The New B2B Buyer's Journey - The Impact of Digital Due Diligence

In this post we’ll cover: 

1. How the WFH culture affects your sales efforts
2. What is digital due diligence
3. How thought leadership content impacts the new buyer’s journey in B2B
4. What thought leadership is
5. What thought leadership is not
6. Four tips for building an excellent thought leadership strategy

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Two years of insanity (pandemic, rising housing costs, shocking inflation, and more) have wrought sweeping change across every aspect of our lives. One noticeable shift for most of us was the rediscovery of our own homes. Even the C-suite has spent time working from home lately, and lots of them are staying there. That locational (and mental) shift has had two major impacts on the sales efforts of B2B tech companies:

• One, representatives have lost access to decision makers. Long-tail sales efforts used to build on relationships created over casual coffee and through hand-written notes delivered to the office. But since the office might now be the CEO’s guest room, those relationship-building events aren’t happening. 
• Two, the C-suite, finding themselves with more time to actually focus, is turning to devouring content online to replace the in-person meetings, conferences, and sales calls they used to take. 

How Does the Work From Home Culture Impact Your Sales?

Outreach techniques and relationship building has become a lot harder, and everyone we know is receiving more spam calls than ever before (thus, not answering). Decision makers are increasingly inaccessible to traditional outbound sales. 

But they’re still buying. 

The question then is where do they get the information they need to make purchasing decisions in the five, six, and seven figures if they’re not interfacing with representatives as they once did? And the answer describes a step in the buyers’ journey that didn’t exist ten years ago, and was nowhere near as important even two years ago as it is today. Digital Due Diligence. 

What is Digital Due Diligence?

There’s an entirely new phase in the buyers’ journey that has been well documented. B2B buyers typically reach out to companies only after having completed 50-75% of their research on their own, online. Additionally, if one person at the company has been in contact with your excellent sales rep, but purchasing decisions are usually made by committee, the other five or six people your rep never speaks to are also busy trying to make the best decision possible. They do this by consuming the information available online about your products and those of your competitors. 

Right about now you’re probably wondering how your online presence is helping or hindering you in this quiet competition. If you’ve been building your thought leadership content strategy over these past couple years, then chances are good that you’re looking pretty solid. But let’s dig into that a bit. 

Thought Leadership Content and the Buyer's Journey

Thought leadership turns the sales dynamic on its head by creating an inbound channel that generates demand. What if your salespeople could spend 80% of their time closing leads that come to the company directly, rather than prospecting for potential buyers? That’s the power of thought leadership done correctly. 

Here’s an example to help put it in perspective. The CIO of a major company needs what you have to offer. But she’s impossible to reach. That said, she spends a lot of her time reading content about services like yours online, subscribes to several industry newsletters on the subject, and listens to podcasts about it. She browses LinkedIn profiles of others in her role at similar companies and reads what they post and notes what they comment on. She’s actively engaged in learning about her field, doing the digital due diligence she’ll need when she’s ready to buy a service like yours. 

Imagine that the newsletter that CIO reads and shares each month comes from your company. What if the LinkedIn content she’s reacting to and sharing originated with one of your developers? What if she actually shares posts from your blog or tells colleagues about your podcast because it’s relevant and useful? What if she reads your quarterly white papers and considers them one of the best ways to stay informed in her field? When she’s ready to pull the trigger on that purchase, odds are good she’ll come to you first. Why? Because she trusts and values you. She knows you understand her needs and provide value when she needs it. Even without compensation. 

It’s a long game, definitely. But it translates to sales. 

The Nitty Gritty of Thought Leadership Strategy

Good thought leadership is not about writing content or posting videos through the lens of your company, and it isn’t sharing cute cat videos that get tons of engagement but have nothing to do with your cloud security play. Thought leadership is not about vanity metrics. 

It is about providing value in your market in an altruistic and evangelical way. A company becoming a thought leader is a byproduct of specific people inside the company regularly speaking about the company, the industry, and the market. 

Thought leadership, when done well, is a cultural movement within an organization. It isn’t a marketing effort, per se. It is driven by the internal belief that you are so good at what you do that you want to share your ideas and strategies because a rising tide lifts all boats. You know that what your company is doing can benefit not just your customers, but your competitors too, and you believe that the conversations you’re starting will make the entire market better. Good thought leadership content provides value. It is shared altruistically, and invites conversation and even dispute. 

What Thought Leadership is Not

We’ve all seen the comment lurker on LinkedIn who waits for the right opportunity to insert himself, providing devil’s advocate-type commentary on someone else’s perspective. We’ve seen the posts that are clearly there just to invite dispute and controversy. Sure, this drives engagement, but it doesn’t add value or build trust. Do not confuse vanity metrics like engagement with successful content. 

You’ve probably also heard the podcast guest who finds every opportunity to mention her own company’s product, or found the blog post posing as useful guidance that is really just a pitch for the posting company’s help with whatever issue you’re researching. These things are not thought leadership. 

How to Build Your Thought Leadership Strategy

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1. Seek to add value. Every person speaking for your company needs to understand that nothing they say or write should be construed as an opportunity to soft sell your products. They’re speaking because they have something to say, something that adds value to the greater conversation in the market, and a real perspective that steps past the obvious. 
2. Take a stance, but be willing to be wrong. True thought leaders offer opinions, but they offer them with humility and vulnerability. They make a statement to share something they’ve been thinking about, or working on. They share in order to advance the conversation, to invite others to help them puzzle out something that affects a group at large. Thought leaders aren’t always right. 

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