How New Customer Buying Behavior is Hurting Your Bottom Line

Buyers are outpacing supplier capabilities and becoming more efficient at pressuring on price—at least that's the recurring theme the SEC is hearing in our recent conversations with members. But what's enabling this behavior today's buyers, and more importantly, what does it mean for your sales strategy?

The recent member conversations we've had suggest that customers have become more sophisticated at buying over the last several years due to:

Economic pressures that have forced buyers to become increasingly risk averse and focused on cost—In response to the economic  uncertainty in the marketplace, customer organizations are relying more heavily on group buying, professionalized, process-driven procurement teams, and third-party consultants to help mitigate risk through well vetted purchases with higher levels of savings .
Increased access to information— Internet access and vast technological advances over the past decade have created a much more transparent buying environment than what existed in the past. Customers can now easily find and access information about their industry, the competition, your product/solution, and your competitors' products/solutions without spending a lot of time or money.

So what are the implications for sellers? Unfortunately, they are far from good as this rise in buyer sophistication has translated into a customer-led sales environment that is being pushed in a much more transactional direction.

In fact, our research this year shows that customers aren't even contacting suppliers until they are, on average, 57% of the way through their purchase process. This means customers have already determined their needs, completed due diligence, and have even begun to do some comparison shopping before contacting your reps. As such, the opportunities for sellers to influence how customers value a given solution has significantly decreased.

In this world, the only thing customers are leaving sellers to compete on is price. And with customers better positioned than ever to de-bundle supplier solutions and identify cost drivers, you can rest assured that the price will likely be low.

So how can sellers get ahead of their customers and take back control of sales interactions? This is the issue that the SEC will be focusing on in our 2012 research.

SEC Members, you can track our progress on this new research entitled Shaping Demand to Win Business here.. You may also want to consider launching the new Pre-Sales Diagnostic (at no extra charge), which examines how high-performing reps shape the nature of demand within their opportunities.

What else do you think is contributing to the rise in buyer sophistication? How are you seeing it manifest in your industry?