3.4 Video Lecture: Aligning Sources of B2B Value with the Buying Journey

Watch this video that re-clusters Bain’s “Elements of B2B Value” to align them with the B2B buying journey. The lecture transcript is included below the video.

Transcript

In this video, we’ll cluster Bain’s buyer value framework to better align with the buying stage models we’ve identified. Together, this will give us a more useful tool to work with customers and advise them in their buying decisions.

[0:16] Bain’s B2B Value Dimensions

Bain provides a useful framework for understanding potential B2B value dimensions.

They highlight the wide range of needs that can be addressed by B2B marketers and salespeople to create value for their clients. They also make some useful insights that the primary areas of opportunity for marketers to create value occur in a middle range between very tangible and very intangible needs.

In building their framework, Bain was leveraging people’s familiarity with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but we know that in their personal decisions, consumers don’t actually rank needs the way Maslow ranked them, and they don’t do so in their organizational decisions either.

So to be more useful, let’s regroup and reorganize these needs to better align with the broad stages of our buying model. This will help us highlight how to use these elements to advise customers as they make buying decisions as a group.

[1:09] Groups that stay basically the same

We’ll keep “table stakes” groupings the same. As Bain noted, table stakes are must-haves and we need to be able to satisfy them just to be considered. We’ll also keep the same “inspirational value” and “individual value” groups for now.

Bain’s functional group value includes needs for tangible economic and performance value. It’s not a coincidence that Bain grouped these needs the same way that we previously broke down our complex decision processes into economic and technical buying decisions to be worth adopting.

Products and services have to work technically to deliver the performance that customers need. And their implementation has to generate economic value. So we’ll make just a slight change to rename performance value to technical value to be consistent with our buying model.

[1:56] Regrouping the primary value creation opportunities

Finally, we move to the group in the middle that Bain highlighted as particularly critical for value creation. These needs are more intangible and subjective, so can be harder for different individuals in an organization to agree upon.

One way we’ll find that people will come to consensus on needs is by agreeing on higher level goals and then evaluating how needs align with these goals.

So let’s group Bain’s operational and productivity needs into a more general goal of better ongoing efficiencies. Customers have existing processes and routines and they want them to run as efficiently as possible without waste and making the most productive use of their resources.

Then we have two groups, Bain labeled “Access” and “Strategic”. These items help companies grow their markets and adapt their products to changing environments. So let’s group them together under easier to grow and adapt.

Finally, we have a cluster that Bain labeled relationship elements like supplier, cultural fit, stability, and expertise are specifically about the interaction quality with a specific supplier. So let’s group them as “supplier is better to work with”.

[3:05] Aligning the new groupings with the buying journey

Now that we’ve grouped these a little differently, let’s see how this might help us align these needs with customers buying processes.

First, let’s take individual value out. While this is very important to keep in mind, it’s not something that will help groups build consensus.

Then let’s identify things that are clearly part of the supplier choice stage. Organizational table stakes are things that the buying center will expect from all suppliers. So when they get to supplier choice, customers will use these elements to screen suppliers in or out. Recall, this is often done by people with formal purchasing jobs in the organization in order to build the list of acceptable suppliers.

Then “Supplier is Better to Work With” is specifically focused on comparing supplier organizations, so it makes sense that buying centers would focus on these elements during the supplier choice decision. That leaves the rest as tools to help build consensus on the solution identification decision.

[4:07] Laddering the benefits

Now, here’s where some ordering of these groups is valuable. There’s lots of research and marketing on the value of laddering, helping customers connect technical features of your product with functional benefits and higher level goals. This is also true in B2B marketing. We create value by helping our customers make this correlation between product features, their technical, strategic, and operational benefits, and the impact of those benefits on their organization’s profit and purpose outcomes.

The more we do this laddering for customers, the more we can help all of the members of the buying center align toward a decision along higher level benefits and outcomes. We’re going to use these two broad business benefits in the middle of the ladder to frame the value we creates to align our messaging towards these two broad customer goals.

This is a topic of the next video.