buyer journey

Sales Tools to Serve Your Buyer’s Journey



Sales tools can be a powerful enhancement to your strategy in serving your buyer with valuable, differentiated solutions. From one-pagers to buyer profiles to presentations and more, there is a wide variety that sales and marketing teams work together to create.

In fact, by choosing to enable their sales teams with relevant sales kit assets and tools, a leading customer communications solutions provider achieved an astounding 194% increase in pipeline growth within 60 days once they stopped wasting the valuable time of their field sales professionals.

Yet a tool is only as effective as a master who knows how — and when — to best use it. A buyer stalled in the awareness stage of the buying journey may not be ready to look at your technical specifications, while a buyer who has reached the evaluation stage of the buying journey might find that very valuable.

Know how to serve your buyer — and with which sales tool — depending on where they are in the buying journey.

Go-to Sales Tools Per Buyer Journey

  1. Awareness Stage Sales Tools

  2. Consideration Stage Sales Tools

  3. Decision Stage Sales Tools

 

Selling Tools for a Buyer’s Awareness Stage

A seller who “Seeks to Serve, Not to Sell™” begins first by understanding how to deliver relevant value to their target buyer, long before there are dollar signs associated with the relationship.

This translates to uncovering a buyer’s pain (or, if ignored, their status quo):

  • What business problems are keeping them and their organization from reaching their goals?
  • What regulations does this target buyer have to navigate through that are hindering their business?
  • What market conditions are they facing that hinder their performance?

In this stage of the buyer journey, your target buyer is trying to understand and prioritize their challenges and opportunities.

According to a recent study conducted by Aberdeen Group, B2B buyers seek-out sellers who can sharpen the buyer’s competitive advantage and provide an appealing long-term solution vision, among many other things. Likewise, 65% of buyers still see value in discussing their situations with salespeople, according to a recent CSO Insights study.

Yet, 30% of the time buyers are not engaging sellers until after they have identified and clarified their needs — and another 26% are not engaging with sellers until after they have identified a solution (CSO Insights).

Uncovered in this same CSO Insights study, though, was a massive number of buyers — 90% — who noted they would be willing to engage salespeople earlier in their buying process, that is if the salesperson could provide specific value.

The gap between buyers and sellers remains in large part because of this reality: B2B sellers are not offering what their target B2B buyer finds as valuable.

Yet the appropriate sales tools can help bridge this gap and meet buyers where they are within this stage. Thought leadership materials that share insights into the challenges the buyer is experiencing — while also offering confidence that the situation can be addressed with the right solution will help direct your buyer toward their consideration stage.

  • Market Infographics
  • Point-of-View Papers
  • Industry Briefs
  • Analyst Reports
  • Client Value Stories

Selling Tools for a Buyer’s Consideration Stage

Once your buyer understands their pain and have clearly defined their priorities — committing to addressing them — they are ready to identify potential solutions between a broad category.

If you were not by their side during their awareness stage, it is important to understand how your specific buyer educates themselves on potential solutions and what features they determine as must-haves or deal-killers.

Whether your salespeople have some relationship built with the buyer or whether the buyer will make first contact in this stage, it is important you have the appropriate sales tools ready to ensure your solutions stand out as viable options for solving their problems with more thought leadership materials and some high-level solution introductions.

  • Point-of-View Papers
  • Industry Briefs
  • Analyst Reports
  • Solution Briefs

Selling Tools for a Buyer’s Evaluation Stage

By the decision stage, your buyer knows the solution category they need to solve their pain and to reach their goals.

For B2B, it is important to understand how decisions are made not only with your individual contact but also within their overall organization. Is there a large committee that must get on board with your solution? Does your main contact have buying authority? Does the rest of the organization understand the pain as well as the main contact does?

Here is where your differentiated value messaging is vital. Proof of your solution and its potential gains is paramount. Turn to the following sales tools to strengthen the prospect of landing the deal with solution drill-downs:

  • Solution Presentations
  • Solution Snapshots
  • Client Value Stories
  • Solution Demos

Prepare to Seek to Serve, Not to Sell with your sales tools and overall selling strategy. Download the free Derailing the Deal eBook for more tips on building value between your selling organization and your buyers.

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