Why Peer Review Sites Matter: Influence and the digital buyer
Presented by Mike Fauscette (LinkedIn, @mfauscette), Chief Research Officer at G2 Crowd.
Moderated by Ludovic Leforestier ( LinkedIn @lludovic), BearingPoint and IIAR Board
When: Thursday 22 September 2016
Time: 0800 PST/ 1100 EDT/ 1630 BST/ 1730 CEST
The Internet and mobile technologies have changed the way people interact and created a population that is always on and always connected. This new connectivity and interaction patterns have opened up many new business innovation and opportunities, but at the same time has led to behavioral changes that are creating frictions and unmet expectations among employees, partners and customers/prospects. For many companies this manifests as a “sales” problem but is, in fact a buyer behavioral “problem”. Buyers are looking to new sources of information, sharing past experiences and in general influenced in new ways and by different I information sources. Most of these sources are outside the control of the seller and according to a recent G2 Crowd survey over 62% of enterprise (B2B) buyers reported that they contact vendor sales representatives after they have made a purchase decision. In other words 62% of prospects never interact with a brand until they have made a purchase decision, and by inference there is a large population of deals that you never touch or even know about. The answer to this issue isn’t simple, but is not addressed by the common approach of treating it as a sales productivity issue. Raising quotas and increasing cold calls doesn’t create relevant and contextual interaction with purchasers most of the time. What would impact them is finding prospects earlier in the buying process and helping them learn about your product in a trusted way.
“Trust” is a big part of this equation as is interacting when, where and how the prospect chooses. Influence has shifted for many buyers, they look for trusted destinations online where they can find unfiltered and unbiased information about solutions to business problems. This doesn’t replace older information sources but does open up a completely different type of influencer. Peer review communities, particularly if those communities are focused on buyer advocacy first and brand advocacy second, are growing in buyer influence and becoming a trusted input to the B2B buying process. In this webinar we will discuss buyer behavior changes, trusted information sources, peer review communities and the role they play in the technology buying process as well as the opportunity that the data collected in the community offers to sellers.
If you are not a member and interested in registering for this event please email info at analystrelations dot org
See also:
- Will research crowdsourcing finally move analyst firms to an experience business model?
- Around Mike Fauscette from IDC in 10 questions
- Constellation and the curse of the (not so) magic quadrant
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