I bought a new car in 2021, when the pandemic had virtually eliminated the gap between new and used prices. Car buyers 30 years ago might have shown up at the dealership wanting a truck, a sedan, or something as vague as a “good family car,” and the salesperson’s job was to help steer them in the right direction based on their needs.
That process has changed dramatically. Like most modern buyers, I had already done a wealth of research leading up to my decision, and nothing the salesperson said was going to make me walk away with anything other than the brand and model I showed up to buy.
Buyers today are more informed than ever, and not just about cars, appliances, and consumer electronics. A 2024 HubSpot Blog Survey of 422 B2B professionals in the U.S. who make purchasing decisions for their teams (hereafter the 2024 B2B Buyer survey) found that half of them find the B2B buying experience outdated. Also, they overwhelmingly prefer to do independent research.
We’ll dig into the findings and see what we can learn from the study, but let’s start with some definitions.
Table of Contents
- What Is a B2B Buyer?
- B2B Buyers vs. B2C Buyers
- Who Are Your B2B Buyers?
- What the B2B Buying Journey Looks Like in 2024
For example, when I was selling a SaaS product for digital marketing firms, a buyer group might include an engineering lead wanting to make API connections easier to create and maintain, a CEO or CFO looking to grow their advertising business while managing costs, and a legal team making sure all the regulatory requirements were met in the processing of customer data. Very rarely did a sale require just a single signature, which meant the sales process and accompanying assets needed to be built around a variety of personas.
B2B Buyers vs. B2C Buyers
While B2C buyers tend to make smaller, transactional purchases to meet their immediate needs, B2B buyers are often making significant investments that demand complex decision-making processes. B2B buyers will look at their business requirements and a product’s technical specifications to determine the initial fit, and they’ll sign contracts based on potential ROI, provider reliability and post-sale support, and the flexibility of pricing terms.
B2B buyers view their providers as potential partners, and as such, they’ll perform a much more thorough evaluation of all the pros and cons before they commit to a potentially lengthy contract. While the pandemic normalized remote work, I still find in-person meetings at conferences and tradeshows crucial to building real relationships with your prospects and gaining their trust. Alignment between partners is crucial to the buyers’ success, which is why it’s essential to get to know your B2B buyers and discern how and why they make their decisions.
Who Are Your B2B Buyers?
The profile of your buyers will vary depending on your industry, but the 2024 B2B Buyer survey identifies a few key points.
B2B Buyer Stats
First and foremost, B2B buyers are users of the tools they buy. Ninety-five percent use the software to some degree, 78% use it regularly, and only 5% don’t use it at all. These numbers hold true to my own experience in SaaS, which is why it’s critical to show prospective buyers how intuitive your software can be or make improvements in usability if that’s not a selling point you can currently tout.
The largest age group (38%) of B2B buyers is 35-44. Keep this age group in mind as you try to hone your messaging and outreach, but don’t forget that younger buyers will be entering the market in the coming years.
And finally, the 2024 B2B Buyer survey paints a picture of buyers as company leaders. The largest group (47%) is at the manager level, where I recommend using sales assets that illustrate how your software can improve efficiencies and make their teams more effective. These selling points are powerful because they’ll also make managers themselves more successful, helping them climb the ladder and reach their career goals.
Some 36% of buyers are at the very top of leadership in the C-suite. Content targeting these individuals should showcase broader impacts of your software such as improvements in profitability, competitive advantages they’ll unlock, and the timeline from implementation to positive ROI.
What the B2B Buying Journey Looks Like in 2024
B2B buyers are looking for new software solutions for predictable reasons. By and large, they’re chasing improved efficiency and productivity, a better experience for their customers, and ways to streamline the communication and collaboration of their own internal teams.
How they’re arriving at their decisions, however, might surprise you.
Let’s look at four stages of the B2B buying journey and see what insights we can apply from HubSpot’s hot-off-the-press survey.
Awareness
In the awareness phase, B2B buyers realize they have a problem and start searching for a solution. One surprising result of the 2024 B2B Buyer survey was the revelation that buyers are predominantly discovering new software tools on social media. They rely on these platforms 60% of the time, which is far more than their next leading source of new information, which is marketing emails at 41%.
The types of platforms might come as an even bigger surprise, with buyers using conventional consumer channels like Facebook (89%), YouTube (87%), and Instagram (79%) far more than the ostensibly business-focused LinkedIn (52%).
To reach your B2B buyers, you need a presence where they spend most of their time — and apparently an outreach strategy that manages to link vacation/pet photos and your SaaS product.
Consideration
The consideration phase involves exploring solutions and analyzing how well they might meet the organization’s requirements. As someone who’s used ChatGPT extensively to eliminate tedious busy work, I’m not surprised to see AI stepping in to meet a formerly time-consuming need.
The 2024 B2B Buyer survey illustrates that nearly half (48%) of buyers are using AI tools to research software, and that an overwhelming 98% of those who are using it agree that it’s been impactful.
Meanwhile, sales reps are seeing their traditional involvement in the consideration stage diminish. The 2024 B2B Buyer survey illustrates that 75% of buyers prefer to gather information on products on their own, and 57% purchased a tool in the last year without meeting the vendor’s sales team.
That’s not to say that reps are becoming irrelevant, and a wealth of research including Gartner’s 2023 B2B Buying Report shows that reps play a critical role in increasing the value and quality of deals — they just need to adapt.
My suggestion? Accept that buyers can and will find other avenues as they look for information, and focus on taking a consultative approach combined with the social selling that reaches buyers in their preferred digital channels.
Evaluation
AI is also leaving its mark on the evaluation stage, where B2B buyers are doing a more thorough analysis of their shortlisted products.
Here, instead of using it to do some of the work, buyers want to see AI features and capabilities in the products themselves. When looking for new tools, the 2024 B2B Buyer survey indicates that 62% of buyers would prefer tools with AI features and 18% are only willing to consider tools that have them.
My main takeaway here is an obvious one: Leveraging AI to make your solution more capable will have the dual benefit of making it more attractive in the marketplace as well.
Decision
A final decision is almost never made in a vacuum, and more than half (54%) of respondents in the 2024 B2B Buyer survey said they need buy-in from one or two individuals at their organization before making a purchase decision. That decision will also take time, with 60% of buyers taking between one and six months to purchase a solution.
Involve key stakeholders early and move your deals forward whenever you can, but trust the process. In my experience, attempting to rush a deal through will almost always backfire, and it’s a recipe for burnout in sales.
Adapting Your Approach
With these fresh B2B buyer stats in hand, you can easily adapt and update your approach.
Here are my three main takeaways: 1) cater to your B2B buyers’ increasingly independent research process, 2) showcase or implement AI capabilities in your software, and 3) hone in on the changing demographics of your buyer to deliver more targeted messaging.