Humanize Your Buyer

By Perry Rearick, Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer

B2B buyers are teams of problem solvers seeking solutions to improve their businesses. And those teams are comprised of people, working collaboratively under imperfect conditions and sometimes under stress.

Yet, many of us dehumanize them by referring to them as MQLs, SQLs, or hot prospects ready to be closed. And when they don’t respond to our pitches, we heartlessly knock them out. We can do better than that!

B2B buyers are navigating a journey of understanding the issues they face, establishing goals to overcome them, setting a strategy, exploring various options to solve the problem, and perhaps even seeking products and services from solution providers.

The best way to be a solution provider they want to speak with is to:

• Help them better understand the issues they face.
• Help them establish realistic goals to overcome them.
• Help them build a strategy that is feasible, acceptable, and suitable to the outcomes they want.
• Help them look at all the options available.

If you engage in helping rather than selling, you will build trust with them, and they will find a way to work with you.