research.
There was some data, I think,
on buying group size and length of the purchase process
that I thought was particularly interesting as well.
Yeah. So buying groups have stabilized.
So over the years, we’ve kind of seen a lot of shifts in buying groups, but
over the last three years they’ve kind of stayed around that 3 to 5 range.
And in the report, you can kind of see how that range is
based on the size companies.
So enterprise being more obviously,
but if you get down to kind of mid-market and SMB, it’s one.
Which is really interesting because you start to see decisions
being made in silos in a sense.
And the executive suite is getting more and more involved.
And so over 50% of buyers said
that a C-suite executive was involved in a purchase decision,
and that was ranging anywhere from 10k purchases
all the way up to, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
So I think that’s interesting to think about the consolidation
of decision making, but then also the C-suite role in that.
And it makes it even harder for us as vendors because getting to that C-suite
and getting those eyeballs is really, really hard.
And influencing the C-suite is really hard.
And so I think we kind of get to some of the other findings.
It’s like reaching the C-suite with a really powerful brand.
It’s really hard.
It takes a lot of work and dedication, but it’s definitely something worth
investing in because this is a trend that we’ve seen over the last few years.
Interesting.
Well, I love that it comes down to brand because you know,
I feel like to get on that short list to get the C-suite attention.
There is, you know, an emphasis on brand.
But there was some interesting data on brand spending versus
spending on demand Gen that caught my eye as well in the report.
Yeah.
So every year of the report we always try to pick a theme like what
really came out, about three years ago is around the self-serve buyer.
Again, kind of what I
talked about in the beginning is that everyone wanted to self-serve.
100% of buyers were like,
I’d rather find all this information on my own about a product.
I’m not going to reach out until I’m ready to buy.
And now you see this evolution where if you’re not even making the short list,
you know you’re not even in the running, you’re not even in these deals.
Last year was really around how much people were putting emphasis on ROI.
Again, this risk aversion and skepticism of oversaturated technology markets.
And this year what you’re seeing is kind of the evolution of that,
where it’s really turning into a brand crisis
for a lot of vendors out there that have been overspending
on kind of this performance driven demand gen centric marketing
and not thinking about the brand that they’re creating.
And I think there’s a big difference
between any marketer will tell you this between awareness and preference.
Awareness, how they heard of you.
And then second is, do they actually want to align themselves
and will they pick you over other competitors in the market?
And those are two different ways to approach brand
awareness and preference, and you have to do both.
So I think when marketers look at, when we look at spend,
so it was a little less than 35% was spent on brand
while the rest of the budget was being spent on demand gen.
And that makes sense
because as a marketing leader you’re going to walk into the executive team
and you want to show that one plus one equals two.
I did this,. I did this, This led to revenue.
You want to tell the board that, you want to tell your sales team that.
And so that makes sense.
But that’s not the way buyers are buying.
And we try to make it this linear equation when it comes
to proving the worth of marketing.
And what is happening is, is you’re seeing the brand side of it
and the emotional connection
and our ability to build confidence through buyers is really lacking.
And that’s what’s kind of hurting us in the long run
and kind of leading to this like year of the brand crisis.
And that’s a big theme of the report that we saw.
That’s so insightful.
I mean, as I’ve got 20 years of marketing under my belt and it is so much harder
to get buy in on spending for brand at the board
level or the, you know, executive level than it is for performance marketing.
But, you know, they are so tightly coupled and I’m excited to hear that
the pendulum potentially is swinging
because it’s been so far in the camp of performance marketing that
the pendulum is swinging back to brand because there’s just so many things
that we do that we can’t measure in the way
that we measure performance marketing, but still have a huge impact.
Right, Exactly.
And I think that it’s interesting because I,
I go and I’m having these same conversations
and that’s why it’s so fun to do this report because we take a lot
of these insights at TrustRadius and apply it to our go to market.
And I really feel like this report is almost for like the investor community
because they’re the ones that are holding our feet to the fire.
And so the more I think this report’s really helpful for people to be like, Hey,
here’s the data around the way buyers are thinking and their mindset.
So you can have that change management and that conversation internally.
So yeah, we might not be able to 100% tie
everything that we do to this bottom line revenue or pipeline or whatever it is.
However, what we can show is like this,
this kind of halo effect that the brand is really creating.
And I think that’s that’s part of like the trust that you’re building
with your sales team, with your board, with the investors, etc..
But really this data is supposed to help us in that conversation.
Okay.
I’m definitely borrowing the halo effect of brand.
I love that term.. I haven’t heard it before. So thank you.
One more data point that was in the report was that the primary
go to market challenge that organizations are going to have
this year is sales and marketing effectiveness.
Can you break down what that means and why do you think it topped the list?
I think when you again, go back to buyers are kind of sticking with this.
We were like they want to know and they want to try before they buy.
And that’s
a lot
because that really changes, so if you think about sales teams,
they’re usually the gatekeepers when it comes to
product information,
any kind of demo or actually seeing the product, pricing.
And what you’re seeing is that brands that are trying to kind of
essentially pivot that and say, let’s
give them an interactive demo that they can just
walk through on their own, let’s give them pricing upfront.
And that changes the role a lot of the sales team.
But if you try to keep the sales team as like this gatekeeper
of product information, it’s really going to hurt you in the long run.
I mean, even in the short run, right?
Because what we actually see on. TrustRadius is
if you’re a product on TrustRadius and you don’t have pricing
and your competitors do, a large percentage of traffic goes over
to your competitors from your page looking for pricing.
And so again, when you look at the most influential resources
that buyers use, they’re looking at their own experience going back to brand
or actually your customer success team, did they use your product before?
Do they know your product before?
Do they have success with it?
They’re looking at free trials and then a self-serve demo.
And so I think when you look at that disconnect and it’s creating those
inefficiencies in your marketing and your sales is when you’re not
being transparent and building that trust.
I think the other big piece of the report that we get into,
obviously this transparency piece, but it’s building trust.
We’re starting a new survey, so this isn’t in the report,
but you’re getting a little bit of a sneak peek.
But we’re looking at some of the like usability and integrations of
products as well.
Like how many times have you bought a technology and maybe
never even implemented it properly or not even using it to its full capabilities?
I know I’ve been guilty of that, where something kind of sat on the shelf
and it took us a year to even do the change
management to actually even implement the product.
And so I think there are some we’re going to start working on some new data
around kind of that people process and technology dynamic
because I think after buy it, post-purchase is the hardest part.
It’s like picking great, like, you go with something,
but then actually implementing it and running the change
management internally and making that successful.
That’s the hardest part, in my opinion.
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
It’s like it’s like getting married versus staying married, right?
Exactly.
Allyson, I feel like there’s so many more things
that we can talk about in this report, but we’re running short on time.
Where can folks find the report if they want to take a deeper dive?
Yeah, so just visit trustradius.com.
You can find the report.
The best thing about it is we have it all ungated,
so you can download the whole report.
We have it all on our site as well.
We also made a media kit.
This year or actually last year was the first year we did it.
But we made a media kit, so you can get all the charts, You can get
all the kind of sound bites from the report too.
So again, this is supposed to be used as a tool if you need to really have
that conversation
with your leadership of change management about how you go to market.
Nice, ungated, fantastic.
Allyson, thank you so much for joining us on Closing Time.
Thank you so much for having me.. This was so fun.
And thanks to all of you for tuning in to Closing Time.
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