The way customers buy has changed - but has the way vendors sell kept up?

The way customers buy has changed - but has the way vendors sell kept up?

It used to be that a customer's buying process couldn't progress without first having the vendor's marketing or sales team push them to the next stage. They moved in lock step.

Today, customers do most of the problem identification, solution criteria, research, and short-listing on their own. The majority of this is invisible to the vendor - they don't even know it's happening.

It is only at the pricing stage that customers now bring vendors in. Putting aside whether the customer has correctly identified the problem and solution, the challenge for the vendor's marketing and sales team is to now try to sell within a set of rules and criteria they had no role in setting.

They want to bring the customer back to earlier steps - the customer doesn't want to. So buying friction increases, customers are unhappy, sales take longer, and average purchase price is down.

This isn't always a great result for the customer, however they have far more control over the process.

It certainly isn't a good thing for the vendor when they're still playing by old rules and haven't updated their game plan.

The solution? Vendors need to be out there educating potential customers before they engage.

Even better, being that vendor that helps the customer identify they have a problem before they realise it.