The B2B Sales Funnel: How it is evolving and the way to adapt to change

The Business to Business sales funnel is a great sales and marketing tool for following up the buyer’s journey from initial visit, to convert as a lead and finally focus to the point where they become a customer. In today’s marketplace, B2B sales has changed over the years than they had worked a decade ago which is no longer viable and it is big change in the modern marketing scenario. So today’s buyer prefer to do all the research with the little or no interference from the sales person. A B2B sales funnel aligns in a very clear way the buyer’s journey which is critical to ensure a smooth and successful ride in today’s marketplace.

Awareness

In this awareness phase, most leads are generally seeking information that can either answer their most pressing questions or adequately address their pan points. So, this kind of content for which they are looking for here is one that throws more light on how to find help for their specific situation.

Consideration

At the consideration phase, leads have explored the different options for getting their problems solved and now they are critically evaluating the solutions of problem solving at their disposal to determine the best fit of the challenging problem.

Decision

In the decision phase, depending on the factor that how much effective the awareness and consideration phases are, the lead then makes a decision on whether to buy from our company or not. If decision is favorable for us, they will become our customer. Otherwise, they will move on without completing the sales funnel cycle.

Evolution

Now the business to business sales funnel is million miles ahead of what it is used to be in 10 years go. Particularly, the B2B buyers are more advanced and they has a lot of information of completely transforming their decision making and buyer behavior. In the previous days, we would invite a targeted buyer out to lunch, meet them up at a golf course or have a sales team storm their office.

Gathering so much information a B2B buyer is able to do product research, read, reviews an references and can easily make a decision without being influenced by the sales person. Now the B2B sellers are finding that they have to constantly up their game to stay in the B2B buyer’s radar. They have to adapt the constantly evolving sales environment to have a firm grip on the market. Additionally, one of the worst thing is that if a B2B seller is being clueless about the current customer’s journey, blaming low sales and poor results on a slow market or its sales force. At the initial stage, the loss is slow. But as soon as the competitors get right in front of the pecking order, the late or non-adopters lose out faster until they are completely dispossessed of their market share, especially when they continue in their ignorance.

How to adapt

 Reposition Salesforce

The B2B sales force are still critical to our sales success but we must understand the new role they play in the B2B buyer’s journey and position them accordingly. In today’s marketplace, buyers don’t want the a product straight out of the shelf although they don’t want a sales person to simply tell them about the product either. Instead, they expect the sales people to help them in the complex buying process and then give an adequate, concise, customized solution.

Power of Big Data

B2B sellers who replace the instinct with big data are 6% more profitable. With the advent of AI and machine learning, the companies who are now investing in it, they are now able to leverage big data to predict the buyer behavior more accurately using the previous buying history. In this way, they are able to qualify leads by analyzing data and using the results to create the targeted marketing messages that are cost-effective and dramatically improves efficiency and supercharges sales in a predictable and consistent way.

SEO and Digital Marketing Tools

The 93% of website traffic comes from the search engines and 50% of prospects are more likely to click on a link if they come across it more than once. Investing in SEO gives the B2B sellers the upper hand over the competition.