Driving Consensus is the Biggest Growth Opportunity in B2B Sales and Marketing

Consensus means general agreement about something or an idea or opinion shared by all the people in a group. Three of the world’s top B2B sales and marketing research and advisory firms agree that the challenge of buying consensus is significant. And solving this problem is a major priority for each of the thousands of clients they advise.

Consensus: The Goal of the Buying Group

A company achieves consensus when each stakeholder within the buying group agrees on the problem their company must solve to reach its growth potential. Consensus also includes agreement on how to address the problem and the selection criteria for choosing the best technology fit. This is the ultimate goal.

According to an extensive study by Corporate Executive Board (CEB), 5.4 people, on average, are involved in the majority of B2B buying decisions. But even when just a second person gets involved, purchase likelihood plummets from 81 to 55 percent. Purchase likelihood drops to just 31 percent when six or more stakeholders take part. SiriusDecisions and MHI Global have each conducted similar studies. They all prove the challenge of getting buying consensus reaches into every outpost of the B2B galaxy.

The Evil Twin: Buying Dysfunction

Without consensus, its evil twin, buying dysfunction, sets in. Dysfunction drives the decision toward a low margin, commoditized, shell version of your value proposition, or worse, no-decision limbo. Buying dysfunction is so pervasive that many B2B professionals have come to accept it as the status quo. Like fish in water, they’re immersed in it and haven’t considered their options because there haven’t been many viable solutions for addressing this unique challenge.

Buying dysfunction is a result of buyer divergence. Stakeholders bring such different perspectives with them to a buying decision that even the most committed and well-intentioned individuals can default to the status quo if they perceive the pain of change to be being more than the pain of staying the same. The job of the modern marketing and sales partnerships is to frame the cost of doing nothing as being too great. In this context, helping companies make meaningful buying decisions has become the best way to sell. Every company that sells something runs up against the buying consensus challenge every day. What can be done to drive stakeholder agreement toward a real solution that positively impacts business?

Using Consensus™ Drives Agreement of the Buying Group

Consensus™ is Software as a Service (SaaS) that accelerates B2B sales by driving consensus among stakeholders in the prospect’s buying group. By automating custom product demos, clients have cut their sales cycles by 68% and jumped close rates 44%. Our interactive demo platform personalizes video and documents. Each prospect automatically learns about your solution in the most relevant way. Our Demolytics™ dashboard helps you discover and engage the entire buying group by gathering analytics and tracking what they watched, what’s important to them, and who they shared it with. Having this knowledge drives consensus and drives confident purchase decisions fast.