Buying today is a whole new game – it's fast, digital, and constantly evolving. Gone are the days when people relied solely on word of mouth or strolled into a store to make a purchase.
Today's buyers have unparalleled access to information, resources, and tools that empower them to conduct thorough product research and make informed decisions. According to Forrester's research, 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase. Furthermore, today's buyers are no longer interested in being pitched to; rather, they prefer engaging in open conversations with sellers that assist them in navigating their buying process.
This paradigm shift has resulted in a new era of buyer expectations and digital-first mindsets.
Modern buyers demand personalized experiences, multi-channel communication, frictionless transactions, and transparency from the brands they interact with. They expect businesses to anticipate their needs, tailor their offerings, and deliver exceptional buyer experiences at every touchpoint.
But the question remains: Have sellers changed to adapt to these evolving dynamics of the modern buyer?
While sellers have made strides in leveraging digital tools and strategies to engage with potential customers, certain gaps persist. Despite embracing social media, optimizing websites, and implementing data-driven approaches, sellers may still struggle to deliver personalized experiences or provide timely responses to customer inquiries. These gaps can hinder the buyer journey and risk losing potential prospects.
In this blog post, let’s explore these gaps further and discuss how sellers can bridge them to better align with the expectations of today's digital-savvy buyers.
As mentioned above, a modern buyer’s expectations are continuously evolving, driven by technological advancements and consumer behavior shifts. To sell successfully, it's essential to understand how buyer expectations have changed over time and what traits define the modern buyer.
“A modern buyer is a self-directed, digitally-native consumer who conducts extensive online research across channels to research products, and compare options before they even approach the vendor. They expect personalized experiences, instant access to information, and seamless interactions across multiple channels.”
Traditional selling methods are increasingly becoming outdated in today's digital age. Consumers are more informed, have shorter attention spans, and expect a buying experience tailored to their needs. Several key limitations are holding traditional selling back:
While the sales team benefits from utilizing various tools and software systems, such as CRM platforms, sales outreach tools, email automation platforms, and spreadsheets, the real challenge arises when these tools fail to integrate seamlessly with each other. This fragmentation leads to inefficiencies and complications in managing customer data and communication. As a result, sellers may struggle to gain a holistic view of customers' interactions and preferences, making it difficult to deliver targeted solutions.Moreover, the use of multiple tools and channels often results in data silos and fragmentation which hinder collaboration, decision-making, and personalized engagement with buyers.
Training your new sales hires is important, as it ensures they are equipped not only with product knowledge but also with the latest sales techniques essential for engaging with today's buyers. Unfortunately, many traditional sales training programs focus on outdated techniques that are no longer effective in the digital age. As a result, the sales team members may find themselves ill-prepared to navigate the complexities of the modern sales landscape.
Sales professionals need to be adept at using the latest tools and platforms to find new leads, engage with prospects, and close deals. Providing access to these tools is not enough. The sales team must receive effective training on how to leverage these tools to their full potential.
We've all experienced it at some point – that moment when a salesperson gets a little too aggressive or pushy while trying to sell a product. Whether it's during a cold call or a high-pressure sales pitch, these tactics can leave customers feeling uneasy. Some may brush it off, while others might feel intimidated or even annoyed. However, for modern buyers who prefer more consultative and respectful approaches, these tactics can be a major turn-off.
Also, very often traditional selling tends to focus solely on the features and benefits of the product or service, without really addressing the specific needs and pain points of individual buyers. This lack of customization can lead to decreased relevance and engagement. After all, today's buyers are looking for personalized solutions that cater to their unique circumstances.
Every day, B2B buyers are bombarded with tons of emails - most of them are generic sales messages that fail to resonate with the audience. These cookie-cutter approaches often miss the mark, leaving buyers feeling disconnected and unengaged.
Traditional sales messaging often follows the same tired formula – a one-size-fits-all approach that lacks the personalization and relevance needed to grab the attention of modern B2B buyers. Instead of addressing the specific needs and pain points of individual buyers, these messages focus solely on promoting the product or service. To truly connect with B2B buyers, sales professionals need to tailor their messaging to each prospect's unique challenges and priorities.
In traditional selling, sales representatives tend to prioritize pitching the product rather than genuinely understanding each buyer’s unique needs, challenges, or concerns. This transactional emphasis on promoting the product overshadows the crucial step of empathizing with and addressing the specific circumstances of each buyer. Rather than providing sustained guidance as buyers self-educate, many sellers simply parachute in late to hard sell. There's frequently a lack of two-way dialogue and trusted advisor partnership leading up to the closing push.
This misalignment fails to recognize that modern buyers crave consultative value upfront and expect sellers to collaborate in their buyer journey.
While the above section covered the core limitations of traditional selling tactics, an entirely new set of challenges is exacerbating the disconnect between buyers and sellers. As buyer expectations and behaviors evolve at a rapid pace, conventional sales approaches are failing to keep up - resulting in an expanding engagement gap. Let’s look at some of these four key areas where the divide is growing wider than ever before:
Buyers today have radically different preferences for how, when, and where they want to communicate and engage with potential vendors or sellers. While some still prefer email and chat, others gravitate towards video conferencing and social media interactions over traditional cold calls. There is no one-size-fits-all, as communication channel preferences can vary even within the same buying group. They also expect responsive, asynchronous communication that fits their schedules.
However, most sales teams still strictly adhere to disruptive cold outreach through cold calls, voicemails, and mass email blasts. This leads to a fundamental disconnect between the modern communication preferences of buyers and the archaic methods sellers still utilize.
In the age of e-commerce and digital marketing, buyers today have access to a vast array of product and service options with just a quick web search. This overabundance of choices, information sources, reviews, and alternatives creates paralysis and decision fatigue.
What buyers truly need is an experienced guide - a consultative seller able to cut through the noise, understand their unique requirements, and pinpoint the best-fit solution tailored to their specific problem. Yet most sellers still take a one-size-fits-all approach, bombarding buyers with generic information rather than providing insightful, personalized guidance.
The days of selling to a single decision-maker are essentially over. According to Gartner, the average B2B buying group now involves 6-8 stakeholders with diverse roles, priorities, and decision criteria to satisfy. Selling to these cross-functional buying committees is exponentially more complex.
Traditional selling models struggle to navigate these group purchasing dynamics. Reps often fail to properly engage all key players, understand their unique needs and perspectives, and facilitate meaningful conversations to advance deals.
It is observed that a growing percentage of buyers perceive the conventional selling tactics and methods they experience as commoditized and lacking unique value. This reveals a widening engagement gap where sellers fail to deliver differentiated, high-value experiences tailored to buyers' specific needs.
According to Gartner research, B2B customers significantly discount the perceived value provided by sales reps. Their data shows that today's buyers perceive little distinct value from interacting with sales reps beyond conducting their research and learning. Generational dynamics compound this trend, with millennial buyers who are digital natives being far more skeptical of sales reps and traditional tactics than previous generations.
So how can modern sellers close the widening buyer-seller divide and engage better with modern sellers?
The answer lies in wholeheartedly adopting a buyer-centric model and mindset. This means fundamentally re-orienting the entire selling experience around the buyer's journey, preferences, and definition of a valuable interaction. To do exactly that, many companies today are implementing dedicated buyer engagement platforms that provide the capabilities and insights required to deliver a seamless, digitally-driven buyer's journey. These companies are better positioned to capitalize on opportunities and outpace competitors.
Shifting to a buyer-centric approach may be challenging, although with a buyer engagement platform its possible. Sales team would be able to proactively map and optimize each touchpoint to seamlessly align with how buyers wish to engage, view resources, and make purchasing decisions.
Below are a few ways in which sellers can shift to a buyer-centric approach:
Providing full transparency and on-demand access to information is critical for enabling buyers to make well-informed purchase decisions. Modern buyers expect complete visibility into product details, pricing, customer success stories, and any other resources that can help them evaluate products according to their specific needs and requirements. This means having self-service access to product decks, demos case studies, white papers, ROI calculators, and more. There should be no gatekeepers restricting what information they can access. Implementing mutual actions plans in the first step can help both sellers and buyers to have a clarity on the overall roadmap to kickstart the journey.
Buyers today engage with potential sellers or vendors across many touchpoints before making their purchase decision. They may first discover the product through a company's website, LinkedIn advertisements, or educational content like case studies and blogs. Alternatively, their initial engagement could be by attending a webinar or trade show event. As they progress through evaluation, buyers then engage with sales representatives through meetings, calls, and product demos to further research and vet the potential solution.
Sometimes, buyers experience disjointed and inconsistent experiences as they transition across these different touchpoints, from marketing to sales to customer support roles. Key context about their needs, prior interactions, and buyer stages doesn’t get transferred smoothly. This isn’t ideal. Today buyers expect a unified, consistent experience across touchpoints. This requires leveraging centralized platforms that integrate traditionally siloed functions and providing a consolidated unified workspace and data hub for all customer-facing roles to ensure buyers receive a consistent, cohesive journey.
In any industry, data is the king. Modern sellers must leverage data points from data analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to extract valuable insights into buyer behavior, preferences, and pain points. By doing so, sellers can tailor their messaging and interactions to suit the unique needs of each buyer, forging deeper connections in the process. This personalized approach not only enhances the buyer experience but also significantly increases the likelihood of closing the sale. Moreover, data-driven insights empower sellers to anticipate future buyer needs, identify emerging trends, and refine their sales strategies to achieve long-term success.
As mentioned earlier, it's crucial not only to provide buyers with the information they need but also to ensure that these resources are easily accessible through self-service channels. This approach not only fosters trust but also empowers buyers to make informed decisions at their own pace. Modern buyers value autonomy and independence in their purchasing journey, so offering access to educational resources, product information, and self-assessment tools allows them to navigate their purchasing journey with confidence. Modern sellers should be prepared to offer consultative guidance whenever it's needed, assisting buyers in navigating complex purchasing decisions and addressing any concerns they may have along the way.
Digital sales room can be a game-changer for both modern buyers and sellers. It addresses the limitations of traditional sales methods and enables sales teams to effectively communicate with buyers, showcase products or services, and guide prospects through the purchasing process.
“Digital Sales room is a comprehensive buyer engagement solution designed to empower sellers to deliver digital, self-service, and personalized buyer experience across every stage of the sales journey.”
By adopting a Digital Sales Room, sellers gain access to a suite of powerful tools and features that enable them to engage leads throughout the entire sales funnel—whether they're at the top, middle, or bottom. From customizable content libraries and interactive presentations to real-time analytics and collaboration tools, a Digital Sales Room equips sellers with everything they need to streamline the selling process and convert buyers effectively.
Excited to unlock the potential of a Digital Sales Room for your sales team? You can start with a 30-day free trial right away with buyerstage.
Buying today is a whole new game – it's fast, digital, and constantly evolving. Gone are the days when people relied solely on word of mouth or strolled into a store to make a purchase.
Today's buyers have unparalleled access to information, resources, and tools that empower them to conduct thorough product research and make informed decisions. According to Forrester's research, 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research online before making an offline purchase. Furthermore, today's buyers are no longer interested in being pitched to; rather, they prefer engaging in open conversations with sellers that assist them in navigating their buying process.
This paradigm shift has resulted in a new era of buyer expectations and digital-first mindsets.
Modern buyers demand personalized experiences, multi-channel communication, frictionless transactions, and transparency from the brands they interact with. They expect businesses to anticipate their needs, tailor their offerings, and deliver exceptional buyer experiences at every touchpoint.
But the question remains: Have sellers changed to adapt to these evolving dynamics of the modern buyer?
While sellers have made strides in leveraging digital tools and strategies to engage with potential customers, certain gaps persist. Despite embracing social media, optimizing websites, and implementing data-driven approaches, sellers may still struggle to deliver personalized experiences or provide timely responses to customer inquiries. These gaps can hinder the buyer journey and risk losing potential prospects.
In this blog post, let’s explore these gaps further and discuss how sellers can bridge them to better align with the expectations of today's digital-savvy buyers.
As mentioned above, a modern buyer’s expectations are continuously evolving, driven by technological advancements and consumer behavior shifts. To sell successfully, it's essential to understand how buyer expectations have changed over time and what traits define the modern buyer.
“A modern buyer is a self-directed, digitally-native consumer who conducts extensive online research across channels to research products, and compare options before they even approach the vendor. They expect personalized experiences, instant access to information, and seamless interactions across multiple channels.”
Traditional selling methods are increasingly becoming outdated in today's digital age. Consumers are more informed, have shorter attention spans, and expect a buying experience tailored to their needs. Several key limitations are holding traditional selling back:
While the sales team benefits from utilizing various tools and software systems, such as CRM platforms, sales outreach tools, email automation platforms, and spreadsheets, the real challenge arises when these tools fail to integrate seamlessly with each other. This fragmentation leads to inefficiencies and complications in managing customer data and communication. As a result, sellers may struggle to gain a holistic view of customers' interactions and preferences, making it difficult to deliver targeted solutions.Moreover, the use of multiple tools and channels often results in data silos and fragmentation which hinder collaboration, decision-making, and personalized engagement with buyers.
Training your new sales hires is important, as it ensures they are equipped not only with product knowledge but also with the latest sales techniques essential for engaging with today's buyers. Unfortunately, many traditional sales training programs focus on outdated techniques that are no longer effective in the digital age. As a result, the sales team members may find themselves ill-prepared to navigate the complexities of the modern sales landscape.
Sales professionals need to be adept at using the latest tools and platforms to find new leads, engage with prospects, and close deals. Providing access to these tools is not enough. The sales team must receive effective training on how to leverage these tools to their full potential.
We've all experienced it at some point – that moment when a salesperson gets a little too aggressive or pushy while trying to sell a product. Whether it's during a cold call or a high-pressure sales pitch, these tactics can leave customers feeling uneasy. Some may brush it off, while others might feel intimidated or even annoyed. However, for modern buyers who prefer more consultative and respectful approaches, these tactics can be a major turn-off.
Also, very often traditional selling tends to focus solely on the features and benefits of the product or service, without really addressing the specific needs and pain points of individual buyers. This lack of customization can lead to decreased relevance and engagement. After all, today's buyers are looking for personalized solutions that cater to their unique circumstances.
Every day, B2B buyers are bombarded with tons of emails - most of them are generic sales messages that fail to resonate with the audience. These cookie-cutter approaches often miss the mark, leaving buyers feeling disconnected and unengaged.
Traditional sales messaging often follows the same tired formula – a one-size-fits-all approach that lacks the personalization and relevance needed to grab the attention of modern B2B buyers. Instead of addressing the specific needs and pain points of individual buyers, these messages focus solely on promoting the product or service. To truly connect with B2B buyers, sales professionals need to tailor their messaging to each prospect's unique challenges and priorities.
In traditional selling, sales representatives tend to prioritize pitching the product rather than genuinely understanding each buyer’s unique needs, challenges, or concerns. This transactional emphasis on promoting the product overshadows the crucial step of empathizing with and addressing the specific circumstances of each buyer. Rather than providing sustained guidance as buyers self-educate, many sellers simply parachute in late to hard sell. There's frequently a lack of two-way dialogue and trusted advisor partnership leading up to the closing push.
This misalignment fails to recognize that modern buyers crave consultative value upfront and expect sellers to collaborate in their buyer journey.
While the above section covered the core limitations of traditional selling tactics, an entirely new set of challenges is exacerbating the disconnect between buyers and sellers. As buyer expectations and behaviors evolve at a rapid pace, conventional sales approaches are failing to keep up - resulting in an expanding engagement gap. Let’s look at some of these four key areas where the divide is growing wider than ever before:
Buyers today have radically different preferences for how, when, and where they want to communicate and engage with potential vendors or sellers. While some still prefer email and chat, others gravitate towards video conferencing and social media interactions over traditional cold calls. There is no one-size-fits-all, as communication channel preferences can vary even within the same buying group. They also expect responsive, asynchronous communication that fits their schedules.
However, most sales teams still strictly adhere to disruptive cold outreach through cold calls, voicemails, and mass email blasts. This leads to a fundamental disconnect between the modern communication preferences of buyers and the archaic methods sellers still utilize.
In the age of e-commerce and digital marketing, buyers today have access to a vast array of product and service options with just a quick web search. This overabundance of choices, information sources, reviews, and alternatives creates paralysis and decision fatigue.
What buyers truly need is an experienced guide - a consultative seller able to cut through the noise, understand their unique requirements, and pinpoint the best-fit solution tailored to their specific problem. Yet most sellers still take a one-size-fits-all approach, bombarding buyers with generic information rather than providing insightful, personalized guidance.
The days of selling to a single decision-maker are essentially over. According to Gartner, the average B2B buying group now involves 6-8 stakeholders with diverse roles, priorities, and decision criteria to satisfy. Selling to these cross-functional buying committees is exponentially more complex.
Traditional selling models struggle to navigate these group purchasing dynamics. Reps often fail to properly engage all key players, understand their unique needs and perspectives, and facilitate meaningful conversations to advance deals.
It is observed that a growing percentage of buyers perceive the conventional selling tactics and methods they experience as commoditized and lacking unique value. This reveals a widening engagement gap where sellers fail to deliver differentiated, high-value experiences tailored to buyers' specific needs.
According to Gartner research, B2B customers significantly discount the perceived value provided by sales reps. Their data shows that today's buyers perceive little distinct value from interacting with sales reps beyond conducting their research and learning. Generational dynamics compound this trend, with millennial buyers who are digital natives being far more skeptical of sales reps and traditional tactics than previous generations.
So how can modern sellers close the widening buyer-seller divide and engage better with modern sellers?
The answer lies in wholeheartedly adopting a buyer-centric model and mindset. This means fundamentally re-orienting the entire selling experience around the buyer's journey, preferences, and definition of a valuable interaction. To do exactly that, many companies today are implementing dedicated buyer engagement platforms that provide the capabilities and insights required to deliver a seamless, digitally-driven buyer's journey. These companies are better positioned to capitalize on opportunities and outpace competitors.
Shifting to a buyer-centric approach may be challenging, although with a buyer engagement platform its possible. Sales team would be able to proactively map and optimize each touchpoint to seamlessly align with how buyers wish to engage, view resources, and make purchasing decisions.
Below are a few ways in which sellers can shift to a buyer-centric approach:
Providing full transparency and on-demand access to information is critical for enabling buyers to make well-informed purchase decisions. Modern buyers expect complete visibility into product details, pricing, customer success stories, and any other resources that can help them evaluate products according to their specific needs and requirements. This means having self-service access to product decks, demos case studies, white papers, ROI calculators, and more. There should be no gatekeepers restricting what information they can access. Implementing mutual actions plans in the first step can help both sellers and buyers to have a clarity on the overall roadmap to kickstart the journey.
Buyers today engage with potential sellers or vendors across many touchpoints before making their purchase decision. They may first discover the product through a company's website, LinkedIn advertisements, or educational content like case studies and blogs. Alternatively, their initial engagement could be by attending a webinar or trade show event. As they progress through evaluation, buyers then engage with sales representatives through meetings, calls, and product demos to further research and vet the potential solution.
Sometimes, buyers experience disjointed and inconsistent experiences as they transition across these different touchpoints, from marketing to sales to customer support roles. Key context about their needs, prior interactions, and buyer stages doesn’t get transferred smoothly. This isn’t ideal. Today buyers expect a unified, consistent experience across touchpoints. This requires leveraging centralized platforms that integrate traditionally siloed functions and providing a consolidated unified workspace and data hub for all customer-facing roles to ensure buyers receive a consistent, cohesive journey.
In any industry, data is the king. Modern sellers must leverage data points from data analytics and customer relationship management (CRM) systems to extract valuable insights into buyer behavior, preferences, and pain points. By doing so, sellers can tailor their messaging and interactions to suit the unique needs of each buyer, forging deeper connections in the process. This personalized approach not only enhances the buyer experience but also significantly increases the likelihood of closing the sale. Moreover, data-driven insights empower sellers to anticipate future buyer needs, identify emerging trends, and refine their sales strategies to achieve long-term success.
As mentioned earlier, it's crucial not only to provide buyers with the information they need but also to ensure that these resources are easily accessible through self-service channels. This approach not only fosters trust but also empowers buyers to make informed decisions at their own pace. Modern buyers value autonomy and independence in their purchasing journey, so offering access to educational resources, product information, and self-assessment tools allows them to navigate their purchasing journey with confidence. Modern sellers should be prepared to offer consultative guidance whenever it's needed, assisting buyers in navigating complex purchasing decisions and addressing any concerns they may have along the way.
Digital sales room can be a game-changer for both modern buyers and sellers. It addresses the limitations of traditional sales methods and enables sales teams to effectively communicate with buyers, showcase products or services, and guide prospects through the purchasing process.
“Digital Sales room is a comprehensive buyer engagement solution designed to empower sellers to deliver digital, self-service, and personalized buyer experience across every stage of the sales journey.”
By adopting a Digital Sales Room, sellers gain access to a suite of powerful tools and features that enable them to engage leads throughout the entire sales funnel—whether they're at the top, middle, or bottom. From customizable content libraries and interactive presentations to real-time analytics and collaboration tools, a Digital Sales Room equips sellers with everything they need to streamline the selling process and convert buyers effectively.
Excited to unlock the potential of a Digital Sales Room for your sales team? You can start with a 30-day free trial right away with buyerstage.
