MatchZINE – The MarTech Magazine

Sellers have it tough – but buyers do, too. Especially in B2B companies! So how do you make it easier for professional buyers to choose your brand? With buyer enablement. What makes this sales strategy so attractive?

Before B2B companies finally make a purchasing decision, a lot of water flows down the Rhine. It usually takes lengthy coordination between many parties – and therefore strong nerves. As a marketing or sales professional, you naturally want buyers to ultimately choose your brand, your solution, or your product. Time for buyer enablement – empowering your customers: you ensure decision-relevant content, highly usable websites, real-time communication, and marketing and sales alignment. How exactly that works is explained here!

Wait a second: What is buyer enablement?

Purchasing is becoming increasingly complex. For buyers to do their job really well, they need information. For you, that means: content, content – oh yes, and content. Because if you provide buyers with helpful information, it is up to three times more likely that they will choose your brand. Buyer enablement roughly translates to customer empowerment and includes offering relevant content that makes the buying process easier. This can include tips, checklists, calculators, white papers, simulations, videos, and diagnostic tools – as well as immediate support.

Your buyer enablement strategy should ideally provide potential customers with all the information, processes, and tools they need to make a well-founded purchase decision. This way, you make the buyer’s journey as smooth as possible and offer an entirely positive buying experience.

But be careful: as so often, there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution here. Every company needs to develop its own strategy. The following factors will help you achieve successful buyer enablement:

Your content is relevant, personalized, easy to access, credible, and useful.

Your high-value, easy-to-navigate website communicates helpful messages and clear benefits for your customers.

Your high-value, easy-to-navigate website communicates helpful messages and clear benefits for your customers.

You offer customer-focused, always-available real-time communication via chat or social media groups.

Marketing and Sales share a unified view of the customer to align activities, messages, and processes for a consistent customer experience.

Why buyer enablement is becoming increasingly important

Buying processes are difficult. At least, that’s what 77% of the 750 B2B buyers surveyed said in a study by Gartner. Why is that? Well, in the decision-making process they have to weigh an enormous number of factors: the typical buyer group consists of six to ten people, each consulting multiple sources before trying to reach a decision together. Quite an undertaking!

This means that with a good buyer enablement strategy, you already have a clear advantage. By simplifying the buying process for buyers, you set yourself apart from the competition. This can be done, among other things, through sales methodology, but also through the engagement process and the content you provide for buyers.

Know your buyers – you should definitely be familiar with the following four typical buyer personalities so you can align the enablement process to them from the outset:

Analytical Buyer:
This persona is convinced by data. They avoid risk and aggressive pitches. Give them an overview with tables, success studies, demos, and ROI calculations, and they’ll most likely be happy.

Amiable Buyer:
This group can be easily inspired, but is not very assertive. Here you win with arguments that are on point: Why does your product offer the best solution to the customer’s problem?

Expressive Buyer:
With these people, you need to expect a short attention span. But if you manage to hook them once, they quickly come on board. They often make impulsive decisions and are less detail-oriented. Short, compelling interactions are key here.

Driver Buyer:
This group is hard to reach. On top of that, they are very self-confident and hold strong opinions. Still, you can convince them – with clearly defined goals and solid data.

The larger the buyer group, the more types are represented. Therefore, prepare an individual strategy for each one.

Buyer enablement: What matters

A successful buyer enablement strategy begins with aligning marketing and sales. All too often, these two departments work alongside each other rather than with each other. Make sure the following aspects are clear to everyone involved:

Shared understanding of the customer

Organizational framework

Shared key performance indicators (KPIs)

Technical infrastructure

Support from executive management

Excellent and consistent storytelling

In addition, the foundation for buyer enablement is your MarTech stack. This allows you to automate processes, produce content faster, keep track of all inquiries via social media (thanks to social media monitoring software), bring marketing and sales together with a sales enablement software, and track the performance of your content in real time. And that’s just a small selection of the possibilities that marketing technologies offer you for buyer enablement.

How to get started with buyer enablement

To introduce buyer enablement in your company, a structured process is important. The following steps will help you: 

Define the purpose of the initiative and understand the market in terms of your target audience, ideal customers, and market segments. For example, reflect on how you can satisfy buyers’ needs, keep your company profitable, and at the same time provide real added value for your customers.

Gather knowledge about your customers by developing buyer personas and conducting jobs-to-be-done analyses. This helps you get to know potential buyers better and proactively address their needs.

Redesign the customer journey. It begins the moment buyers identify a problem they want solved and continues with the search for that solution, defining product requirements, selecting an offer, and validation. Finally comes building consensus. Thanks to buyer enablement, you can already stand out during the offer selection because you empower your customers to make the best decision – namely, the decision for you!

By the way: buyer enablement doesn’t end with the purchase! After all, you want buyers to choose your brand again next time. So from the very beginning, think about how you can provide added value even after the deal is closed.

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