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We live in a buyer-centric world.
Research into B2B purchase decisions suggests that power is increasingly shifting to buyers.
Today, buyers are more often driving the process on their own terms and timetable.
For example, here’s an interesting statistic on how businesses buy things:
“9 out of 10 buyers say that when they’re ready to buy, they’ll find you”
– DemandGen Report
How the buying process has changed
Traditionally, buyers of software and other major business purchases sought input early in the process from vendors to help them define and clarify their requirements. But today, buyers are often conducting extensive research on their own first.
As a result, when buyers do engage with vendors, they’ve often made up their mind and are just looking for confirmation and reference checking! In a nutshell, the traditional process for creating a shortlist has fundamentally changed.
What this means for software vendors
For software vendors, this new behaviour has both positive and negative implications. On the plus side, when buyers choose to engage with you they are often much closer to purchase. More educated buyers can mean shorter sales cycles and lower selling costs.
However, the flip side is that vendors now have much less influence over the purchase process … sometimes to the extent of being ruled out even before you even knew there was an opportunity. The key challenge for vendors is to make sure you’re in the consideration set when buyers are ready to buy.
Challenges for software buyers
This change is mostly good for software buyers — i.e. you have more power in the purchasing process! However, it does also present important challenges. In particular, you now have to sift through vast quantities of information, trying to make sense of what’s available and which options are most relevant.
As B2B consulting firm Greenhat puts it, there is “an over-supply of unfiltered content” on the web, so smart buyers are looking for ways to cut through the clutter.
Common techniques used by buyers to get closer to a decision include (i) asking trusted advisors and colleagues for advice, (ii) reading content from respected authorities and thought-leaders, and (iii) making use of shortlisting and comparison services, such as our Get A Shortlist offering.
Share your experience
Are you part of this trend? Think about the last time you were involved in a business purchase decision and share your experience in the comments below…
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If you tried to access Software Shortlist yesterday, you may have received a warning from your search engine about potential harm. This was due to a malware attack on the website and has now been fully resolved. The Software Shortlist website is now safe to access and has been given a clean bill of health by our hosting provider and Google.
What was the issue?
A PHP file was maliciously uploaded to our server that inserted an iframe tag into our home page and other pages. This iframe code opened up a website that is a known distributor of malware in a tiny window. In most cases, users attempting to visit Software Shortlist during this period would have received a warning from their web browser and prevented from accessing the site.
Software Shortlist itself was not hosting malware.
How did we resolve it?
We worked with our hosting provider to systematically scan all files on the server, remove the offending PHP files, and implement tighter security measures. The vulnerability that allowed this to occur has now been resolved. Furthermore, we have identified the hacker responsible and are reporting them to the appropriate authorities.
What’s the status now?
The Software Shortlist website is safe to access. We have completed a systematic scan, removed any offending files, and upgraded security — and verified this with our hosting provider and Google. Search engines have now removed the warning page.
We apologize for any inconvenience. If you have any remaining concerns, please contact us to discuss.
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I’m a firm believer that business priorities should drive your IT decisions, not the other way around. This ensures that you are achieving real business impact, not just following the latest IT trend or getting distracted by low value activities.
As Peter Drucker once said:
The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers. The truly dangerous thing is asking the wrong questions”
In the context of choosing software, asking the wrong question is jumping to “which CRM should I get?” before first asking questions like “what does my business need to meet its objectives?” and “how can software help me do this?”. It may indeed be the case that a CRM system is required… but before you try to find the right one, find out in detail what it is that you most need for your business to succeed!
Even big enterprises sometimes need reminding about this. A recent article in strategy+business magazine called “Road Map to Relevance” emphasises the importance of thinking about the capabilities that your business needs to succeed, and ensuring that your IT strategy is aligned with this. The authors suggest the journey to achieve this has four steps:
“First, what are your company’s distinctive capabilities – those that support your strategic priorities – and how can they be improved with information technology? Second how should you prioritize your IT projects accordingly? Third, what sequence of investment and activity will allow you to reach the goals you’ve set and close the gaps you need to close. And fourth, what kinds of cultural and governance support do you need to put this IT strategy into practice?”
Although the article above has a much broader scope than our focus on software selection, it certainly resonates well with the simple, five-step methodology that Software Shortlist developed to help SMBs choose software more effectively:
- Understand your business needs
- Define your software requirements
- Identify available software
- Shortlist the best options
- Evaluate and decide
The benefits of taking a more strategic approach to IT – i.e. aligning your IT and software decisions with what drives your business success – are compelling.
On the one hand, you reduce your costs by not investing in things that don’t make a difference to your business. Plus, the right IT investments can provide a seriously positive boost to your sales, productivity, customer satisfaction, and overall business performance. In fact, a McKinsey study from 2006 found that “investments in technology-enabled business processes can deliver up to ten times the impact of traditional IT cost reduction efforts”.
If you’d like a free copy of our ebook on effective software selection, simply email us at info@softwareshortlist.com. And once you’re ready to consider particular solutions, why not try our free Get A Shortlist service?
