Buying friction disrupts the customer lifecycle and grinds deals to a halt. Buyers are continuously reconciling how their environment and needs are changing as they evaluate suppliers and their solutions, and at the same time dealing with the complexity of internal coordination and changing buying processes.
As a result of this evolving buying landscape, suppliers' GTM strategy needs to adjust. Today’s top suppliers are improving their ability to support and enable customers to make continuous headway toward future goals. Headway Selling makes hard decisions feel less complex, making it a vital strategy for suppliers in an era of smaller deals and extended sales cycle times.
Report: A New Era of Commercial Differentiation
Understanding Buying Friction
Understanding buying friction is crucial for improving sales outcomes, as high levels of friction can reduce the odds of a completed purchase by 43%. Buying friction can be categorized into three types: supplier created, buyer created, and environment created. Recognizing the distinctions is essential, as anticipating and overcoming these frictions can strengthen a purchase decision and build trust within the client relationship.
Supplier Created
The expanding scope of the supplier-buyer relationship involves buyers engaging with suppliers across multiple teams. Unfortunately, these supplier teams can be uncoordinated and produce conflicting messaging, leading to 71% of buyers reporting having a “frustrating" experience. Frustrated buyers are less likely to move forward with a bold purchase decision.
Buyer Created
Buyer organizations are implementing risk averse buying practices, made worse by constructing buying teams of on average 12 decision makers. Buyers consulting with a high number of decision makers struggle to reach a final decision, potentially settling for less risky options or abandoning the purchase entirely.
Environment Created
Buyers report experiencing seven organizational changes during the lengthy decision-making process. These changes create shifts in the buying organization’s needs and raise doubts among buyers regarding how their needs may continue to evolve.
Value Selling and Its Shortcomings
One of the most common methods for helping buyers make decisions has been value selling. Selling organizations have focused on linking their solution to an immediate and often quantified value, giving the buyer confidence that they are making the right decision.
Unfortunately, Value Selling has fallen short in two areas. First and most important, as buying friction has increased, value calculations have become only partial solutions. Value selling raises confidence in the current problem faced by the organization but fails to help in the uncertain future. Buyers have become skeptical; the ROI calculation does not consider the friction they face when implementing and dealing with the GTM team, for example.
Additionally, organizations across the board have mastered value selling, and the approach is no longer differentiated. It does not do enough to overcome the friction buyers face internally and in supplier interactions.
The Next Era of Commercial Differentiation
Our research finds that Headway Selling shifts the focus from merely emphasizing the value of a product to demonstrating to buyers that you as a supplier can guide them toward continuous success. This approach reassures buyers that you are prepared to meet their changing needs.
Headway Selling is a powerful approach for converting buyers into making a bold purchase decision, with an over 33% increase in win rates, deals that are 15% larger, and buyers that are 62% more likely to be an advocate for your organization.
Headway Selling offers a differentiated experience, giving the client confidence that the supplier’s team will help them succeed after the contract is signed. This can be done through fully contextualizing and empathizing with the buyer’s current and evolving needs. There are three ways Headway Selling achieves this.
- Advance Customer Evolution
Demonstrate that you “get it” – you know how the customer is evolving, the constraints they are facing, and what it will take to help them succeed now and in the future.
- Anticipate Roadblocks
Guide the buyer with steps that ease them into a decision, preparing for change and making it feel less disruptive.
- Align the GTM Team to Customer Direction
Instill confidence in the buyer that the entire go-to-market team is moving in the same direction, with them, toward success and consistently meeting their changing needs.
How Can These Strategies Work Together?
Effectively overcoming buying friction requires a differentiated strategy. This can be achieved through leading with the core principles of Headway Selling and applying the best elements of value selling. Use value selling to demonstrate an understanding of and effectiveness in solving the “here and now” challenges the buying organization faces. But more importantly, use Headway Selling to ensure buyers have confidence that you will be with them and help them to succeed as their needs evolve and advance over time.
Click to review the full report.
