Ever wondered “Is it hard to buy from us?” Here’s how to diagnose friction in your B2B pipeline
As avid consumers of Pelotons, Oreos, slow-cookers and much more, we know that any type of buying friction makes us seriously reconsider our purchase. Maybe you’ve experienced some of these obstacles to as a B2C buyer:
Insufficient or unclear product information
Inconvenient payment options
Poor delivery process
Impossible to deal with customer support
Bad product reviews
When these sorts of issues arise, they feel like an obstacle on your path to buying. You are left with the impression that the vendor must be clueless about how annoying this is…otherwise they wouldn’t dare let consumers experience this kind of frustration, difficulty or disappointment.
Still, you wonder “How can they afford to leave such obvious gaps in the buying experience?”
Buying B2B SaaS is even harder than buying Oreos
Of course, investing in a 5-year, 7-figure contract for enterprise SaaS with a team of 8 decision-makers doesn’t have much in common with buying a package of Oreos.
And this is why the best B2B tech vendors care EVEN MORE about identifying and eliminating buying obstacles that may be impeding prospects from moving forward with a decision. In addition to the list above, B2B buying fiction can look like:
Bait-and-switch marketing
Slow response to lead forms
Too many qualification steps before talking to sales
Insufficient informational resources to sell through the decision internally
Lack of results content or testimonials from other customers
Complex implementation
Buyers are stressed and plagued by indecision
Thanks to The Jolt Effect, we know that buyers already tend to be stressed out by the prospect of making a high-stakes decision and are constantly fighting an internal battle against a lack of confidence in their decision-making abilities. As such, B2B vendors can’t afford to leave massive boulders in their buyers’ path that may impede them from moving forward. B2B decision-making is already a long, hard slog.
So how can we make B2B buying easier?
Buyer enablement sits on the other side of the spectrum, opposite buying friction. Buyer enablement is the ultimate goal and I’ve written tons about it here, here and here.
But how can we know at what point “enabling buyers” becomes a do-or-die urgent commercial priority? How can you tell if buying friction is threatening your ability to close deals and even retain customers?
Conduct R&D for the buying process
Similarly to how you are (hopefully) improving the functionality of your SaaS product by collecting and learning from user data, it is critical to collect and learn from buying process data to build a complete picture of how buyers are moving through your marketing and sales pipeline.
Below, I’ve broken down some of the key indicators of pipeline problems that can indicate that buyers are finding it difficult to buy from you.
You can answer these questions with a combination of qualitative and quantitative data pulled from your CRM, marketing automation, and from talking to your top salespeople.
Questions to diagnose friction in your B2B pipeline
Are the right buyers gleaning enough compelling enough from our marketing content to move forward in the purchase process with us?
Do prospects spend time on our website, or quickly scan the site and then bounce off?
What is our website bounce rate?
Are prospects engaging with our blog or other lighter content (infographics, videos, etc)?
On average, how many blog posts/pieces of lighter content does a lead look at? Which ones?
Are prospects engaging or downloading (if gated) our guides, webinars, ebooks?
On average, how many heavier assets does a lead look at? Which ones?
How is lead quality?
What percentage of leads convert into paying customers?
Is it easy and effortless for leads to engage with sales?
5. Are we seeing leads “lose interest” and ghost before meeting SDRs?
How many leads disappear before meeting SDRs?
6. How long are sales cycles?
How long is a sales cycle?
What are the most common sources of friction in the sales cycle?
7. Do our customers struggle to take action?
How many deals are lost to indecision?
How many deals tend to be downsized?
Is our product experience sticky enough to retain ideal customers?
8. Do we have retention and/or customer loyalty problems?
What is our renewal rate?
How are our software reviews?
Based on the results of your investigation, you should have a pretty strong gut feeling about whether or not you have a serious buying friction problem. And it should be clearer which parts of the funnel are presenting the most severe problems. Maybe you have a serious lead drop-off happening before SDR calls, for example. Or perhaps lead quality is low and your team is wasting tons of time disqualifying poor-fit leads.
Where do we go from here?
Now, you need to understand WHY and HOW these sources of friction are affecting lead quality, deal flow, win rate, sales cycle length, and possibly customer retention.
The best way to dig into the why is with buyer research.
Next steps: How do you adjust your go-to-market strategy to improve lead quality and win rate?
If you have diagnosed that you have a buying friction problem, the next step is talking to your buyers and digging more into their pain points, buying triggers, internal conflicts and pricing objections, and more.
When things are going awry in sales and you are scrambling for content marketing ideas, it can be tempting to start throwing shots in the dark to see what works.
It’s also a complete waste of resources without solid customer insights on which to base your experiments.
Before making any adjustments to your go-to-market strategy, buyer research is foundational.
This gives you the full picture of the buying process that started WAY before they landed on your website and will give you a wealth of golden insights that can fuel your GTM strategy.
In short? People who want to pay you money to solve their problems are having a hard time figuring out how to buy from you. And it is seriously hurting your sales.
The solution? Buyer Research & Buyer Enablement Content Strategy. Reach out if you are interested in learning more.