This is the fourth and final of our examinations of the distractions that plague B2B buyers. Today we’ll pay another visit to Marta , a perfect example of the G-Spot buyer. “G”, in this case, refers to the people in most organizations whose job is to Get Stuff.
Marta is a Frequent Buyer. She buys hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff every year for her company. As an Executive Assistant, she books hundreds of airplane rides, hotel rooms, catered lunches and meeting spaces. She orders office supplies, organizes events, sources contractors, issues purchase orders and people wonder how she does it.
Here’s how: Marta knows people. Need 100 silver balloons in Denver by tomorrow morning? Marta knows a guy. Left your computer on a plane? Marta’s got a connection in Productivity Prevention who’ll set you right up. Did your experiment involving bacon and a three-hole punch go horribly wrong? Marta will have a new punch by Wednesday.
Just like her C-Suite, P-Cube and F-Word colleagues, she is a very distracted buyer.
G-Spot Buyer Distraction #1: Complicated Purchase Processes
Marta has discretion, authority and a corporate credit card with no apparent limit. What she doesn’t have is time. When she has to fill in screen after screen after screen of information just to set up her user ID on a vendor’s system, she is not going to stick around too long.
When she then has to fill in screen after screen after screen of information to order something, she is going to banish that vendor from her list of suppliers. You can just imagine how much she will like it when she gets to the check out screen and discovers that the vendor in question doesn’t accept the credit card she is required to use.
If you sell to the G-Spot, you need to make your account set-up and purchase process as fast as humanly possible. I know, I know, we need lots of fields to grab lots of data so we can aggregate it all and keep that revenue in the funnel, but if there’s no revenue because Marta’s pissed off, then it’s all kind of for nought anyway, isn’t it?
My advice is to make the set-up and purchase as simple as possible, and go after the rest of the data in follow-up surveys or by calling up Marta to thank her for the business and collecting the data on the phone. Marta may like that human touch, or, depending on the day, she may tell you to get lost.
G-Spot Buyer Distraction #2: Minimal Product Knowledge
Marta knows her way around travel booking and lunches and the place she orders office supplies, but now and again, she has to go buy something about which she knows almost nothing. It could be some sort of promo item; it could be a specialized bit of equipment or it could be organizing a golf tournament when she’s never picked up a club in her life. This is where vendors make her list or never see a cent of revenue from her again.
We’ve discussed the need to understand the distance between the person using a product or service and the person who’s stuck with actually buying it. Yet many vendors build their sites or staff their order desks with the assumption that the person on the other end of the order actually knows what they are doing.
In the case of the G-Spot, you need to be able to very quickly understand what they’re after, how much they know about what they’re after and to steer them to a solution that will make them look good. They don’t want an education in the finer aspects of offset printing or auto detailing; they want to get the thing done and look like they do it every day. If you sell to non-technical people, or people who buy what you sell very infrequently (like golf tournaments) make sure you design your hiring and selling processes around it.
G-Spot Buyer Distraction #3: Terrible Websites
If your G-Spot buyer doesn’t know very much about your product, a good way to close the deal is by having a friendly website that explains exactly how to buy whatever you are selling. Whether it’s a quick reference guide on your various models or simple explanations of your contract options or just clear diagrams of how it all works, the more you can help your G-Spotter get a quick education, the more trust you are going to build.
Trust isn’t enough, however, for busy people like Marta. You also need to make it very obvious how to buy, what to click, whom to call and how to pay. See Distraction #1. Marta has not got time to wander around your terrible website looking for the Buy Now button or the correct phone number to call. This is where a live chat might help, if you can pull it off.
If you sell to the G-Spot and your site is not converting as it should, you probably have a sucky website and you should fix it.
G-Spot Buyer Distraction #4: Personal Risk
There is a pervasive myth that B2B purchases are mechanical, methodical things without a lot of emotion. Not true, particularly for the G-Spot.
When Marta is asked to get something, she has exactly one chance to get it right. Mucking up someone’s travel, buying a printer that jams, hiring an unreliable contractor, ordering promotional items that don’t work or having a caterer show up late and poison the room are not just bad for the supplier, they are mortifying, and possibly career-limiting, for Marta.
This is why Marta has “people”. The balloon guy in Denver or the discreet dry cleaner in Winnipeg may not be the cheapest or even the highest quality, but they are the one thing that G-Spotters need most and that thing is reliability.
If you sell to the G-Spot, your value proposition should begin with reliability and include a healthy helping of easy and knowledgeable. Pull that off a few times and you can earn a coveted spot on Marta’s go-to list. Mess it up and she’ll see you in Hell.
Related Posts
Three Reasons Customer Experience Management Fails
The Road to Yes is Paved with Maybe
BizMarketer is written by Elizabeth Williams
I help companies have better conversations
Drop me a line at ewilliams@candlerchase.com
Or follow me @bizmkter
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.