It’s the beginning of 2024, and GTM teams are in the perfect situation to drive early brand awareness, get ahead of long sales cycles, and speed up deal velocity.
B2B Marketers know how to grow brand awareness and create pipeline to give sales a head start, but it’s the deal velocity that should be a heavy focus for B2B marketing orgs leaning on ABM.
The root issue of long sales cycles and slowing deal velocity is the growth of BUYING COMMITTEES.
You’re aware it’s more than one buyer involved in the B2B buying process, but are you aware of how many functions and departments are involved, and more importantly what’s their contribution to the purchasing process.
We learned this back in 2022, when we were pitching a Series B B2B SaaS company. Initially, we thought we had the deal in the bag since we impressed the Director of Marketing, but little did we know we had to impress and convince the Chief Growth Officer and CFO. Now, we did end up winning the deal, but it revealed to us it’s more hands involved in buying decisions than we anticipated.
So how do we address these big buying committee’s in 2024 forward?
1. One Unified Goal, Multiple Participants
First, understand that just because there’s multiple parties and groups involved, doesn’t mean there’s multiple goals. All the committees share one unified mission, goal, and targets. This means when you’re curating messaging, personalized material, and Paid Social creative, you’re creating varying messaging for how each buying group plays into the overarching goal of the company/account your targeting.
2. Solidify Core ICP
Secondly, you need to nail your ICP. Both firmographics and the demographics of the key user involved. ICP is crucial for a myriad of reasons, but the more you understand the organizational structure of your target account, the better penetration you can get, and the more personalized messaging for each buying committee involved.
3. Identify Stakeholders/Committees Involved in the Buying Decision
Thirdly, after you’ve solidified firmographics and the core buyer/user of your product, carefully look at all departments and functions, and use process of elimination to uncover the hidden committees and stakeholders that weren’t apparent before.
4. Identify Buying Persona in the Committee
Each stakeholder within the buying committee plays a crucial, but independent role of the others. During our GTM strategy sessions with our clients we identify 5 personas involved in the committee:
- Business Decision Maker: Decision maker focused on if your product produces ROI and revenue.
- Technical Decision Maker: Decision maker focused on if your product impacts technology and operations.
- Sponsor: The internal spokesperson, pushing the deal forward with the decision maker.
- Influencers: The internal spokesperson who does not have a direct role in the purchase, but has the potential to influence the decision maker.
- User: The person(s) who will be using your product day-to-day.
Learn More About Evron
We position B2B marketers like you to source more revenue with less friction. With GTM roles shifting to the right, marketers are challenged with sparking up initiatives that drives sales ROI, and having data to back the results. Current GTM and Demand playbooks don’t help today’s B2B marketers optimize for revenue outcomes. That’s where we come in. We develop roadmaps and campaigns, execute demand and ABM tactics, and design creative assets to fuel revenue results.
Discover more about Evron at evron.io. Join the GTM and Demand convo on our socials: LinkedIn, YouTube, Tik Tok. Listen to The A2B Series Podcast on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.