In the world of B2B sales, understanding the intricate landscape of buyer behavior is paramount to success. This week on The Digital Download, we delve deep into the complexities of B2B buyers with our guest, Kerry Cunningham, a seasoned B2B marketing strategist, researcher, and thought leader.
Join us as we explore questions like:
* What makes B2B buyers tick?
* How do they make decisions, and what factors influence their choices?
* What are the internal dynamics within a buying group that sellers need to be aware of?
* How can sellers build trust and relationships in advance of the buying process to gain a competitive edge?
* What are some common pitfalls to avoid when interacting with B2B buyers?
Kerry's extensive experience and research in demand generation and B2B buying behavior provide a unique perspective on how sellers can effectively engage with and influence B2B buyers.
We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is highly encouraged!
Kerry Cunningham, Researcher, and thought leader with 6Sense
Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner
Tim Hughes, CEO & Co-founder of DLA Ignite,
Bertrand Godillot [00:00:00]:
Good afternoon, good morning, and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of The Digital Download, the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn Live. Now globally syndicated on Xinyin Radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk, news, and strategy radio network. Today, we're diving into cracking the code of b to b buyers. We have a special guest, Kerry Cunningham, to help us with the discussion. Kerry is a seasoned b to b marketing strategist, researcher, and thought leader. But before we bring Kerry on, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. Actually, today, we're on b 2.
Bertrand Godillot [00:00:44]:
While we are doing that, though, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them, and have them join us? We strive to make the digital download an interactive experience. Audience participation is highly encouraged. Tim, why don't you go first?
Tim Hughes [00:01:01]:
Thank you. Thank you, Bertrand. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the Digital Download. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and cofounder of DLA Knight, and I wish to pass on everybody else's, apologies. We've had a number of we've had a bit of sickness and hospital appointments and schools get in the way. So, it's just, now there are 2.
Tim Hughes [00:01:23]:
But we we should be back to to to normal next week.
Bertrand Godillot [00:01:27]:
That happens. That happens. I'm myself, Bertrand Godillot. I am the founder and managing partner of Odysseus & Co, a very proud DNA Ignite partner. So as I said, this week on the digital downloads, we'll speak with Kerry. His extensive experience and research in demand generation and b2b buying behaviors provide a unique perspective on how sellers can effectively engage with and influence b2b buyers. Let's bring him let's bring him on. I'm on.
Bertrand Godillot [00:02:01]:
Sorry. Hello, Kerry. Good morning.
Kerry Cunningham [00:02:04]:
Hi. Good morning. Good good afternoon, and good morning from Southern California.
Bertrand Godillot [00:02:11]:
Yes. Thank you for, for that's an early call for you. So thank you for joining. Good afternoon. Let's start let's start by having you tell us a little bit more about you, your background, and what led you where you are today.
Kerry Cunningham [00:02:22]:
Great. Thank you. So, right now, I work at, 6Sense, a software company that makes, AI based software for identifying, b to b buyers and engaging b to b buyers. And I prior I've been here about 3 years prior to 6th Sense. I was at Forrester and SiriusDecisions, both analyst firms, for about 8 years prior to that. Prior to that, I had a really long career in b 2b, primarily in, in the BR SDR space. I ran a third party teleservices organization in, North America for about 12 years. We had offices in in, the Bay Area in California, so all tech companies, but then also, opened up a satellite office outside of Montreal.
Kerry Cunningham [00:03:14]:
And, then through some acquisitions, also had offices in Austin and Manila. So I had at the time we sold the company, I had about 500 BDR types, reporting up into my organization, doing business development work for, lots and lots of, almost entirely tech companies. Between those two times, after we sold the company and and before I became an analyst, I went back to graduate school. I spent 4 years working in academic research labs and social sciences and had a master's in organizational psychology. And apart from, 1, using all the money I would otherwise have been using to retire, 2, it was just the most phenomenal time of my life, and it really has informed all of the research that I do now. I run a a research practice at 6 Sense, which is pretty unusual for a software company, and we'll we'll get into it.
Tim Hughes [00:04:13]:
I I think, though, to add to that, Kerry, is that there is a vacuum for and there is a, a, an appetite for this sort of research. And and when the CEBs and that, you know, got bought up by Gartner and then gradually dismantled, I think that, you know, there's there's there's people that people want this sort of because they want to they want to be able to use this sort of data to inform their strategy and what they're going to do or totally ignore it.
Kerry Cunningham [00:04:46]:
Right. Yeah. So I
Tim Hughes [00:04:48]:
people seem to do.
Kerry Cunningham [00:04:50]:
That is absolutely what people seem to do, despite however allowed and vociferously I I, say things. And I've been saying some of the same things for the last 7 or 8 years. I'm I'm not tired of saying them yet because I have, some righteous zeal behind what I'm, what we're talking about. But I think when you look around and you apply even some normal common sense to the way things work in b two b, pretty quickly come to the conclusion that that doesn't make a lot of sense, about a lot of practices in b two b. And so to be honest, it's it's a lot of fun, identifying these things that don't make sense and trying to figure out, 1, how do you tell the story to get people to understand that it doesn't make sense, this thing that we've been doing forever, and then figure out how do we advise people on what to do, because it's, sometimes you do have to just if it's if there's bad practices in place, you do have to just get rid of the bad practice even before you have a great alternative, to be honest with you. Because it's the alternative to some of these bad practices, Doing nothing is better than what you're doing, but in most cases, you really have to find some other, some replacement. So that's a big part of the job as well.
Tim Hughes [00:06:00]:
But one of the one of the strange things, I think, Kerry, is that that quite often, we're all b to b buyers.
Kerry Cunningham [00:06:06]:
That that's exactly right.
Tim Hughes [00:06:08]:
Yeah. And and and we we expect certain things, and we like certain things and don't like certain things. And then what seems to happen is that we we we get into or sit in front of our, our screens for work and forget all that and and follow this playbook that's been around for 30, 40 years Yeah. And and get the results that we get rather than actually thinking about our own experiences.
Kerry Cunningham [00:06:33]:
To me, that is that is the source of most of the bad stuff that's happening, particularly on the marketing side, but not just on the marketing side. But that's absolutely right. And almost every time I'm talking with marketers today, I ask, just, you know, think about your own behavior for a minute. And, like, if you think about, would I respond to the kind of thing I'm expecting my buyers to respond to? The answer will come back no 95% of the time. You know? And you can go up and down the list of things that are standard practices in b to b, and the answer for most senior b to b marketing or sales leaders is I would never, engage with that kind of tactic, you know, and and yet we build our plans, our dreams, our everything is built around other people doing these things we would never do.
Bertrand Godillot [00:07:28]:
It's crazy. So so, Kerry, that's that's that's interesting. And let me ask you a foundational question. What what makes b two b buyers tick?
Kerry Cunningham [00:07:39]:
Yeah. So this is fascinating, and we can we can spend the rest of the time on this, and I'm happy to.
Bertrand Godillot [00:07:44]:
I'm sure.
Kerry Cunningham [00:07:46]:
So, you know, I've got a bunch of good research. There's some other some research from some other folks that we can talk about as well. So you know like the first thing to to understand is your buyer, so in most b to b purchasing, the buyer is a group or a team of people, not an individual person. Right? So if you're selling things that cost in the 100 or low 1,000 of dollars, maybe you sell to an individual person. But in most cases when you're selling software to a company or machinery to a company or something like that, it's gonna be a pretty large group of people. Now when we we go out and look across b two b, if you ask thousands of people as we have, who've been part of a buying process, how how big was that purchase? The average is gonna be a couple $100,000, and then the number of people involved in that buying process is going to be 11 on average, and that's pretty consistent globally. It's it's a little more some places and a little less somewhere else, but not very much. And so the first thing to understand is it's a group activity, and we have to understand the psychology of groups if we wanna understand what's happening in that buying group.
Kerry Cunningham [00:08:54]:
So the second thing that is, I think, quite new from our research in this past year is that, buyers already have prior experience with the brands that they're going to be evaluating nearly all the time. So buyers say that 90% of the time they've got experience with at least one of the vendors they're gonna evaluate. That's, that number is is backed up by research that, Bain did, a couple of years ago that was published in the Harvard Business Review. But then we dug a little deeper and what we found is that buyers buyers say that on day 1 of their buying journey, when they go out to just start researching a new solution, they already have experience, not just aware of, but they have experience with 4 out of the 5 vendors that they're going to evaluate. And so I was surprised when I saw that number at first, but then, you know, Tim, to your point, when you think about who these people are, who are, who are making decisions about, you know, 6 figure, 7 figure purchases, they're not the kids who just graduated from college. Right? These are people like us who have the volume and the color of hair that we do, that, you know, there are people who have been around in their in their jobs for 20 or 30 years in many cases. So they've been through whatever category you're in, They've they've been through many purchase cycles in your category. If you are a 25 or 30 year old sales rep, they've probably been through more cycles for your category of stuff than you have.
Kerry Cunningham [00:10:31]:
And so they know the brands in the space. Now, of course, if you're in a brand new category, that that's a different thing. If you're a brand new company in the category, maybe they don't know you, but they do know your competitors. Alright. So they enter this process, so you've got 11 people, and I'm these are I'm describing the buying group, but to understand how they tick, you really have to know that these parameters. So you've got 11 people. Each one of those 11 people is an experienced senior business person, and they all have opinions and experience about the vendors they're about to evaluate on day 1 of the buying journey. So we we wrote a paper called no blank slates.
Kerry Cunningham [00:11:17]:
You know, the the buyers are not blank slates. You're not starting from scratch with them. You're starting with a set of people who already have opinions about you, about your competitors, and about what would be good for their business on day 1. Right? Now this is gonna come into play when we talk about the the back channeling stuff that we just, published in a minute. So when they're starting that buying journey, they've got all these opinions. If you've got 11 people, you've got at least 4, maybe 5 opinions about what the organization ought to do. And the rest of the buying journey, it's not as we've always thought about. It's not it's not educating themselves about the category or your solution, not primarily.
Kerry Cunningham [00:12:03]:
You know, they they may need to refresh, their understanding if it's been a couple of years since they've been in the space, but it's primarily about each member of that buying team arming him or herself to win the internal debate about what they're gonna do. And that's a very different kind of buyer than a buyer who's walking into this process as a blank slate, and now you can educate them on, the vendors in the category. Right? It's really primarily about winning the internal argument about what the organization's gonna do. And so the other some of the other dynamics that are in play are really, really important. In a group environment, a big part of what happens in that group environment is that, people are trying to identify some common ground within the vendors that they can say, okay, this one is one that we can all agree on. And whenever that's the case, they're probably never or very unlikely to buy an extreme kind of choice in the category. So if you've got a brand new vendor that's extremely new and has a completely new way of solving this problem or they're the most innovative way of solving that problem, that may appeal to the business buyer who owns the department that's gonna be using this solution. But does the CFO or the head of purchasing and procurement or the IT person, do they care about how innovative and exciting your solution is? Probably not nearly as much.
Kerry Cunningham [00:13:41]:
Right? That's not there. It's not on the top of their list. Not messing it up is on the top of their list. Right? Or not paying, you know, the top dollar. So so those dynamics are happening internally. Then what we found is that, you know, as the price goes up for a solution, the buying group size goes up. And so that's not surprising, but then you have to ask yourself, well, why do you need more people just because it costs more? And a big part of the answer to that is so that you're spreading around the risk involved in that decision. Right? So if I'm buying something that I can afford with my budget without getting sign off from the CFO, then there's probably not a ton of risk involved in that decision.
Kerry Cunningham [00:14:27]:
But if I'm signing off on something that's more expensive, one, I'm gonna have to involve the CFO and the head of IT or something like that. But, also, I want to because if that decision doesn't go well, I want everybody who is going to point fingers at me later to have been involved in and nodded yes to that decision. And then it's they're not gonna cut my head off if it doesn't go well, because everybody was involved. So that's a big part of the dynamic in the buying process, as well.
Bertrand Godillot [00:14:57]:
And, clearly, we we all have been through this before. I'm pretty sure. But that that raises a question. If you are a challenger, I mean, you are a in your entrance, so it's what we're discussing here is the barrier of entry for Yeah. For enterprise size type of deals. How do we work around this?
Kerry Cunningham [00:15:20]:
Well, I think yeah. I I think one, it it it's as hard as we all know it is. Right? You know, it's it. The the the thing that you do has to be substantially better or cheaper or, you know, one of these vectors that really matter a lot, like, you know, is it much better at the thing that's gotta be done? Is it much less expensive to buy or to own, or both? Or does it somehow allow you to, reduce spend in other areas, right? So it it can either be less expensive itself or save a lot of labor somehow that's not already being saved. You know, one of the things that we found is that about 3 quarters of b to b purchases are within an existing category, a category that the buyer already has. Right? So most are just replacing something, that's there. So you may have an innovative way of doing that, and certainly, you know, you look like companies like Workday, which I don't know when Workday came into existence, but it didn't exist that long ago, and now it's everywhere. Right? So it's certainly possible, you know, we we, you know, Salesforce is an example of one from 25 years ago, whatever it was that one day it doesn't exist.
Kerry Cunningham [00:16:37]:
A few years later, it's starting to catch on, and then it's everywhere, and then that kicked off the replacement of countless numbers of on premise pieces of software because now everything moves to the cloud. So so that can happen. You have a much better way of delivering your product or service, and that the market appreciates more and now you can you can win that way. But you have to have something like that if you show up with a me too in a category, then obviously you're gonna have our time getting people to take the chance on buying your solution when something out when you're not clearly differentiated in one of those other ways. It does point, however, to so, you know, we can talk about branding and, you know, it's it's fun to talk about brand brand marketing, with sellers because sellers will often say, what are you doing? Don't spend money on that, you know. In fact, a lot of marketing leaders today will say, what are you doing? Don't spend money on that. But if you're a a challenger brand and nobody knows who's knows who you are, you're probably not on the day 1 shortlist, and buyers buy from the day 1 shortlist 90% of the time. So, you know, you should want your company to be doing some very serious brand and reputation marketing to the audience that you're trying to sell to.
Kerry Cunningham [00:18:02]:
Because it may be that your primary buyer is dialed into the category enough to know that you exist and to know about you, but if the CFO has never heard of you, if the head of purchasing has never heard of you, if IT people have never heard of you, your chances of getting through that gauntlet are very, very low. And you as a salesperson, trying to get those people even to talk to you, is going to be extremely challenging if they can't if they can't look out the window of their computer and see lots of information about you that makes you look smart and trustworthy and all of that, you know, the how hard is your primary persona gonna fight for you when they have to, you know, in this battle to try to win this deal? And that's really what you need to have happen, is your the the person that your that your messaging, that your product really appeals to is gonna have to fight for you against these other people who have no idea you exist and who do not care about how innovative you are. You know, maybe a little bit, but, yeah, not really.
Bertrand Godillot [00:19:12]:
Alright. So so so so so from that perspective, you know, how can sellers build trust and build literally build relationship in advance of the buying process. So so so that you, you create that awareness and you gain somehow a competitive advantage on the list of 5.
Kerry Cunningham [00:19:38]:
Oops, I lost your audio. Is that just me?
Tim Hughes [00:19:44]:
Yeah. So we said that we have
Bertrand Godillot [00:19:45]:
a list of, you know, 4 or 5 people and 4 or 5 suppliers, and we know we're gonna buy from them. Well, at least 2% of the audience is buying from them. How do you, as a seller, build a relationship and try to work around this to to to build some sort of competitive advantage even though you may not be in the picture in the industry.
Kerry Cunningham [00:20:12]:
That's why I, I love the idea of social selling and wanna be in a place where we're talking about social selling because I think that's really where most of the answer is gonna be. So in our research, that like the so the, the main kind of facts about the, buying journey are, if you do not have a pre existing relationship with members of that buying party, you are they are not going to talk to you until they're 70% of the way through the journey. And the trigger to talk to you is that they have already decided where you fit on the shortlist. And so, but that applies to about 80% of b to b purchases. In the other 20% of b to b purchases, there is some or but or there there becomes an existing a a relationship that allows the seller to talk to the buyer prior to the time they pick a winner. And yep.
Tim Hughes [00:21:11]:
Because because, the your your stats of the 80%, I know that there's a lot of sales leaders dismiss it. Yeah. And the reason why they dismiss it is that they say, I that doesn't bother me because I have an SDR team Yeah. That are basically hammering on people, kicking down doors, basically going and getting meetings. But what you're saying is that, yes, that's right, but they're only winning 20, you know, if you've got a if there's a 100% of business, they're only winning 20% of it.
Kerry Cunningham [00:21:42]:
Yeah. And I think, the percentage that your SDRs are winning is probably much, much smaller than that. So what I would say so we know that in 80% of buying processes, buyer does not talk to you until after they've decided where you fit in the shortlist. You know, they they picked a winner, they put you on the shortlist because that that's the only reason they would talk to you, but now you may be 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th, and it doesn't really change very much after they start talking to you. But if you if you're an AE and you're covering a big account, and you've been working that account as you should, over time, and you actually know those people, you knew them you met them last year when you took over the account, they weren't in a buying process, but you developed a relationship with them, when they go into that buying process, you'll probably be able to engage with them throughout the whole thing. If you're a trusted resource throughout that whole thing, then then you get to and that's the work of a good AE. Right?
Tim Hughes [00:22:40]:
Okay. But that that fundamentally, is the complete opposite of what the narrative on LinkedIn, especially from the VC community is, which is that you should only be engaging with companies that are in market.
Kerry Cunningham [00:22:57]:
Right. Well right. So now now
Tim Hughes [00:23:01]:
I don't I agree with what you say is with so so my view is if you're engaging with companies that are in market, then you'll have a number of things. One is that all your competitors will be there. So, therefore, you will have a margin. You know, every deal that you you go into, it will be the competition of, drop the price again. And you have to take it. Whereas if you're actually talking to people that are not in market and you can do this, fast and at scale. You can talk to people and build relationships that are not in market. So when they come to market, you are on the shortlist.
Kerry Cunningham [00:23:36]:
That's right. Yeah. So if you're if if so 6¢ is built to show you who's in market because that is where you should be spending the bulk of, say, your demand gen dollars, but your we have AEs and we have strategic accounts and their job is not to wait until an account is in market. Their job is to go develop relationships, build the networks inside those organizations so that we're not, subject to the rules. The rules are you don't get to talk to them until they decide. But if you have good AEs and they're doing their job, you don't have to play by those rules, and that's where the social selling comes in, right? How are you gonna get to know these people? Well, a big part of it is you're going to have to surround them in the places where they exist, you're gonna have to be delivering value to them. There are lots of different ways, social selling is one, but there's many other ways, and, and I think, you know, my company is a really good example of a lot of ways to do that, but that's what you're gonna have to do. Now, but by definition, you can't do that, you know, to all of the accounts in your universe
Tim Hughes [00:24:45]:
if
Kerry Cunningham [00:24:45]:
you sell to 1,000 of accounts, you know, that's just not if you sell to 1,000 of accounts, you're gonna have a sprinkling of relationships. Even if you do it at scale, you're gonna have a handful of relationships in any quarter where you've been able to be involved in that process from the beginning, but you can't build your business entirely on that. You're going to have to play by the you know, you're gonna be subject to the rules of the way the buyers wanna buy in most cases. And then if you're really good, maybe your company gets to, play outside of those rules in 25%, purchases. Maybe you could get to 30 or something like that if you're really good at it. You're not gonna get to a 100. And so that's the that's the game that, you know, I think we're we're playing is how do you get how do you get your sales team to be to to be, to have relationships with the key buyers that you care about? And then at scale, you also have to have your brand having have have your buyers have a relationship with your brand outside of a buying process. And that's another thing I think, you know, we're not the only ones, but we do that really well.
Kerry Cunningham [00:25:52]:
We have, for instance, a, we sponsor something called the CMO Coffee Talk. So at at this time, every Friday, there's 2, 2 conference calls where CMOs get together, and they network, and they talk with each other. We sponsor that. We don't present at it. We don't sell at it. We never do. But we provide this forum for the people who make decisions about buying our solution. And it's something that they value a lot.
Kerry Cunningham [00:26:18]:
Right? So they're getting value from us long before they're in market whether they ever go in market. Right?
Tim Hughes [00:26:25]:
And I think that's kind of the difference. There's a difference that subtle difference, isn't there, between between, pitching, and just being present or or or sponsoring something. And I think that it's the it's that, on, the in the film spinal tap, there's a quote, which is there's a thin line between being clever and stupid. And I and I think that's often the case in in marketing where where, you know, what happens is that communities are that ability. Oh, what what we're gonna do is we create a community and then we can pitch them.
Kerry Cunningham [00:26:58]:
Right. Yeah. No. You have to be delivering value and becoming a, a a resource. Well, I would say, put it more generally, you have to participate in the community that you intend to serve with your solutions, as a valued member of that community. That's really if that's the way you have to be thinking about it. And then if you think about it that way, I think you do the right things. Right? What what what does a valued member of this community want? Or back to the way we started this conversation.
Kerry Cunningham [00:27:27]:
So if I'm just a practitioner in this community and not somebody trying to sell them something, would I like the thing that I'm doing to this community, you know, or in this community? I've been talking on LinkedIn about the the golden rule, you know, and I think we need to be thinking about that a lot.
Bertrand Godillot [00:27:48]:
Kerry, I'd like to spend a little bit on top of time on the last article that you published, and and I'd love I'd love you to explain what backchannels are Yeah. Yes. In a b two b context.
Kerry Cunningham [00:28:01]:
I'll give a little, a backstory for the back channeling. So last year when we did our survey, you know, we started to we had some questions asking about, you know, whether whether buyers had prior experience with the vendors they were gonna evaluate. We were very surprised that the number was as high as it was. It's, you know, it's it's everybody knows at least 1 vendor, and and they tend to know, you know, 4 out of the 5 vendors or have prior experience with them. So we thought, you know, if you have prior experience with a vendor, how would you do that? Most of the time it'll be you've been through buying processes with them before, you've evaluated them before, maybe you were a customer. And then we thought, well, what else would be so if they've got these prior experiences, then they've met people in those companies before, and so, that's interesting. And then you think about how how people behave today in a social world, in a connected world. We were talking about this before we came on but, you know, when when, somebody's applying for work in your company, you don't nobody asks for references anymore, you just go out and find them, right? They're they're easy to find.
Kerry Cunningham [00:29:12]:
Why would that be any different when you're looking at solutions to buy? And so this time around in our surveys we asked, prior to talking to sellers, because we already knew by this point, we're not talking to sellers most of the time until 70% through the journey. But did you talk to anybody else before you talk to sellers? And, you know, I thought, well, you know, maybe 15, 20% or something like that of buyers will say, Yeah, I talked to somebody else. 70 plus percent of buyers say, Yes, I talked to somebody else. And the numbers are a little bit different. They're statistically significantly different for the non winning vendor than they are from the winning vendor. They're very high for both. So buyers say that they talk to somebody who is not a seller 70% of the time in non winning vendors and 77% of the time in winning vendor. And, so one, I I I that was kinda staggering when when I saw that number.
Kerry Cunningham [00:30:15]:
Let me
Tim Hughes [00:30:16]:
let me just get let me just just so so what's happening is that the buyers are so if I'm a vendor, you are basically because you think about the if we think about IT
Kerry Cunningham [00:30:28]:
Yeah.
Tim Hughes [00:30:28]:
It's actually a very small marketplace. We most people kinda know, most people. You know, I've got people where we've got, you know, 2,000 mutual connections on LinkedIn.
Kerry Cunningham [00:30:40]:
Yep.
Tim Hughes [00:30:41]:
And and so and and and a lot of people know each other. So what's happening is that when we're going out and buying stuff, we're going, right. Okay. So we're going to we're going to evaluate company x. Anybody know anybody in company x who isn't a salesperson? Oh, yeah. I know. I used to work with virtual. Okay.
Tim Hughes [00:30:58]:
Give him a call for her a call.
Kerry Cunningham [00:31:00]:
Right. Yep. That's exactly right.
Tim Hughes [00:31:02]:
That that's fascinating. So so so it so there's actually this an ability for organizations to influence even before the by through relationships that they have.
Kerry Cunningham [00:31:16]:
That's right. Yeah. And so I think it's, it's worthwhile to toss for people who aren't familiar with, the research that we've done. There are a couple of things that I think are important for people to understand. So backing up to what we said at the beginning of the process, the buyers are people like us. They've been around for a long time. They're not junior people. So they've been through many cycles before.
Kerry Cunningham [00:31:36]:
Also in B2B, we tend to go into an industry and stay most of our careers in that industry. We might jump around different jobs, but we're in an industry, we're in a function. And so the buyers are almost always really experienced people in the categories that we're talking about. And they've been they they've been through cycles with if your vendor has been around for 25 years, they've been through buying cycles with you even if they've never been a customer. Right? But they may also have been a customer. So these buyers are connected, to your organization, to your competitors already, and then they're on LinkedIn. So, you know, they, you know, they they probably maybe they met with 5 or 6 or 7 people in your organization, through through various, cycles that they've been through before. They have somebody that they liked and trusted, and now they're gonna go through a cycle again and they ping them.
Kerry Cunningham [00:32:29]:
And by the way, this happens to me all the time. You know, this and that's part of the reason we ask the questions because, like, I'm pretty public, out there and people know I've been around. And and as a former analyst, I think, you know, I have some, some some amount of trust built up. And so people will ping me and say, hey. We're thinking about evaluating you and and the other guys and, you know, how are things going over there? You know, a lot of times their questions just about, you know, do you like working there? You know, those kinds of things. They wanna know what you're like as a company, as a partner, potential partner. They are in in a lot of cases more social kinds of questions, not always. I would say maybe 40% or so or or that kind, but that's what's happening in a lot of cases.
Kerry Cunningham [00:33:14]:
And it's not just the primary buyer, like the CFO is doing it as well. And so what's interesting is the higher a person is in the organization, the less likely they are to back channel. The the if they're the CFO or some of the non departmental people, they're a little bit less likely all things being equal. But the other things that impact how often it happens is how expensive the solution is. So the more expensive a solution is, the more complex it is, the more likely it is that members of that buying group are going to back channel. And so what we found is that even the more senior people and the CFO types, they're more likely to be involved in those more expensive complex purchases. And so and when when they are, they back channel too. So and, you know, those guys also, they know each other.
Kerry Cunningham [00:34:09]:
Right? They're they've been around. They work for each other. They've they went to school together or whatever the case may be. And so they all have resources, networks, and they take advantage of them, to kind of get the inside scoop. The other thing to know is that, you know, buyers are very defensive. You know, they're they're afraid of talking to sellers really until they've made up their mind. They want to be able to decide on their own as a buying group to come to consensus, and they want trusted resources. So again, like in about 20% of cases, the seller is the trusted trusted resource, but 80% of cases, it's somebody else.
Kerry Cunningham [00:34:51]:
And, you know, I think sellers doing their job well, networking well, delivering value outside of buying processes increase their odds of being in the 20% or increase that 20 to 25, but that's kinda where where what it looks like.
Tim Hughes [00:35:07]:
Yeah. I think that, I mean, the thing about salespeople, we all know it. As soon as you talk to somebody, you're in you you basically become a line in a in a CRM. You're a transaction. And so what happens is you get called up every month or, you know, an email when you're gonna make a decision. And and we all hate that.
Kerry Cunningham [00:35:26]:
Yeah.
Tim Hughes [00:35:27]:
Though what happens, as I say, we go back when we when we get into our work mode, we forget all about the fact that we hate all that. And we start saying, so why haven't you, you know, why haven't you phoned a person 3 times today? You know?
Kerry Cunningham [00:35:37]:
Right.
Tim Hughes [00:35:38]:
Where you know that would actually be really annoying. So so, I mean, the the one of the things that we found is that when we've been in organizations quite often usually, when we talk to organizations, our entry point is through sales leaders. And then what we do is we go up in the organization to actually, empower the the senior people within the business. And the most difficult people to empower are always the CFO and the CIO. But once you actually get them to switch and you get them to understand that they this is actually a platform to allow them to network or back channel as you say, What happens is that the CIO is suddenly like, so I can go and talk to people about what cybersecurity system they've got. Yes. You know, the CFO that means I can go and talk to them about, you know, what, you know, about automating something to do with payables. Yes.
Tim Hughes [00:36:33]:
That's what and and and and that and and and actually using social for what it should be, which is about being social. Right. So and and and I I and I can see this thing certainly within the the people that are used to talking to to customers. But sometimes you get this light going on with the with with people that are more back office. But actually seeing this ability to have these conversations is fascinating.
Kerry Cunningham [00:36:56]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And you can see it so, you know, 6¢, you know, my company actually manages that. So not not pitching 6¢, but just what we do.
Tim Hughes [00:37:05]:
Yes. So what do you do?
Kerry Cunningham [00:37:07]:
We we create, we we create the back channel, for our buyers. So, you know, if you're a so we sell to marketing and sales organizations, but still primarily marketing organizations. If you're a marketer inside 6th Sense, if you head a department, demand gen, ABX, whatever it might be, you have probably a 100 conversations a year with prospects yourself about how you do your job. You are a you are a resource, and you're 1, you're offered, by sellers. So our sellers in their networking with buyers find somebody on LinkedIn inside their Target account, and so in my case as a former SiriusDecisions Forrester analyst, our reps are going into their they cover an account, they go into that account, they look for somebody who's connected to me. If they're connected to me, then that person gets an email and says, hey. We've got Kerry Cunningham, former analyst, for Forrester, and he's more than happy to talk to you about strategy, you know, whatever it is not part of it. You know, you don't have to do a demo or anything like that.
Kerry Cunningham [00:38:22]:
It's not a time share agreement. It's, you know, this is something that we offer. So if you're in in doing that, you know, just let us know. And that's just offered that way, you know, there's no, I wanna pitch you now or whatever, it's just, hey, look, saw you're connected there, love to offer that. That's done, you know, with other, like, our head of demand yet, our head of, ABX, etcetera. Whenever there are, you know, if they're trying to get to know the head of account based marketing in one of their accounts, They say, hey, you know, we've got, a great ABX program. We do this, that, and the other. And if you'd ever like to talk to our head of ABM about how we do that, I can set that up for you.
Kerry Cunningham [00:39:04]:
And the answer is yes a lot of times. Right?
Tim Hughes [00:39:07]:
Because because I because it because in most because in most, most sales leaders and most salespeople, it's all about control. They become control freaks. And so in a way, what they would wanna do is actually say to select the you're not allowed to talk to anybody else.
Kerry Cunningham [00:39:23]:
Right.
Tim Hughes [00:39:24]:
Whereas you can't you can't do that. And and what you're doing is in effect saying, this is happening. What we're gonna do is actually we're gonna facilitate it. Because we can't stop it. You know, it's the it's how can we we we can't push water uphill. I remember, we did some work with Microsoft a a number of years ago, and they were telling us that they would this was something that they they they were finding particular individuals, you know, set, change makers or particular people within the accounts, and then they were basically feeding them with information.
Kerry Cunningham [00:39:57]:
Mhmm.
Tim Hughes [00:39:58]:
And and actually because they knew those people would then go and spread it in the organization. And that was one of the ways that they were basically getting their brand in front of because everybody knows Microsoft, but it's it's it's Word and and Excel. And And what they would do you know, this is in the early days of Azure before anybody knew what as as Azure was. And they were basically pinpointing people and then using that as the as as the way of the the the customer was gonna educate everybody else in the organization.
Kerry Cunningham [00:40:29]:
Yeah. No. That's great. That's and that's you know, I think that's the the the way that we have to think about how deals are are done. It's just, not more than 20% of the time, it looks like, is it that kind of standard sales process that we think of, where a seller, calls cold calls somebody out of the blue and and introduces themselves and then begins a sales process. Or, you know, much less, the marketing organization runs an email campaign. Somebody responds to the email campaign, and 2 weeks later, there's pipeline. As if that organization developed the idea of buying a solution in your category when they saw your email, and then suddenly 2 weeks later, they're in your pipeline, for this $200,000 piece of software that you sell.
Kerry Cunningham [00:41:26]:
I mean, that's absurd. I mean, of course, it you know, that that doesn't work that way. It never has. And, you know, your email campaign that looks like it that got you a meeting got you a meeting because that organization has been in market for 6 months now looking at vendors. You're one of them. And the timing of your email was such that they were about to reach out to you anyway. Right?
Tim Hughes [00:41:56]:
And and
Kerry Cunningham [00:42:00]:
so, you know, the the idea that, you know, we just we we have to back up and think, as we talked about earlier about, you know, what does it look like when I've been when I've been involved in a big purchase for my company? What did that look like? Did it look like me getting an email or a phone call from somebody and deciding to go into market for that thing? It might have. Right? You might have gotten the idea like spark the idea. You know what? We really should think about replacing x, y, and z thing that we have, but then how long between that first spark of that idea and it actually happening, was it? Because if that thing wasn't in your budget and it costs a couple $100,000, it doesn't happen this year, you know, right? We don't have that kind of money sitting around most of the time. So I think it's just, you know, we really we really do need to become a little more self conscious about these things as we've said a couple of times now, because otherwise I think
Tim Hughes [00:42:55]:
it's I think, you know, there may be people watching that that sell something which is far more of a transaction, and and they're deliberately pitching it as a, you know, I have a sign off of $999. Right. And therefore, they're pitching it at 998. So I can just buy it on a credit card.
Kerry Cunningham [00:43:15]:
Right.
Tim Hughes [00:43:15]:
And I totally understand that. You know, I know people that sell stuff to marketeers, which is at 11995 because they know that a lot of marketeers that are down 1 have, like, a $2,000 sign off. You know, data and and for, you know, stuff like that. Mhmm. One one thing that I'm I'm interested in, I don't know if you've looked at it at all, Kerry, is if you think about non non sellers, so presalespeople, sales engineers, people that, people that are doing probably demonstrations on that. Do you have any do you have any data on on what or what part they play in the sale?
Kerry Cunningham [00:43:58]:
I don't yet. So that's definitely a, an area for future research. Like, I suspect those people are are often, back channel targets.
Tim Hughes [00:44:09]:
Yes.
Kerry Cunningham [00:44:10]:
Right? So if you're a the sales engineer or somebody like that who's been through a process, you you know, in the in the prior, so let's say that I'm a business person, senior business person. I run a department. I'm interested in, the cat a category of solution. I've been through 6 or 7 buying processes for that over the last 15 years, and I've met a couple of really good, sales engineers along the way. And one of them is over here, and one of them is over here. I'm gonna ping them because I trust them. They did a great job when I was working with them before. They're not the pitch heavy people.
Kerry Cunningham [00:44:47]:
They're not the ones, you know, who are trying to, you know, make sure that I I buy their thing today or whatever. So I'm I trust them, and I wanna know, how I I see that your solutions changed a little bit in the last year. You've done this. And I've got a question about that that my buying group is is asking. I can reach out to you and I feel okay about doing that. I can reach out to you and ask that question. And I feel, you know, so I think that that probably happens a lot. You know, and and I think we, you know, we don't wanna underestimate just how much when people change jobs every 2, 3 years, you know, in any given industry, it's pretty incestuous.
Kerry Cunningham [00:45:24]:
Right? You know, I used to work with so and so. They're over here now in this other company. That's probably also a big part of that back channel.
Tim Hughes [00:45:31]:
Yeah. And and and we I know the answer to this because I asked you before we we went live. But I'm gonna ask it again because we're we're live now. So so Dark Social, you know, the use of WhatsApp groups, you know, a CFO WhatsApp group or a, a CIO, you know, a cybersecurity WhatsApp group. Do you think that's being used for for for back channel discussions?
Kerry Cunningham [00:45:53]:
Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, we'll we'll dive into it more this year, but, I'm I'm sure it is. You know, those kinds of groups. And that's part of what, you know, we set up when we have we sponsor a CMO group and a BDR group, and part of the reason that people in those disciplines love those groups is because they get they get to help shape those networks and be in those networks and meet those people so that when they have issues, questions, problems, or evaluating a vendor, they've got a network that they can call on to help get answers. So I'm I'm absolutely sure those are, that's a huge part of it, and we'll be digging into that more this year in the research.
Tim Hughes [00:46:31]:
Okay. I mean, that that's, I remember someone coming to me 8 years ago, 7 years ago, And and, IBM did they'd been paid to do some research by IBM where they found out that a lot of the, the such the the buying that was going on was taking place in dark social. And they they phoned me up because they said I found they found my book. And and, basically, IBM had seen the research and rejected it. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. They said it just couldn't happen. If you think about going back, you you know, people were laughing at social media was a fad.
Tim Hughes [00:47:08]:
You know, do do really people think of it, you know, have cut these conversations? And and that person had a conversation with me, and I said, no. I think it it's it's taking place. You know, I'm in the number of sales ones where, you know, people are swapping ideas even from a sales perspective, but you can get you can get a feel for the market and the category and what other people are talking about just by sitting there and listening, not necessarily taking part.
Kerry Cunningham [00:47:32]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. No. I think I think that's huge. And, again, we just think about your own behavior. It's what you do all the time. Right? When you need to know something, whether it's anything from considering a vendor to, hiring an employee.
Kerry Cunningham [00:47:46]:
It's the way we work.
Tim Hughes [00:47:49]:
Well, we we all know that if we consider a vendor, you know, we could get fired. Sorry, Bertram. Were you gonna ask me? No. No. No.
Bertrand Godillot [00:47:59]:
I was just going back to, obviously, you know, because there is a a practice of using back channels, I suspect, there will soon be a practice of how do you get attractive to be contacted, and to be part to to be part of the back channel or to be at least a target of a back channel. Any ideas or any best practice that you could that you could share?
Kerry Cunningham [00:48:33]:
Yeah. I mean, I mean, the the answer is probably the for me is the most obvious one, which is get your ass out there on, social media on LinkedIn, you know, and be a presence and and and and deliver value, not just, you know, being out and trolling and whatever is not going to help you, but actually deliver some value into the marketplace that you serve so that the people who are who have the interest that that, your prospects do will see you, see your content, understand that you have something to contribute, and call on you when they have questions and and are evaluating vendors. That's really I mean, it's a glorious time in the existence of b two b, to be able to do that. You know? It didn't you know, beginning of our careers, it didn't exist. And we have we have sellers. We have BDRs, who have tens of thousands of followers. You know We do. Right? So, you know, they're they're out there delivering value to the the constituencies that they serve.
Kerry Cunningham [00:49:40]:
It's the way to do it.
Tim Hughes [00:49:44]:
Okay. Yes. I I think it it, it amazes me. I quite often you know, when whenever we talk to organizations, we always do a review of their social and stuff. And and it always amazes me. You'll get an SDR that will have, like, 200 contacts in LinkedIn, and they've never posted anything. And you'd you start to say, what do they do all day?
Kerry Cunningham [00:50:06]:
Yeah. Well, you even know I would imagine there are still companies where they say, well, I don't want you know, you're you're not supposed you're not you're not to be on LinkedIn all day posting things. You're you call I want you calling people and emailing people.
Tim Hughes [00:50:18]:
Yeah. We talked I I met someone recently, and they said that their CRO basically set they they their view was the reason why the IT industry in this has basically done a dip and lots of people have been laid off is because all the salespeople have been been playing on social media for the last couple of years.
Kerry Cunningham [00:50:35]:
Not selling not not playing enough, is I think more like the more like the case. Yeah. You know, I think it's it's even if you think about the the kind of the old, mere exposure effect. The the fact of being out in the marketplace and and just having your name present where your buyers are so that even if they don't consciously know that they've seen your name before, they see your name and it's familiar, and they think, well, I you know, you're I I must know this person or, you know, I've I've got a positive, sense of who this company, this person is because I see them all the time. I don't remember anything they've ever said. I couldn't pinpoint a single thing that I got from them, but I see them all the time. Right? That's very power. That's what advertising is, and this this is something that you can do yourself for nothing.
Kerry Cunningham [00:51:26]:
Well, it takes time. That's it.
Tim Hughes [00:51:27]:
Well, it well, that's interesting. I mean, one of those things is that it's partly because we've got 2 brains, and it's the monkey brain, of experience that where we get that feeling that we actually know someone and we like you know, the note the know, like, and trust somebody comes from the monkey brain, not the the the modern brain.
Kerry Cunningham [00:51:44]:
That's right. Yeah.
Tim Hughes [00:51:45]:
And that's all about experience. It's not necessarily, you know, I it it may be you know, I follow you, Kerry, and and, you know, what you produce is excellent. And, therefore, I know you for for for what you, what you create. But it could be that you're you know? So so Barry Duffy basically said, here, love joining webinar late and walk straight into a great line from Kerry. Now you may know Barry. You may not. But the fact is that Barry knows you, and that's the important thing.
Kerry Cunningham [00:52:15]:
It is.
Tim Hughes [00:52:15]:
So even though you may have 30,000 followers, but it doesn't matter. You can't know everybody of those 30,000 people, but Barry knows you.
Kerry Cunningham [00:52:23]:
Mhmm. Yeah. That's it. That's it. And in this case, it's not even necessary, I think, for somebody to know how they know you or even really be able to say, do I really know? It's if you're familiar, to people because you've simply been there, they are more likely to respond positively to you, and there's a ton of science, behind that. Now if your people are familiar and they do know why and the why is a negative, then that's not gonna help. But if you've been out in the marketplace being neutral or better and delivering a little bit of value in content and whatever, they're going to be more likely to respond to you, and they may not they don't have to know why necessarily. They just need to think, okay.
Kerry Cunningham [00:53:10]:
This person's been around. Right?
Bertrand Godillot [00:53:13]:
Kerry, this has been really great, and, I'd like to ask where where where where can people learn more? How can they get in touch with you?
Kerry Cunningham [00:53:24]:
LinkedIn's probably the easiest place to find me, of course. So Kerry Cunningham on LinkedIn, and there might be a couple of Kerry Cunninghams, but, I think at this point, I'd probably come up first if you gotta look for me. And then if you go to https://www.6sense.com/research, there's a ton of our research there. There are no forms of any kind. It's all freely available, and so, you can get all of our research there. But if you follow me, you'll also if you find me on LinkedIn, there's a link in my profile to all of that. So please do. That's what
Tim Hughes [00:53:57]:
I do. And I would and I would echo that, Kerry, in terms of I follow you, and I would recommend everybody else follows you. And one of the things about it is that you you always are putting out stuff where where where I go, I never thought about that. You know? And there is a lot of, there's a lot of stuff on on LinkedIn, which is the same old, same old. You're putting out stuff which is thought provoking. Sorry, Bertram.
Bertrand Godillot [00:54:24]:
That's fine. It's just to say free to understand that fully agree, and and we all need to go and and visit, and visit, Kerry's profile. We we now have a newsletter, so don't miss an episode. Get your highlights beyond the show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes. You can scan the QR code on screen or visit, us at digital download dot live slash newsletter. On behalf of the panelists, to our guests, and to our audience, thank you all, and see you next time. Thank you very much.
Kerry Cunningham [00:55:05]:
Thanks, Kerry. That was excellent. Thank you so much. Thank you. Bye bye.
Tim Hughes [00:55:08]:
Thanks, Bertrand as well. Bye.
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