Making a purchase as a B2B buyer is vastly different than that of your run-of-the-mill Amazon checkout done from the comfort of your couch.
If only the tap of a single button was all it took.
Even though you may still shop for vendors and solutions through consumer-friendly methods — perusing the channels of social media, for example — B2B sales cycles are naturally longer.
There’s more than just your opinion alone to consider.
For any given business problem you encounter, you’re sure to find a plethora of SaaS software options promising to solve it. And with the weight of both budget and various stakeholder needs to consider, you have to be thorough with the research you do upfront.
In fact, 45% of B2B buyers are spending more time researching purchases than in years past. 41% are conducting a more detailed analysis of ROI across multiple platforms before ever making a decision.
More is clearly the name of the game when it comes to purchasing SaaS software for your business. And it’s something that all too often gets in the way when trying to make the right purchase.
The Paradox of Choice and Too Much Information
Listen to Barry Schwartz TED Talk on The Paradox of Choice and it's easy to understand why shopping often brings with it a sense of anxiety. Choice, as Schwartz argues, isn’t really freedom — it’s a paralyzing agent.
There are plenty of studies to exemplify this, one famous example involving the jam study conducted by psychologists from Columbia and Stanford University. However, this is probably something you can just as easily verify with situations found in everyday life.
Simply pay attention to the number of menu options available to you the next time you’re at a restaurant. The more items there are to choose from, the more difficult the decision will be to make.
Not only will a decision with too many choices prove harder to make, but it will likely also leave you feeling less satisfied with the end result. When you end up dedicating more time and energy to absorbing and processing the variety of options available, you inevitably become less certain regarding how much better one is over the other.
Applied to SaaS software purchasing decisions, this same paradox applies. Especially when you consider both the number of people involved in the buying process and volume of information available to you.
The push for high-quality content among companies selling their solutions and services online has proven to be both good and bad.
Good in the sense that you can now surface useful information about almost anything through a Google search. Bad in the sense that searches have become oversaturated.
When conducting SaaS software research, it’s more difficult than ever to discern one company from the next. You do as much analysis as possible, but in the end, your final decision ends up feeling more like a “best guess” or “gut feeling” than a sure thing.
Three Unique Sales Approaches to Engaging Customer Information
In a survey of more than 1,000 B2B customers, Gartner found two customer sentiments to be the most likely indicators of high quality, low regret deals. They involved high confidence in the information encountered and low skepticism of the seller.
Basically, you should feel as though the SaaS software provider you partner with is trustworthy.
How do you gauge trustworthiness, however, when all of the information you’re presented with appears to be legit at face-value? For starters, it helps to remain cognizant of the three approaches most sales teams will take in engaging you throughout the buying cycle.
Giving
As it relates to information, the giving approach operates under the notion that more is better.
In order to move a deal forward, a rep will likely throw as much content at you as possible in order to cover every potential question under the sun. Even if it’s not always 100% relevant to your business needs.
Telling
The telling approach champions individual experts on a sales team based on personal experience, depth of knowledge, and authority. It positions reps as the best single source of information available to buyers conducting research.
Sense-Making
With sense-making, sales teams actively assist customers in their evaluation of information. They rely heavily on the fact that buyers should arrive at their own understandings of what’s presented to them based on individual needs. Rather than throwing everything up into the air and seeing what catches, sales reps will prioritize content based on customer relevancy.
The Approach to Take for Closing on High Quality, Low Regret Deals
As you conduct SaaS software research for a business, you’re likely to encounter all three of these approaches among potential enterprise solutions. But only one is going to lead you to close on a high quality, low regret deal.
When working with a sales team, it’s the sense-making approach that often leaves buyers with a greater sense of confidence and ease in the provider they choose to partner with. You want to make a decision based on how thoughtfully curated information is to your specific business needs.
This means prioritizing the type of information you’re presented with when evaluating different SaaS software options. Any good salesperson should be able to point you in the right direction when it comes to the features most relevant to your business.
Final Thoughts: How to Choose SaaS Software
At Cirrus Insight, we’re firm believers in the sense-making approach. It’s something that goes beyond our deep knowledge of this industry.
Through a combination of demo environments, user reviews, and case studies, we can provide prospects with a first-hand feel for what our solutions have to offer. This helps teams better identify opportunities for efficiency and alleviate pain points immediately upon implementation.
Don’t just read about the advantages of Cirrus Insight for better managing sales across your team, see it in action during a guided demo. Or simply put it to the test for yourself with our free 14-day trial — set up is fast and easy with no credit card required.
