Editor’s Note: CMO Coffee Talk is an open space for more than 1,300 CMOs to come together weekly with their peers and discuss timely, crowd-sourced topics. Matt Heinz of Heinz Marketing co-hosts these dynamic, illuminating conversations with 6sense CMO Latané Conant.
How awesome would it be if B2B buyers bought exclusively based on logic? If they looked at the evidence and made a rational decision every time?
Someone once told me that B2B buyers decide on logic, while consumers decide and buy based on emotion.
Oh, if only it were that simple!
In the end, all buyers are human. And you can’t take the human out of the B2B buying (or selling) experience.
Last week’s CMO Coffee Talk focused on how behavioral science can explain and even predict buyer behavior, therefore giving sales and marketing professionals valuable insights to reach, influence, and mobilize decisions. We were honored to have Shirin Oreizy join us once again to share new research and insights.
Prevention vs. Promotion
There are countless examples of behavioral science in action. For example, did you know that the average human feels losses at twice the impact as wins? Over time, this gap in impact prohibits many of us from making risky decisions for fear of feeling that deeper loss.
It’s a key reason why the status quo is so powerful. Doing nothing is more desirable than losing.
I’ve often thought of this as the difference between vitamins and painkillers. Are you willing to invest in solving a problem in the future more than a problem that exists for you (and is impacting you) right now? Addressing an immediate real-time pain is keeping you from that losing feeling. A pain in the future isn’t nearly as visceral.
Emotions Affect Behaviors
Does love have a place in B2B? Let me ask a different question. Think about an important business relationship you have — an agency, a vendor, a technology platform. How would you feel if it was gone?
Love is an emotion; loyalty is a behavior.
So here’s a bit of homework for you. Pull up your buyer personas. Are emotions and feelings addressed explicitly? Can you enumerate specifically how each persona might feel about their status quo?
What might be the feelings, emotions and fears along the way — and how can you proactively address each of them to help your buyers make a confident commitment to change?
Shirin talked about this as a “shrinking the zone of acceptance.” Eliminate fears, increase confidence, make the final choice easier.
Coming Up on CMO Coffee Talk…
In our next CMO Coffee Talk meetup (which is just around the corner!), we’re doing Swipe File Friday! Twice a year, we feature a rapid-fire open sharing of what’s working across B2B marketing organizations. Board slides, A/B test results, new tools and templates, it’s all fair game and shared openly amidst CMOs. You don’t want to miss this one!
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