2. Building B2B Customer Insight
2.5 Reading: Adamson et al, The Challenger Customer, Chapter 1 (excerpts)
This reading is an excerpt from a book written specifically to help salespeople understand and sell more effectively to B2B customers. The authors lead a sales training consulting firm. They have written several great books based on original research they did on effective selling, including The Challenger Sale, which was the first book in the series that continued with this one.
This reading from the first chapter of The Challenger Customer explains and provides insights from a research study they conducted with 3000 B2B buyers. It also introduces another model of B2B buyer decision-making.
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Click here to access a copy of this book excerpt (requires UConn NetID)
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Comprehension Questions
- According to the customers they surveyed, how many people on average are typically part of a B2B buying center? How many different priorities and perspectives needing to come to consensus are involved?
- What three broad stages do the authors use to break down the B2B buying journey?
- How do they find that the difficulty of individual decisions compares with the difficulty of group decisions at each stage of the buying journey? Which stage is the most challenging? Which stage is the easiest?
- According to the author’s research, how far through their buying process do buying center members typically reach out to a supplier? How far through their buying process do buying center members typically experience the most group conflict (often causing the buying journey to fall apart)
- What implications do the authors find for selling organizations?
Application Questions
- How might you integrate the authors’ model of the B2B buying journey with the other models that you’ve seen?