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As covered extensively over the last few months, the buying experience is becoming a predominant factor in the buyer’s relationship.  In fact, it is fair to say that the buyer will view the value of their relationships with sellers based on a high percentage of their experiences with the selling company.  Today, B2B companies will need to catch up to B2C advancements in this area if they are to have a future in buyer relationships.  Carefully examining new social technologies that enhance the buying experience.

Social Expert NetworksThe social buyer persona that is emerging this decade is placing tremendous value in social expert networks.  I see this trend as having two distinct components.  The first being that the social buyer persona is looking to avail him or herself to expert knowledge that creates more confidence in decision-making.  The second being, and we are seeing this more today, social buyers are seeking to position themselves as experts in their respective fields and seek to contribute content socially.

Social media is about relationships, so it requires you to engage in two-way conversations and participate consistently. Social media is real time, so you need to be monitoring the conversations and taking action on them in real time. Social media enhances and amplifies other channels, so it cannot be used in a silo.

To generate demand from these conversations, you want the engine to identify those people who are potential buyers in the discover phase of their customer life-cycle so that you have already started a relationship with them and created brand preference when they enter the explore phase.

Suspects are looking for companies to share what they know as an organization — not what they sell. So the content marketer’s goal at this stage is to get content to spread from person to person in the hopes that the more people it reaches, the better the chance that it will reach a potential prospect.

content marketers to avoid using forms when communicating with Suspects, as anything that interrupts consumers’ ability to view your content is a surefire way to blunt its spread at this stage of the marketing game.

What information they want: In general, Prospects are looking for content that feeds their professional interests and provides a service, whether it be helping them solve a problem, giving them some targeted business tips, or arming them with information that can help them get buy-in from team decision-makers.

By year-end 2013, B2B organizations using social CRM applications will represent 25 percent of all projects worldwide, which is an increase from fewer than 10 percent in 2011.

To be successful with social CRM, organizations need to be much less focused on how an organization can manage the customer, and much more focused on how the customer can manage the relationship. Without any benefit for the customer to participate, communities and social networks die resulting in no benefits to the organization using the social CRM applications.

1 – Attract many, then focus on filtering If your prospects do research online, will they find your company, or your competitor? Mark Roberge, VP Sales from HubSpot argued that you should keep the top of your sales funnel as broad as possible.

#2 – Give all sales people a social media address Scott Holden, Senior Director at Salesforce.com argued that not just companies need to be discoverable, but also individual sales representatives. Social pages are often the first ones to come up in search results.

Scott Holden summarized this as moving from self-promotion to social referrals: “trust me, he is a great lover” and not “I am a great lover”.  I expressed a similar sentiment in my blog earlier this week on Genuine Customer Engagement.

Cloud wary, yet hopeful. Buyers see cloud computing as a major disruptive technology wave with many benefits, forcing them to re-think their IT landscape

Self-reliant, yet dependent. Buyers are pushing salespeople out of the early stages of the buying process with search, industry influencers, their peers, and social media, yet they demand strong relationships

Short on time, yet content hungry. Time-constrained buyers maintain a robust appetite for relevant content, but they want it packaged and delivered on their terms