The decision stage of the buyer’s journey signifies exactly what you would think. Your prospect is ready to make a decision about whether they will purchase your product or service. Your goal at this stage in the buyer’s journey should be obvious: convince the prospect to buy.
If you did a good job nurturing them through the awareness and consideration stages, then you’ve already established trust with the buyer by the time they get to the decision stage. At this point in their journey, the prospect should believe in your offering’s ability to solve their challenge.
Value-based selling
influences B2B decisions
This is your salespeople’s time to shine.
Thanks to the proper discovery, your salesperson is well-acquainted with the buyer’s needs, organizational barriers, and any other decision makers who need to be convinced. The buyer has been sales-qualified by an SDR, converted to a qualified opportunity, and now your closer must clearly convey how your company can solve the prospect’s problem.
Your reps can use product demos and collateral like case studies as concrete examples of how your product or service will benefit them. These tactics give buyers tangible proof of value and can be extremely influential as they and their fellow stakeholders make the final purchase decision.
Sales reps should utilize everything they’ve learned about the buyer to emphasize and reiterate the features and benefits of your solution that appeal most to their individual pain points and organizational needs.
In order to close deals, the sales team should collaborate with potential clients to ensure adoption of your product or service is seamless. This involves mapping out an efficient onboarding process, as well as helping the prospect get buy-in from others in their organization.
Download the Ultimate Guide to the B2B Buyer’s Journey
Download our guide to learn how to map out your ideal customer journey.
Decision factors and obstacles
In B2B sales, a customer’s decision to buy is often complex and involves multiple stakeholders. This is one reason why thinking in terms of the complete buyer’s journey is especially helpful for B2B sales.
Salespeople should think of nurturing as assisting buyers through their journey, addressing the important organizational factors and obstacles that must be overcome before making a purchase decision.
B2B buyers must stay within a budget, answer to any internal objections, and plan a strategy for implementing your solution into their operations. Salespeople should offer material solutions to these concerns, in addition to selling the buyer on your actual offering.
Salespeople should think of nurturing as assisting buyers through their journey, addressing the important organizational factors and obstacles that must be overcome before making a purchase decision.
Decision stage
marketing strategy
Your marketing strategy for the decision stage should focus on guiding prospects to the bottom of the funnel and converting them to customers. While your sales team does the hands-on work, marketing should make sure your company’s messaging toward buyers is consistent.
At this stage in the buyer’s journey, marketing collateral such as case studies, white papers, data sheets, and even your website as a whole can be utilized by sales when convincing prospects to buy.
To be effective in the decision stage, marketers should ensure all these different content types are attractive, lend credibility, and address specific pain points that are relevant to your ideal buyers. Prospects who are further along in their buyer’s journey should have no confusion or doubts about what you offer and how it relates to their needs.
Specialization & its effect
on the sales process
As your company sets its sights on larger markets and looks to scale its business, it becomes more and more necessary to specialize your B2B sales roles.
Assigning different functions of the sales process to separate specialized roles helps you provide the most value and best experience to both customers and employees. And if you run into a shortage of salespeople to round out your process, outsourced inside sales teams are a viable option.
When it comes to the critical decision stage, your sales reps need to be hyper-focused on closing deals instead of exhausting resources on prospecting for new leads. SDRs assist in the top and middle of the sales funnel to save your closers time. Additionally, we recommend a specialized team for onboarding new customers, which will be useful in the growth and delight stages.
Using dedicated teams to assist your buyers before and after the sale means your closers can focus on winning new clients. And when your teams channel all their time and effort into one specific area, they’ll each perform better in their respective roles.
SDR
These are your prospectors. They handle the upper portion of your sales funnel, reaching out to cold leads and qualifying prospects for your sales reps.
Sales Rep
These are your deal-closers. They nurture qualified leads, build relationships with potential customers over time, and win new business.
Consultants
These are your Consultants. They guide new customers through onboarding and check in periodically to ensure satisfaction.
Download the Ultimate Guide to the B2B Buyer’s Journey
Download our guide to learn how to map out your ideal customer journey.
