This article explains why a buyer-centric approach is essential, detailing the B2B buying journey and how to build a robust content strategy to meet modern buyers where they are.

The graphic below from Gartner is a good representation of the complexity and hurdles that need to be overcome in order to progress a sales prospect along the B2B sales journey.

Each contact within a sales process is looking to satisfy different needs, to help them address particular concerns and support them in reaching their aspirations and goals.

Why Old B2B Sales Tactics Fail Today’s Buyers

Traditional B2B sales methods are often misaligned with the modern buyer’s behavior. In a typical B2B purchase, multiple stakeholders with different priorities are involved. These decision-makers often conduct up to 67% of their research digitally and independently before ever speaking to a sales professional.

Gartner identified six key “jobs” a B2B buyer must complete before making a purchase. These include:

• Problem Identification: Realising they have a business need.
• Solution Exploration: Researching potential solutions.
• Requirements Building: Defining their specific needs.
• Supplier Selection: Evaluating vendors.
• Validation: Confirming their choice.
• Consensus Creation: Gaining internal approval.

Sellers often have little influence on these early stages. The buyer is in control, gathering information from unbiased, third-party sources. This reality underscores the need for a new approach that prioritizes trust and provides value from the very first touchpoint.

Gartner identified six B2B buying “jobs” that a prospective B2B customer must complete in order to get to the end of a sales process and successfully finalise a purchase:

Understanding the Modern B2B Buying Journey

To build a winning strategy, you must align your efforts with the buyer’s journey. This process is generally divided into three distinct stages:

1. The Awareness Stage

• Buyer’s Goal: Acknowledging a business problem or opportunity.
• Buyer’s Behavior: Actively searching for information related to the symptoms they’re experiencing. They’re trying to understand the problem, not find a solution yet.
• Your Strategy: Create educational content that helps the buyer define their problem. Focus on blog posts, guides, and explainer videos that address common pain points. Use long-tail keywords that match their early-stage queries, such as “signs of low sales conversions” or “how to improve lead quality.”

2. The Consideration Stage

• Buyer’s Goal: Researching and evaluating possible solutions.
• Buyer’s Behavior: Comparing different vendors and solutions. They’re looking for in-depth knowledge and proof.
• Your Strategy: Provide comparison content to demonstrate how your solution uniquely addresses their specific problem. This includes whitepapers, webinars, case studies, and comparison guides that highlight your product’s strengths and ROI.

3. The Decision Stage

• Buyer’s Goal: Choosing a solution and justifying it to their team.
• Buyer’s Behavior: Armed with self-researched information, they are ready to talk specifics with vendors. They want to hear the “why”—why your solution is the best fit for their specific needs, especially for different stakeholders (e.g., IT, finance, end-users).
• Your Strategy: Provide strong proof and tailored proposals. This is the time for live demos, customer testimonials, ROI calculators, and a clear articulation of your competitive advantage.

The Power of Buyer Personas and Content Strategy

A buyer-centric approach requires you to know exactly who you’re talking to. This is where buyer personas become invaluable.

A buyer persona is a semi-fictional profile of your ideal customer, detailing their pain points, motivations, goals, and decision-making criteria. Creating these personas helps:

• Humanise your customers and their challenges.
• Clarify their specific needs so you can tailor your messaging.
• Filter out bad-fit prospects by focusing your efforts on those who are most likely to buy.

Once you know your buyer, you can develop a robust content strategy. Your content should act as a trusted, third-party resource that guides the buyer through each stage of their journey. A good rule of thumb is to spend 50% of your effort on content creation and 50% on content distribution to ensure your valuable content reaches your target audience where they’re already looking.

By shifting your focus from selling to advising, you build trust and authority. You position your business as a valuable partner, not just a vendor. This is how you win in the modern B2B sales landscape.

According to Gartner sellers have less access and fewer opportunities to influence customer decisions.

When B2B buyers are considering a purchase‚ they spend only 17% of that time meeting with potential suppliers. 

When buyers are comparing multiple suppliers‚ the amount of time spent with anyone sales rep may be only 5% or 6%.

The reality is that a sales prospect will find you when they’re good and ready; no matter how much effort you put into chasing them down.

According to a SiriusDecisions Study on B-to-B Buyer Behaviour – “Up to 67 per cent of the buyer’s journey now occurs digitally, shortening the actual time for sales engagement.”