A new report from Alinea Partners is a Secret Shopping organization for technology companies. Their Secret Shopper Report researched the B2B sales process using secret shopping as a methodology, covering nearly 700 companies in six regions and across seven different product categories.
I picked one key area of focus from the report.
Two out of three buyers abandon their buying journeys in frustration before hitting the CRM system. In over two-thirds (68%) of cases, the buyer was given cause to abandon their buying journeys. Why? Frustration – failing to show up in search results or a lack of understanding of the buyers’ business context were two reasons for the drop-off. 47% still have no search function on their website to help prospects find information on solutions or products they may wish to buy. 41% of websites use language about features, not the business value they can provide based on their expertise and not just their product portfolios.
Only a third (33%) sell on business values the potential customer can gain if they select the proposed solution.
And here’s a frightening one:
Over half (55%) of salespeople took the initiative and led the sales process. While this indicates a natural inclination to take the lead, 63% of buyers wishing to engage in sales failed to connect at the first attempt.
Why do we care?
I’ve done a bit of work with the team at Alinea before, and the Secret Shopper for B2B concept is one I think is incredibly clever.
I can’t say I’m surprised by this data. As part of researching the Diversity Report each quarter, I visit many vendor and services companies’ websites, and so many of them are so very, very bad. Both the lack of search and the lack of focused information to assist a buyer in becoming informed is staggering – much less the ability to buy anything or make the next step on the journey happen.
Filling out a Contact Us form does not count. If the action doesn’t directly take me on the step – rather than passively wait on some missive to disappear into the ether – then it’s a broken journey. I’ve dug into this topic before – can someone buy on your site? Book their meeting? Take the first step? Or even as this report points out, learn about the business value provided – beyond saying you provide business value?
